Allwinner Submits A100 Initial Support to Mainline Linux

Allwinner A100 Mainline Linux

You may also have already used boards based on Allwinner processors with mainline Linux support. But so far you had to thank linux-sunxi community for all the mainlining work they do, and AFAIK Allwinner was not involved. But today, I noticed Allwinner A100 initial support was submitted by Frank Lee with an AllwinnerTech dot com email address, and although the company was involved in some other patchsets, AFAIK it might be the first time they work on mainlining one of their processors. Allwinner A100 is a mid-range tablet processor with a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, an Imagination PowerVR GE8300 GPU, 4K video decode and 1080p encode that looks to be a replacement for/upgrade to the popular Allwinner A64. The patchset itself brings initial support for the four Cortex-A53 cores, clock and pinctrl, as well as the Device Tree file. There’s also mentioned of Allwinner Perf1 Allwinner A100 SBC with  1GB DDR3, […]

Allwinner V831 AI Full HD Camera SoC Powers Sochip V831 Development Board

Sochip V831 Development Board

In the last year or so, we’ve started to see several camera SoCs with a built-in NPU or SIMD instructions to accelerate face detection, objects detection and so on, starting with the low-resolution Kendryte K210 processor to the 2.5K Ingenic T31 MIPS video processor, or even the 4K capable iCatch V37 camera SoC. Allwinner introduces several camera processors (V3, V316, S3…) in the past, but none of them included an NPU aka AI accelerator. This has now changed with Allwinner V831 Cortex-A7 Full HD camera SoC also including a small 200 GOPS NPU. Sochip / Allwinner V831 AI Camera SoC Specifications: CPU – Single-core Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ up to 800 MHz with NEON, 32KB L1 instruction cache and 32KB L1 Data cache, 128KB L2 cache AI Accelerator – 0.2 TOPS (200 GOPS) NPU for face recognition, face detection, and “humanoid detection network” System Memory – 64MB on-chip DDR2 RAM […]

Widora TINY200 Allwinner F1C200s ARM9 Development Board Supports DVP Camera, Up to 512MB SD NAND Flash

Allwinner F1C200s ARM9 Development Board

Widora TINY200 is a tiny ARM9 development board equipped with Allwinner F1C200s with a DVP camera interface compatible with OV2640 / 5640 sensor, an audio amplifier, and various storage options from a 16MB SPI flash to a  512MB SD NAND flash. I first heard about the processor when I wrote about Microchip SAM9X60 ARM9 SoC last month, and some people noted there were other fairly new ARM9 SoCs around such as Allwinner F1C200s that also includes 64MB RAM so you can run Linux without having to connect external memory chips. Widora TINY200 V2 specifications: SoC – Allwinner F1C200s ARM926EJS processor @ 400-600 MHz (Overclockable to 900 MHz) with 64MB DDR1 RAM Storage – 16MB SPI NOR flash or 128MB NAND flash and MicroSD card slot or 512MB SD NAND flash. Display I/F – 40-pin RGB FPC cable for resistive touch screens; additional 6-pin FPC cable for capacitive touch support Camera […]

Allwinner A-Series Processors 2020-2021 Roadmap – Allwinner A33E, A100 and A200 SoCs

We previously discussed Allwinner business units where each can share the same silicon (with different a name) but maintains its own software stacks for different target applications. Allwinner A-Series is the most well-known as Allwinner A10 & A20 were very popular SoC for tablets and TV boxes many years ago. CNX Software received two slides that originated from Allwinner this morning. The first one shows the different Allwinner processor families, and the second provides a roadmap for A-Series processors for tablets with A33E, A100, and A200 coming this year and next. Let’s go through the Allwinner processor families first and their main use case: R-Series and MR-Series – Smart home applications A-Series – Tablets VR-Series – Virtual reality H-Series and F-Series- High-performance applications like multimedia (TV boxes) T-Series- Automotive, I suppose mostly infotainment V-Series – Camera SoCs XR/XIN-Series – Wireless chips like the infamous XR819 WiFi chip. AXP – PMIC […]

Allwinner R329 Smart Speaker Processor Features Arm China’s AIPU (Artificial Intelligence Processing Unit)

Allwinner R329

Allwinner R328 is a dual-core Cortex-A7 processor with 64MB or 128MB built-in RAM designed for low-cost smart speakers that was introduced last year and found into smart speaker sold in mainland China. According to a recent press release (in Chinese only), the company has now released a 64-bit update with Allwinner R329 dual-core Cortex-A53 processor equipped with dual HIFI4 DSP for audio post-processing and pre-processing, as well as Arm China’s AIPU (Artificial Intelligence Processing Unit) delivering up to 0.256 TOPS at very low power. There’s no product page for Allwinner R329 yet, so I extracted some specifications from the press release: CPU – Dual-core Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5 GHz DSP- Dual-core HIFI4 DSP @ 400 MHz AI Accelerator – Arm China AIPU with 0.256 TOPS Built-in DDR RAM Audio Embedded second-generation VAD hardware 5x audio ADCs 2x audio DACs with 100dB SNR I2S and DMIC controller 5-1-channel and 7.1 […]

Allwinner H616 TV Box Processor Comes with Mali G31 GPU, Supports Android 10

Allwinner H616

Allwinner H6 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Arm Mali-T720 GPU was launched in 2017 and made its way into various TV boxes and SBC’s. But last year, we got some news of lower-cost versions of the processor with Allwinner H603 and H6 VC200-OS SoC’s. Allwinner H616 Processor Advantages So the first time, I read about Allwinner H616, I thought it was yet another variant of little interest. But it turns out H616 is the first processor from the company with a Bitfrost GPU, namely Mali G31MP2, meaning it supports Vulkan, and down the line, it could potentially be supported by Panfrost open-source graphics driver. Another positive for the processor is support for Android 10, while AFAIK other H6 processors are stuck to Android 9.0. Another advantage is low power consumption leading to lower CPU temperature. It might be a process change or some other optimizations in the silicon, we just don’t […]

Allwinner H6 VC200-OS Processor is a Cheaper Version Allwinner H6 SoC without PCIe, GbE, Camera…

Allwinner H6 CV200-OS

Allwinner H6 SoC has been around a few years, first used exclusively in Zidoo H6 Pro TV box, but then finding its way into other TV boxes, and some single board computers such as Orange Pi 3 or Pine H64 model B. There’s no a cost-down version called Allwinner H6 VC200-OS with most of the same features but without the mostly useless PCIe port (since it does not work well on H6), and other interfaces. I’ve gone through Allwinner H6 (V200) specifications and highlighted the ones missing or updated in H6 VC200-OS using stricken bold or bold text using information from the datasheet. CPU –  Quad-core ARM Cortex A53 with NEON, hardware Java acceleration, and FPU 3D GPU – Dual shader ARM Mali-T720 with support for OpenGL ES3.1/3.0/2.0/1.1, OpenCL 1.1/RenderScript, Microsoft DirectX 11 FL9_3 Memory I/F – DDR4/DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2/LPDDR3 interfaces Storage I/F – 1x eMMC 5.1 flash interface, 1x NAND Flash […]

Allwinner R328 Smart Speaker & System-on-Module Spotted in China

Allwinner R328 Smart Speaker

Earlier this year, Allwinner introduced some AIoT (AI + IoT) processors including Allwinner R328 dual-core Cortex-A7 processor for “low-cost voice interaction solutions” aka low-cost smart speakers. I did not pay too much attention at the processor at the time, but since then, the company has released a product brief with some more details about the processor. We can see it integrates 64MB to 128MB DDR3 memory which should be enough to run Linux without external memory, and truly provide a low-cost solution for smart speakers, and I was told the chip may cost around $3. I was also asked whether Allwinner R328 smart speakers were already shipping. A Google search in English did not help, so I had to switch to Chinese, and after visiting several sites, I could see some Allwinner A328 platforms including a smart speaker and a system-on-module were showcased at some event in China. We’ve got […]

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