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August 29, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

A80 OptimusBoard Development Board Pictures and Benchmarks

A80 OptimusBoard is a development board featuring the latest AllWinner A80 SoC with 8 ARM Cortex A15/A7 cores in big.LITTLE configuration, and a PowerVR GC6230 GPU. Availability was announced about 2 weeks ago for $345, but partially thanks to reader comments on CNX Software, Merrii Technology decided to lower the price to $169 (and $50+ for shipping) to stay competitive against similar boards such as Hardkernel ODROID-XU3. I’ve now received a sample for evaluation. I won’t go again through the specs, but today I’ll take a few pictures of the board, and provide benchmark results to compare them to the ones I got with Rockchip RK3288. Normally, I would also play with the SDK provided with the board, but sadly (and amazingly), there’s currently no such SDK for A80 OptimusBoard, except a leaked Linux SDK which failed to build with recent tools and operating systems. A80 OptimusBoard Pictures I’ve received […]

August 16, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 42 Comments

AllWinner A80 OptimusBoard Octa-core big.LITTLE Development Board is Now Available … for $169

A80 OptimusBoard powered by AllWinner A80 octa-core processor with four Cortex A15 and four Cortex A7 in big.LITTLE configuration had been announced at the end of 2013, and after numerous delays, several boards have recently been sent to developers and companies such as miniNodes, Linuxium, and others. The company behind the board is actually Shenzhen Merrii Technology (aka WITS), which had done all earlier development kits for AllWinner, and they’ve now made the board available for purchase on Aliexpress. Unfortunately the company has decided to leave to low cost development boards market to the likes of Cubieboard8 and PCDuino8, as A80 OptimusBoard sells for $345 plus about $30 for shipping by courier.[Update: they now offer it for $169] SoC – AllWinner Ultra Core A80 4x Cortex 15, 4x Cortex A7 big.LITTLE processor with Imagination Technologies PowerVR GC6230 GPU with 64-cores, and support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.0, Directx 9.3 System Memory […]

August 14, 2014August 14, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Samsung Announces Exynos 5430 SoC, Manufactured with 20nm Process

Samsung already have a few octa-core big.LITTLE SoCs part of Exynos 5 Octa family with Exynos 5410, Exynos 5420, and Exynos 5422/5800, all based on 28nm process. The company has just announced a new Exynos 5 Octa processors with Exynos 5430, but this time manufactured using 20nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) process technology providing 25% less power consumption compared to 28nm Exynos SoCs. Exynos 5430 SoC will feature four ARM Cortex A15 cores at 1.8 GHz, four Cortex A7 cores at 1.3 GHz, supports WQHD (2560×1440) and WQXGA (2560 x 1600) displays using hibernation display and Mobile Image compression (MIC) in order to lower power consumption. It also said to support HDMI, come with a Multi Format Codec (MFC) supporting HEVC/H.265 decoding, as well as an enhanced dual ISP, and up to 17GB/s of memory bandwidth. That’s about all the information I could get at this point. The CPU core […]

July 30, 2014July 30, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

ARM and Qualcomm Release a New Guide About 32-bit to 64-bit SoCs

ARM and Qualcomm have been pretty successful with ARMv7 SoCs in the mobile space in recent years, and while 32-bit ARM (Aarch32) processors certainly have a few more years, both companies are now moving to 64-bit ARM (Aarch64 / ARMv8), and they released a document showing what has been achieved with ARMv7, the differences between ARMv7 and ARMv8, and new capabilities that will be attainable with 64-bit processing. The document covers the following: Introduction ARM Business Model The Mobile Computing Revolution (Tablets replacing Laptops) Android on ARMv7-A and ARMv8-A ARMv8-A Architecture Backward Compatibility to ARMv7-A ARM Cortex A-53 and Cortex-A57 ARM big.LITTLE Technology The Transition to the ARMv8-A Architecture (Fast Models, Tools, Linaro…) Qualcomm Technologies: Transitioning to 64-Bit with Integrated Mobile Design Custom and ARM Designed Processors: The Right Technology to Any Market Multiple Foundries, Flexible Production Flexible design practices in action (Performance, price point, development time. Snapdragon 410 vs […]

July 24, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

PcDuino8 Octa-core Development Board Revealed (Video)

Two AllWinner A80 powered development boards are currently expected. We’ve already seen some pictures of the Cubieboard8, and today we can gt more details about PcDuino8 development board thanks to Charbax who visited Linksprite, and interviewed the company. Here are PcDuino8 (Beta) specifications based on the interview and pictures: SoC – AllWinner A80 octa core big.LITTLE processor with 4 ARM Cortex A15 cores, 4 Cortex A7 cores, and Imagination PowerVR G6200 GPU System Memory – 1GB Storage – 4GB flash + micro SD Card slot Video Output – HDMI Audio Output – HDMI, stereo audio jack Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth 4.0 (AP6330 module) USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x Micro-B USB 3.0 port Debugging – 14-pin header for JTAG Expansion Header – 32-pin header Misc – IR receiver Power – Round DC power jack (5V?) The hardware specs are a bit lower compared […]

July 17, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Onda V989 AllWinner A80 Android Tablet is Now Available for Pre-order

AllWinner A80 octa-core big.LITTLE has been delayed several times, but it appears products based on the latest AllWinner application processor can finally be pre-ordered. One of them is Onda V989, an Android 4.4 tablet with a 9.7″ 2048 x 1536 pixel display, 2GB RAM and 32GB flash, that’s supposed to reach over 48,000 in Antutu, but actually gets a little over 32,000 points in Antutu X. Onda V989 tablet specifications: SoC – AllWinner A80T octa core bit.LITTLE processor with 4x ARM Cortex A7 cores @ ?? GHz and 4x ARM Cortex A15 cores @ 2GHz, and PowerVR G6230 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 32GB NAND flash + micro SD/SDHC slot (up to 128GB) Display – 9.7″ IPS display with 10-point capacitive touchscreen, 2048 x 1536 resolution Video Output – micro HDMI (up to 1080p) Audio I/O – Stereo speakers, built-in microphone, 3.5mm earphone jack, and HDMI Connectivity […]

July 11, 2014July 17, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Mediatek MT6795 Octa Core ARM Cortex A53 Processor to Launch in Q4 2014

Mediatek had already announced two 64-bit ARM SoCs with MT6732 and MT6752 boasting respectively four and eight Cortex A53 cores for mainstream and premium smartphones. There are now reports that the company will launch an eight core 64-bit LTE SoC with HMP architecture. Since HMP (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing) is only used for big.LITTLE processing, and Mediatek does not have an history of making their own custom ARM cores, we can safely assume the processor will feature four Cortex A53 little core, and four Cortex A57 big cores. [Update: finally it’s eight ARM Cortex A53 cores, no HMP here]. What we know about MT6795 so far: Processor – 64-bit Octa core ARM Cortex A53 cores @ 2.2 GHz GPU- Imagination Technology G6200 @ 700 MHz Memory I/F – 2x LPDDR3 @ 933 MHz (PoP) Camera I/F – 20MP@30fps using a dual ISP Display – Up to WQXGA (2560×1600) Video Decoding – 4K2K […]

July 8, 2014July 8, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Hardkernel Unveils $179 ODROID-XU3 Development Board Powered by Samsung Exynos 5422 SoC

Remember ODROID-XU2 development board based on Exynos 5420? The bad news is that it apparently got scrapped, but the good news is that it gave birth to ODROID-XU3 development board powered by the latest Samsung Exynos 5422 octa core big.LITTLE SoC with support for Ubuntu 14.04 and Android 4.4, including GPU 3D acceleration with the company promising a full desktop experience in Ubuntu. ODROID-XU3 specifications: SoC – Samsung Exynos 5422 quad core ARM Cortex-A15 @ 2.0GHz+ quad core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1.4GHz with Mali-T628 MP6 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.0 / 2.0 / 1.1 and OpenCL 1.1 Full profile System Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 RAM PoP (933Mhz, 14.9GB/s memory bandwidth, 2x32bit bus) Storage – Micro SD slot (up to 64GB) + eMMC 5.0 module socket (16, 32, or 64GB module available) Video Output – micro HDMI (Up to 1080p) and DisplayPort (up to 2160p) Audio Output – micro HDMI and […]