linaro

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments on $179 Arndale Octa Developement Board Gets an Upgrade to Exynos 5420 big.LITTLE SoC

$179 Arndale Octa Developement Board Gets an Upgrade to Exynos 5420 big.LITTLE SoC

Hardkernel ODROID-XU may have been the first low cost big.LITTLE development board, but since it’s using Exynos 5410 SoC, big.LITTLE processing is limited to cluster migration that means using A15 cores or A7 cores. Insignal’s Arndale Octa was also initially announced with Exynos 5410, but the good news is that we’ll soon get a fully functional big.LITTLE development board as Arndale Octa has been upgraded to Exynos 5420 Octa-core SoC. This board will support both In-Kernel Switching (IKS) and Global Task Scheduling (GTS) implementations, and be officially supported by Linaro like the first Arndale board based on Exynos 5250 dual core Cortex A15. Here are the specifications of the board (derived by me from several pages, and pictures): SoC – Samsung Exynos 5420 octa core SoC with 4x Cortex A15 cores up to 1.8 GHz, 4x Cortex A7 cores up to 1.3 GHz in big.LITTLE configuration, and ARM Mali T-628 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments on Android 4.4 KitKat on Galaxy Nexus – ROM, Linaro, and Petition

Android 4.4 KitKat on Galaxy Nexus – ROM, Linaro, and Petition

Google has already released the binaries for Android 4.4 “KitKat” for the Nexus 5, and images are coming for Nexus 4, Nexus 7, and Nexus 10, in the next few weeks. Source code is also available in AOSP (Android Open Source Project). However, even though KitKat has been optimized for older devices, the Galaxy Nexus won’t an official Android 4.4 released because it was released at the end of 2011, which is over the 18 months update window guaranteed by Google. Many people are upset about this decision, and several people have started working on KitKat for Galaxy Nexus. The Linaro team found a solution within minutes by going to the convenience store, and providing KitKat on Galaxy Nexus as shown below. However, usability was not really ideal, so they had some more work to do… In the meantime, Grabak, a developer and member of XDA Forums, provided an alpha […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Linaro 13.08 Release With Linux Kernel 3.11 and Android 4.3

Linaro 13.08 Release With Linux Kernel 3.11 and Android 4.3

Linaro 13.08 has been released with Linux Kernel 3.11-rc6 (stating), Kernel 3.10.9 (LSK – beta), and Android 4.3. This month is the first release based on Android 4.3, which was only pushed to AOSP at the end of last month. I can also see work on new SoCs/hardware this month with Texas Instruments Keystone II ARM Cortex A15+DSP SoC and Fujitsu AA9 board (Which processor?, I could not find out). A lot of work also appears to have gone in OpenEmbedded, further optimizations have gone into NEON optimized AES encryption in OpenSSL, and more. It’s also the first time I can see a Ubuntu Raring engineering build image for HighBank (Calxeda Energycore). Here are the highlights of this release: Android Engineering Android stack was tuned to achieve 100% CTS pass result on Android 4.3 Analyzing the UEFI EDK II boot loader for Android completed, implementation of fastboot application and USB […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments on $59 Iteaduino Plus ARM Linux Board Features Raspberry Pi and Arduino Compatible Headers

$59 Iteaduino Plus ARM Linux Board Features Raspberry Pi and Arduino Compatible Headers

Iteaduino Plus is a development platform designed by ITEAD studio, a Shenzhen based company, powered by AllWinner A10 with 1GB RAM, a micro SD card slot, expansion header, etc… Overall features are very similar to the Cubieboard, but the platform is comprised of a baseboard and a CPU module. The baseboard features a 26-pin GPIO header compatible with the one on the Raspberry Pi, and you can add an expansion board to connect Arduino Shields. Iteaduino Plus specifications: SoC – AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 @ 1GHz with Mali400 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 @480MHz Storage –  1x micro SD slot, 1x SATA Video Output – HDMI Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet USB – 2x USB Host, 1x USB OTG Audio – 3.5mm Audio in and out jacks Expansion headers (see pin assignment) 2x 2×36-pin (Total 144, but not all used) – I2C, SPI, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on KVM on 64-Bit ARM with AppliedMicro X-Gene Developement Platform

KVM on 64-Bit ARM with AppliedMicro X-Gene Developement Platform

Applied Micro announced X-Gene 64-Bit ARMv8 Server-on-Chip at ARM Techcon 2011, and later in 2012, they showcased Apache2 on an FPGA implementation of the chip. More recently, they showcased KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) on their X-C1 hardware platform with an actual X-Gene SoC at Linaro Connect Europe 2013, and Linaro has just uploaded the video of the demo. The development board features 8 ARMv8 64-­bit processors, PCI network, up to 6 SATA drives (but only one used in the demo), and they also have hardware fitted into a 1U rack. The demo below runs 4 SMP Linux virtual machines (with 2 VCPUs), including 2 ARMv7 32­-bit, and 2 ARMv8 64-­bit guests, running web servers concurrently on each VM using VirtIO-based network virtualization. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on LinuxCon North America 2013 Schedule

LinuxCon North America 2013 Schedule

LinuxCon (North America) 2013 will take place on September 16 – 18, 2013 in New Orleans, LA. The event will be co-located with several other conferences: the Linux Plumbers Conference, the Xen Project User Summit, the OpenDaylight Mini-Summit, the Gluster Workshop 2013, the UEFI Plugfest, the Linux Wireless Summit, the Linux Security Summit, and CloudOpen 2013. LinuxCon consists of 3 days of keynotes, and legal, operations, and developers related sessions as well as tutorials and workshops. There will be around 150 sessions and keynotes during those 3 days. I’ve gone through developer sessions and selected one for each time period. Monday, September 16 10:35 – 11:25 – UEFI and Linux by Kirk Bresniker, HP UEFI has become ubiquitous on the PC client systems and is coming up on servers and ARM-based systems, it is becoming the converged firmware infrastructure. UEFI Secure Boot feature has attracted a lot of attention from […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on Linaro 13.07 Release With Linux Kernel 3.10.1 and Android 4.2.2

Linaro 13.07 Release With Linux Kernel 3.10.1 and Android 4.2.2

Linaro 13.07 has been released with Linux Kernel 3.10.1 (both baseline and stable versions), and Android 4.2.2. It’s summer time, so activity seems to have slowdown a bit, yet improvements have done to LAVA with the first LAVA Multi-purpose Prove (LMP) setup, and Linaro has released build with Linux 3.10.1, Ubuntu Raring, OpenEmbedded (ARMv8), and Android. For the very first time, there’s even an Android 4.2.2 community build for HiSilicon K3V2 hardware (HiSilicon Hi4511 development platform). Here are the highlights of this release: LAVA LAVA Core VExpress A9 test images no longer use the master image’s boot loader Support added for interactive bootloader commands. Support for OpenID / Crowd added for LAVA. LAVA Master images updated on images.validation.linaro.org LAVA Multi-node – Multi-Node support has an initial implementation which can support communication between nodes under test via the use of a GroupDispatcher. LAVA Lab Capabilities – LMP (LAVA Multi-purpose Probe) prototypes […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on big.LITTLE Processing Update – In-Kernel Switcher vs Global Task Scheduling

big.LITTLE Processing Update – In-Kernel Switcher vs Global Task Scheduling

big.LITTLE processing is a new technology announced by ARM in 2011 that allows an SoC to feature low power cores (e.g. Cortex A7) together with high performance cores (e.g. Cortex A15) in order to optimize power consumption. I’ve previously detailed two big.LITTLE software implementation methods: In-kernel switcher which runs tasks on either Cortex A7 or Cortex A15 depending on the load, but both processors can not run simultaneously. Heterogeneous multiprocessing (now called Global Task Scheduling) that assigns tasks to relevant Cortex A7 or Cortex A15 cores, and if needed, allows all cores to run at the same time. Linaro has just provided a update for the big.LITTLE software implementation. There are currently only two SoCs that ship in products with Linaro b.L kernel support: ARM’s reference Test Chip 2 (TC2) tile for the Versatile Express development platform, configured as an SoC with 2 Cortex-A15 cores and 3 Cortex-A7 cores. Samsung-LSI’s […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC