arm

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on Samsung Exynos 5250 Dual-core Cortex A15 and GAIA SMDK Development Board

Samsung Exynos 5250 Dual-core Cortex A15 and GAIA SMDK Development Board

Samsung showcased its new Exynos 5250 Dual-core Cortex A15 processor at Mobile World Congress as well as the corresponding Samsung Exynos 5 GAIA SMDK Development board. Announced in November 2011, the new Samsung Exynos 5250 processor features 2 Cortex A15 clocked at 1.7 GHz or 2 GHz, with a Mali-T604 GPU and support for dual-channel 800 MHz LPDDR3 RAM that allows for a data bandwidth of up to 12.8 GB/s. The processor is manufactured using 32-nm HKMG (High-K Metal Gate) technology that reduces leakage by 30% proving lower power consumption. Samsung claims the new Exynos 5 processors are twice as fast and consume twice as less power than its previous Exynos 4 application processor based on Cortex A9. This seems to confirm TI OMAP 5 vs. Nvidia Tegra 3 benchmark results. The Exynos 5250 supports embedded DisplayPort  (eDP) interface up to WQXGA resolution (2560×1600), which is handy for Samsung since […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Microsoft Unveils Windows 8 Consumer Preview at MWC 2012

Microsoft Unveils Windows 8 Consumer Preview at MWC 2012

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced they would be releasing Windows 8 Consumer Preview at the end of February, and they have done so yesterday with an official announcement at Mobile World Congress 2012, in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, they showcased ARM tablets based on Nvidia Tegra 3, Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 and Texas Instruments OMAP 4/5, as well as tablets, ultrabooks, laptops and touch PCs based on Intel meldfield and clove trail.  All those devices are reference platform for developers and not actual products although Microsoft expect manufacturers to use those reference designs to build their products. The Touch PC used a an interesting screen which could be positioned vertically (like a normal screen). horizontally (like a surface PC) and at an angle for use cases such as an architecture reading a plan or an artist drawing a painting. They also showcased a very large touchscreen that could be used by […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Atollic TrueSTUDIO for ARM 3.0 To Be Released at Embedded World 2012

Atollic TrueSTUDIO for ARM 3.0 To Be Released at Embedded World 2012

Atollic has just announced  that Atollic TrueSTUDIO for ARM 3.0 – a C/C++ development tool for embedded developers –  will be released on the 28th of February 2012, at Embedded World 2012,  Nuremberg, Germany. Atollic TrueSTUDIO v3.0 will bring the following improvements: Redesigned user interface that is more intuitive to C/C++ developers New support for NXP LPC1000 Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M3 devices New support for Infineon XMC4000 Cortex-M4 devices New support for Energy Micro EFM32 (Cortex-M3) Upgraded support for STMicroelectronics STM32 devices Improved real-time interrupt tracing with ARM Serial Wire Viewer (SWV) interface. Execution time profiling now present information using bar charts Upgraded ECLIPSE platform to the latest “Indigo” release (3.7.1) Major upgrade of the GNU command line tools Upgraded TrueINSPECTOR, TrueANALYZER and TrueVERIFIER add-on products Supports over 800 ARM devices Hundreds of minor improvements Since the product has not been released, that’s currently all information there is.  Further information will certainly […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on ARM Mali-200 and Mali-400 GPU Open Source Driver Released

ARM Mali-200 and Mali-400 GPU Open Source Driver Released

There has been a lot of controversy around GPU drivers and open source, as GPU drivers usually come with a blob (a binary file). If you have been lurking in Raspberry Pi forums you’ll know what I mean. But this will change thanks to Lima. No, not the capital of Peru but the open source graphics driver for ARM Mali GPUs (Mali-200 and Mali-400) also called Lima whose goal is stated as follows: The aim of this driver is to finally bring all the advantages of open source software to ARM SoC graphics drivers. Currently, the sole availability of binary drivers is increasing development and maintenance overhead, while also reducing portability, compatibility and limiting choice. Anyone who has dealt with GPU support on ARM, be it for a Linux with a GNU stack, or for an Android, knows the pain of dealing with these binaries. Lima is going to solve […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Debugging Embedded Linux with GDBserver and Insight (gdb GUI)

Debugging Embedded Linux with GDBserver and Insight (gdb GUI)

Although it it sometimes possible to debug applications using GDB (The GNU Debugger) on the target boards, there is often not enough memory available to run GDB on embedded systems running Linux. To work around this issue, you can use gdbserver to perform remote debugging. Installing and running gdbserver on the target board First of all you need to install gdbserver on the target board. Assuming you use a Debian based distribution:

If you distribution, does not have binary repository, you can download gdb source code and cross-compile gdbserver. Once gdbserver is installed, (cross-)compile your application in debug mode and start gdbserver as follows:

Where target_ip and target_port are respectively the IP address of the board and the chosen TCP port, and prog_dbg, the program under test compile in debug mode (CFLAGS=-g). Remote Debugging with GDB If you are familiar with gdb and prefer to use the command […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Java SE Server Compiler now Available on ARM

Java SE Server Compiler now Available on ARM

Hardware and software development is going full-steam ahead for ARM servers.  After Calxeda and AppliedMicro server SoCs – based respectively on Cortex A9 and ARMv8 architecture – have been announced and Ubuntu focusing further ARM development on Servers (Calxeda, Marvell and ARMv8), Oracle has released the Java SE server compiler – a throughput optimizing JIT compiler –  for ARMv7. The ARMv7 server compiler is part of Java SE for Embedded 7 Update 2. First, some quick explanations on the 2 JIT compilers available for Java SE: Client: The client compiler is a fast start-up, lightly optimizing compiler. It’s better suited for smaller footprint systems and those running applications that require fast start-up such as Android applications. Server:  The server compiler is optimizing code for throughput and produces highly-optimized code but incurs a start-up cost in achieving that. The server compiler only works on ARMv7 processors with hardfloat (VFPv3 FPU), and  initial […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on The Past, Present and Future of Ubuntu for ARM

The Past, Present and Future of Ubuntu for ARM

David Mandala of Canonical talked at Linux.Conf.Au on 18th of January 2012 about Ubuntu for ARM and the move from netbook to server support. You can read my notes below, or jump at the end of this post to watch the presentation. The Past 2008:  Ubuntu decides to only support ARMv7 architecture vs. Debian that supports ARMv4 and above. 2009:  Ubuntu release for Freescale i.MX51 (ARMv5 built), and then Marvell ARMAVA with ARMv6 and VFP (ARM floating point unit) support. 2010: April (10.04) The first ARMv7 release for OMAP3 (Beagleboard) with VFP, Thunb2, NEON and SMP for ARM and first netbook edition October (10.10) Pandabord (OMAP4) release with initial device tree support for ARM. Starts work with Linaro. 2011: 11.04 (5th release) – Supports OMAP3 and OMAP4 only. The netbook edition is using Qt, further improvement to device tree, further work with linaro and on the way to the Unified […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Cross-compiling Berkelium for ARMv6 with Emdebian Toolchain

Cross-compiling Berkelium for ARMv6 with Emdebian Toolchain

Berkelium is a BSD licensed library that provides off-screen browser rendering via Google’s open source Chromium web browser. This library is used by Xibo Digital Signage Player python client and I already cross-compiled it using Ubuntu/Linaro  toolchain. Since I need it to run on ARMv6 for the Raspberry Pi, I have cross-compiled it again in Debian with Emdebian ARM cross-compiler. Here are the instructions I followed to build Berkelium and Chromium for ARMv6 in Debian. First, you’ll need to install some development libraries for ARM: sudo /usr/share/pdebuild-cross/xapt -a armel libnss3-dev libgconf2-dev libgnome-keyring-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgnome-keyring-dev libgtk2.0-dev libxtst-dev libpam-dev libxss-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libnss3-dev libgconf2-dev libgnome-keyring-dev libxss-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libnspr4-dev libglib2.0-dev libjpeg-dev libasound2-dev libbz2-dev libgcrypt-dev libspeex-dev libcups2-dev and some tools on the build machine: sudo apt-get install git-core subversion cmake doxygen gyp gperf flex bison On 64-bit build machines (required for debug build) also install g++-multi and possibly some 32-bit libraries with xapt:

If […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design