The CraneBoard is a low-cost, open-source hardware development platform based on the AM3517 Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessor. The CraneBoard was announced in December 2010, can be purchased for 199 USD and can be an alternative to the Beagleboard-xM. AM3517 is especially suited to industrial applications and would be a preferable platform if your project needs CAN or PoE support. The board has less RAM (256 MB vs. 512MB) and no camera port. Here are the features and specifications of the board (I highlighted the differences with Beagleboard-xM in green): AM3517 Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 – 600MHz Integrated 3D Graphics Accelerator RAM: 256 MB NAND Flash: 256MB Support for on-chip peripherals: 10/100 EMAC USB OTG utilizing on-processor PHY 3.3V I/O CAN Bus DDR2 Power over Ethernet and other power options including USB and DC MMC/SD Card Support Fully open-source four-layer PCB Fully Open Source Linux Board Support package (2.6.32) Based on existing […]
Texas Instruments AM387X Sitara ARM Cortex A8 Microprocessors
Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced three new AM387x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessors (MPUs): AM3871, AM3872 and AM3874. TI says these MPUs offer integration of the ARM Cortex-A8 core, peripherals for high-bandwidth connectivity (SATA, D-CAN, PCI Express (PCIe), Gigabit Ethernet switch and more), 3D graphics for enhanced GUIs and display subsystems for camera connectivity and viewing. The AM387x ARM Cortex-A8 MPU can connect to and control IP and CAN networks, HD displays, keyboard, mouse, PC, SD card and various general purpose peripherals, all via one highly integrated processor in an industrial automation application controlling a production line and a high-speed, shared data bus allows for reduced communication overhead and quick access to shared data, which results in reduced chip count, discrete memory costs and printed circuit board (PCB) space compared to separate solutions. Those MPUs are targeted at a variety of fanless applications such as: single board computing, network and communications processing, […]
OpenCL (Open Computing Language) Overview and SDKs
OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a multi-vendor open standard for general-purpose parallel programming of heterogeneous systems that include CPUs, GPUs and other processors. OpenCL provides a uniform programming environment for software developers to write efficient, portable code for highperformance compute servers, desktop computer systems and handheld devices. OpenCL standard is managed and defined by the Khronos Group. The latest version (OpenCL 1.1) was ratified by the Khronos Group on the 14th of June 2010 and adds significant functionality for enhanced parallel programming flexibility, functionality and performance including: Host-thread safety, enabling OpenCL commands to be enqueued from multiple host threads. Sub-buffer objects to distribute regions of a buffer across multiple OpenCL devices. User events to enable enqueued OpenCL commands to wait on external events. Event callbacks that can be used to enqueue new OpenCL commands based on event state changes in a non-blocking manner. 3-component vector data types. Global work-offset which […]
Ziilabs Unveils Low Cost Jaguar3 Android Tablet Reference Designs
Earlier this May, Ziilabs announced the ZMS-20 dual core processors targeted at Android Honeycomb tablets. They have now unveil the 3rd generation of Android Tablet reference designs based on ZMS-20 and ZMS-40 called Jaguar3. Here’s an excerpt of the press release: ZiiLABS, a pioneering media processor and platforms company (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd), today introduced its JAGUAR3, the most powerful 3rd Generation Android 3.2 tablet series. JAGUAR3 is a series of ultra-slim, ultra-lightweight and stylish 10.1” tablet reference designs targeted at the OEM markets. With over a decade of designing experience in portable mobile devices, Creative provided the ergonomic and sexy design of this series of JAGUAR3 tablets. ZMS-20 StemCell Processors JAGUAR3’s superior performance, low power consumption and rich feature set comes from the dual-core 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 based ZMS-20 StemCell Processors. ZMS-20 has another 48 StemCell Processing cores within, which effectively make it into a 50-core processor. […]
Android 2.3.4 Release For ST Ericsson Snowball Development Board
Igloo Community – the team developing for ST Ericsson Snowball Nova A9500 development board – has released the first version of Android 2.3.4 for the board. It can be downloaded at http://igloocommunity.org/download/android/images/20110910/. Here are the main features for this release: Based on Android 2.3.4 HDMI/DVI-D display support Graphics acceleration with the Mali 400 GPU Bluetooth support Multimedia acceleration Ethernet connectivity microSD card support Sensors support ADB over ethernet (by default) and over USB OTG port and the Known issues: WLAN connectivity is disabled in the UI due to startup problems with the interface. Audio recording does not work Consecutive audio playback might not work Potrait mode does not work (rotating the device corrupts screen until rotated back) Might be a temporary problem, but the browser crashes on the default google page when loading finishes. Other pages seem to work fine, so interrupting loading or going through the search acts as […]
Android NDK revision 6b
Google has just released Android Native Development Kit Revision 6b, the Android SDK that allows developers to reuse C/C++ code. It is a bug fix version without new feature compared to Revision 6. Here’s the Changelog of the most important bug fixes: Fixed the build when APP_ABI=”armeabi x86″ is used for multi-architecture builds. Fixed the location of prebuilt STLport binaries in the NDK release package. A bug in the packaging script placed them in the wrong location. Fixed atexit() usage in shared libraries with the x86standalone toolchain. Fixed make-standalone-toolchain.sh –arch=x86. It used to fail to copy the proper GNU libstdc++ binaries to the right location. Fixed the standalone toolchain linker warnings about missing the definition and size for the __dso_handle symbol (ARM only). Fixed the inclusion order of $(SYSROOT)/usr/include for x86 builds. See the bug for more information. Fixed the definitions of ptrdiff_t and size_t in x86-specific systems when they […]
200 Android Development Video Tutorials
If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to develop applications for Android but reading books bores you, you now have the chance to teach yourself Android software development with 200 video tutorials (about 20 hours). The videos have been uploaded to ChangingTheUnknown Youtube channel and can be accessed via TheNewBoston – Android playlist. To give you an idea of what you’ll learn, here are the titles of the first 10 tutorials: Download and Install the Java JDK Installing Eclipse and Setting up the ADT Installing Android SDK and Set up Emulator Setting up an Android Project Overview of Project and Adding Folders Introduction to Layouts in XML Creating A Button in XML and Adding an ID Setting up Variables and Referencing XML ids Set up a Button with OnClickListener Using setText method for our button You can watch the first tutorial: “Android Application Development Tutorial – 1 – Download and […]
LinuxCon 2011 Presentation: Embedded Systems
The fourth presentation entitled “Embedded Systems” was presented by Tim Harder, developer at OSUOSL (Oregon State University Open Source Lab) on the 16th of August 2011 at LinuxCon 2011. Abstract: This presentation deals with software development for Embedded Systems especially focusing on Linux and open source. It describes current software development challenges such as fast software life cycle and memory footprint issues, lists several open hardware projects (Beagleboard, Pandaboard, Bug Labs, Gumstix), microcontrollers (Arduino and TI MSP430), different operating systems (Android, Meego) and toolchain build tools (Buildroot, Yocto) for embedded systems. It also explains specific challenges to embedded software development such a the numerous number of hardware platforms and software & hardware tools. Finally, it deals with the cross-compilers, emulators (e.g. qemu) and debugging tools (gdb, jtag, serial console, etc…). If you want to download the presentation slides, please go to Embedded Systems and use the download button on top of […]