allwinner News - Page 9 of 22 - CNX Software

April 20, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Allwinner VR9 SoC is Specifically Designed for Extended/Virtual Reality Headsets

Virtual reality headsets have been powered by application processors designed for smartphones, tablets, or even TV boxes. For example last year, I reviewed a low cost VR headset good enough to watch 360 / VR videos, but not gaming that was based on Allwinner H8 TV box processor. But we’ve previously seen Allwinner was working on VR9 & VR10 processors specifically designed for virtual reality headsets with launches scheduled for Q4 2016 and Q2 2017. There’s obviously been some delays, but the company also now formally launched Allwinner VR9 quad core Cortex A53 processor specifically designed for XR and VR headset (Extended / Virtual reality). Allwinner VR9 key features & specifications with parts that look specific to XR/VR highlighted in bold: CPU – Quad-Core Arm CortexM-A53 @ 1.8GHz with 32KB L1 I-cache + 32KB L1 D-cache per core, 512KB L2 cache, CoolFlex power management architecture GPU – Arm Mali-T760 @ […]

March 30, 2018March 30, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

Allwinner S3 Dual Camera SoC Includes 128MB RAM, an I2S Audio Interface

Allwinner V3s processor was introduced a little over a year ago with a single Arm Cortex A7 core, 64MB DRAM built-in, and designed for camera applications with parallel CSI and 4-lane MIPI CSI2 interfaces It looks like Allwinner has now launched an updated version with Allwinner S3, still based on Cortex A7, but increasing memory to 128MB, and adding some interfaces like I2S. We don’t have a whole lot of information, apart from a development board (SC1615S) on Taobao with the following (tentative) specifications: SoC – Allwinner / Sochip S3 Cortex-A7 processor with 128MB DDR3 Storage – 16MB NOR Flash, 4GB eMMC flash, SPI NAND flash, micro SD card Display I/F – LCD, LVDS, touch panel connectors, HDMI port Camera I/F – 1x 4-lane MIPI CSI, 1x parallel CSI Audio – HP, 2x MIC, speaker headers, PCM header Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi + Bluetooth (AP6212 or XR819 […]

February 2, 2018June 18, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 45 Comments

Bootlin Wants to Bring Allwinner VPU Support to Mainline Linux (Crowdfunding)

I wrote about Free Electrons several times in the past due to their work on porting Arm SoCs to mainline Linux. Free Electrons is no more. But don’t be sad, as it’s not because they closed shop, but instead they changed their name to Bootlin due to trademark trolls. Free Electrons Bootlin intensively worked on Allwinner processors, for example working with Next Things Co. to add CHIP board to mainline Linux, or more recently adding support for OpenGL ES in mainline Linux, albeit with closed-source user space binary blobs. The company normally work with partners for their work, but for their latest initiative aiming to bring Allwinner VPU (Video Processing Unit) to the official Linux kernel there’s asking funding from the community through a Kickstarter campaign. For those who do not know, the VPU is the IP block within the SoC used for hardware video decoding of codecs such as MPEG2, […]

January 4, 2018January 25, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

$129 Allwinner R18 based 3-Mic Far Field Amazon AVS Development Kit in the Works

Allwinner-SoC-Only-3-Mic-Far-Field-Dev-Kit-for-Amazon-AVS

Several companies are already offering development kits for Amazon AVS (Alexa Voice Service), but as we’ve seen in the past, those are rather expensive with far-field kits such starting at $349 with kits such as Synaptics AudioSmart 4-Mic Development Kit, or Intel Speech Enabling Developer Kit, and hands-free kits being barely cheaper at $299 and up. But there will soon be a cheaper solution, as Allwinner and SinoVoIP (aka Banana Pi) are working on “SoC-Only 3-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit for Amazon AVS” that includes 3 microphones, and works without special DSP, relying instead on Allwinner R18 processor’s audio codec and capabilities. Allwinner SoC-Only 3-Mic Far-Field Dev Kit for Amazon AVS (aka R18-AVS-EVK) specifications: SoC – Allwinner R18 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.15GHz with Mali400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash Video Output – HDMI Audio – 6x Microphones, 2x AEC, AUX and headphone output; GMEMS voice […]

November 27, 2017March 17, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 57 Comments

Amlogic S905X vs Rockchip RK3328 vs Allwinner H6 Processors – Benchmarks & Features Comparison

Rockchip, Amlogic, and Allwinner are all battling for the lower and mid-range segments of the TV box market, so it may be interesting to compare their solutions. We won’t look into the ultra low-end market with 32-bit ARM Cortex A7 processor, but instead compare some of the recent quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 processor for 4K HDR TV box from the company with respectively Amlogic S905X, Rockchip RK3328, and Allwinner H6 SoCs. We’ll compare some of the benchmarks obtained with Android TV boxes, as well as other features like video support, USB, and Ethernet interfaces. S905X vs RK3328 vs H6 Benchmarks Let’s start with results for popular Android benchmarks: Antutu 6.x, Vellamo 3.x, and 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme v1.2 with results obtained from 3 TV boxes: Mini M8S II (Amlogic S905X), A95X R2 (Rockchip RK3328), and Zidoo H6 Pro (Allwinner H6). A score is highlighted in green is there’s a […]

November 15, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Allwinner H6 Datasheet and User Manual Released

Putting aside the ill-fated Allwinner A80 SoC, Allwinner H6 is the first Allwinner processor with multiple high speed interfaces such as Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 and PCIe, and also support 4K HDR with the company’s Smart Color Engine for video processing. So far, it’s been found in some 4K HDR TV boxes such as Zidoo H6 Pro or Beelink GS1. We’ve already known Shenzhen Xunlong was working on Orange Pi 3 Plus board with the processor for a few months, but Pine64 appear to have joined the party, and will soon launch Pine64 H64 board according to their Wiki. No photos yet, but the company released various documents for the board including Allwinner H6 V200 datasheet (80 pages), and Allwinner H6 V200 user manual (965 pages). The documents should – for instance – allow sunxi-linux community to port drivers for the processor. Some corrections have been made to the first […]

September 26, 2017September 26, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

Allwinner SoCs with Mali GPU Get Mainline Linux OpenGL ES Support

OpenGL ES support in Linux for ARM SoC is usually pretty hard to get because of closed source binary blobs coupled with the manufacturers focus on Android. Workarounds include open driver projects such as Freedreno for Qualcomm Adreno GPU, Nouveau for Tegra, or Etnaviv for Vivante GPUs, as well as libhybris library that converts Linux calls into Android calls in order to leverage existing Android GPU binary blobs. Allwinner processors relies on either PoverVR or ARM Mali GPU, and the former does not have any open source project, while some work is still being going for the latter with Lima project, but it’s not ready yet. That means so far, you’re only option was to use libhybris for either GPU family. The good news is that Free Electrons engineers have been working on OpenGL ES support for ARM Mali GPU for Allwinner processor, and have been allowed to release the […]

July 11, 2017July 11, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

NetBSD is Now Running on Allwinner H3 Boards

Most people will run Linux kernel on development boards because it does the job, and that’s usually the only option. But others have been working on NetBSD kernel for Allwinner H3 boards, and it’s now running on various H3 boards with serial console, USB, Ethernet, SD card, and eMMC flash working. Jared McNeill explains they first had to deal with low-level code to initialize the CPU and MMU, before using a U-boot layer to disguise NetBSD as the Linux kernel in order to load kernel and device tree file. The code then jumps to the generic ARM FDT implementation of initarm to relocate DTB data and perform other steps, and finally they can enumerated devices. This is explained in greater details in the aforelinked blog post on NetBSD website. Jared tested the implementation on NanoPi NEO and Orange Pi Plus 2E, but others have reported success on various hardware based […]