15 Linaro OnAir Sessions about Android, Linux, Debugging and Software QA

Linaro has planned 15 virtual conferences between Monday, August 13 and Saturday, August 18, 2012. Those online events will deal with the work done at Linaro, including software optimization, software QA, Android and Linux kernel development, Open Embedded on ARMv8 and more. Those conferences are public and anybody can join. All times indicated below are GMT+07:00 (Bangkok), so you can either mentally convert the time (recommended), or click on the links below to get the date and time in your timezone. Exploring The Performance Impact of PGO and LTO on ARM– Mon, August 13, 5:00 PM Abstract: Profile guided and linked time optimisation (PGO and LTO) are two of GCC’s cross program optimisations that should improve both the startup and runtime of typical programs.  We know that they basically work on ARM but don’t know the potential speed up or the work involved in proper support. This session will cover […]

ARM Announces 3 New Midgard GPUs – Mali-T624, Mali-T628 and Mali-T678

ARM announced the second generation of the Mali-T600 Series GPUs targeting tablets, smartphones and smart TVs. Those new GPUs provide up to 50% performance increase over the first generation Midgard GPUs (T-604 & T-658) and include  support for Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC), a texture compression technique. The company explains that ASTC significantly optimizes GPU performance and increases battery life in devices. Those 3 new GPUs based on Mali Midgard architecture are named as follows: Mali-T624 – 1 to 4 cores – Market: Smartphones and smart-Tvs Mali-T628 – 5 to 8 cores – Market: Smartphones and smart-Tvs Mali-T678 – Up to 8 cores, 4x the GPU compute performance of Mali-T628 – Market: Tablets As with previous Midgard GPUs, the new GPUs support GPU compute with improves performance and energy-efficiency for math intensive activities, such as: Computational photography – computational methods of enhancing or extending digital photography Multi perspective views – […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

Adafruit Launches Raspberry Pi Starter Pack for $69.95

The Raspberry Pi is supposed to be great for hardware prototyping, but you may not know where to start and/or depending where you live it might be difficult to buy the small components needed at a decent price. That’s where Adafruit Raspberry Pi starter pack comes into play. It includes a case,  some cables and power supplies, as well as a breadboard and a whole bunch of components. The package includes: Adafruit clear acrylic Pi Box USB Micro-B Cable to connect the Raspberry Pi to a power source 5V 1A power adapter USB TTL console cable to be used to access the serial console. Useful to debug the kernel or if you run your device without display and/or network. 4GB SD Card Adafruit Pi Cobbler kit with GPIO cable for connection to the GPIO/I2C/SPI/Power pins. USB microSD card reader for loading the image onto the SD card. Large full-size clear […]

HardKernel ODroid-X Development Board Unboxing and First Boot to Android

I’ve just received the ODroid-X development board based on Samsung Exynos 4412 quad-core processor together with lots of accessories: WiFi-Modules Kit USB-UART Module Kit 16 GB eMMC Module 5V/2A Adaptor 10.1″ LCD Module (1366×768) BlueTooth Dongle Camera Module HDMI Cable Since there is quite a lot of things to cover, today I’ll just show some unboxing pictures, how to connect all those modules to the board and run Android pre-loaded in the eMMC module, and I’ll do a more detailed review with Android and Ubuntu in another post. I received the kit in a large box sent via EMS. Here’s a picture with  the board and all accessories present in the Box. From top left to bottom right: 10.1″ LCD Modules, ODroid-X development board, HDMI to mini HDMI cable, micro USB to USB cable (for debugging), 5V/2A power supply for the board, 9V/1.5A power supply for the LCD module, WiFi […]

My Hardware

For those interested, here’s the list of hardware platforms I own [Updated in May 2017): Linux Development Boards Raspberry Pi – Development board powered by Broadcom  BCM2835 (ARM11) that supports several Linux distributions Raspberry Pi 2 – Development board powered by Broadcom  BCM2836 (4x ARM Cortex A7) that supports several Linux distributions Raspberry Pi Zero – Minimal version of Raspberry Pi board. ODroid-X – Development board based on Samsung Exynos 4412 Quad core cortex A9 processor for Linux and Android development – See unboxing and Android review. Cubieboard – Development board featuring AllWinner A10 processor. Read Unboxing and quick start post for details. Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO – Open source hardware AllWinner A13 development board. Read my board review for details. Wandboard Dual – Development board powered by Freescale i>MX6 Duallite processor. See unboxing and quick start guide. My short Ubuntu review may also be interesting. OPENBRIX Zero – Development board based on […]

Hackable Gadgets

This is a list of gadgets that are remarkable either by their hackability, their popularity and/or their price. As with the boards lists, I plan to keep the list short and add/remove gadgets as things evolve. I don’t plan to include smartphones and/or tablets, but if you have one you can probably just go to XDA developers forums and start to hack away. Mele A1000 set-top box The Mele A1000 is an Android set-top box based on AllWinner A10, with 512GB RAM and 4GB flash, and a whole lots of features: HDMI, VGA and Composite video outputs RCA audio and optical audio outputs 3 USB Host ports SATA interface IR sensor 10/100M Ethernet Wi-fi 802.11 b/g/n, SD card slot. There’s an internal serial port that makes it very easy to debug u-boot and the kernel via a serial debug board. Beside Android, this device currently supports most ARM Linux distributions, […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

x86 & Arm Linux Development Boards

This list of Android/Linux development board lists does not intend to be exhaustive. On the contrary, I only plan to list the boards that I find remarkable either by the level of community support, price or features, and I plan to keep the list shorter than 10 boards/vendors. I’ll also focus on the cheaper boards (less than $100, or slightly above) as those sell in larger quantities than more expensive boards. If you are interested in the latter, I have a list of the top 5 most powerful Arm boards (in 2017/early 2018). Raspberry Pi Boards The Raspberry Pi Foundation has sold close to 20 millions boards as of Q2 2018, and the Raspberry Pi boards are a step above the competition in terms of sales thanks to the relatively low cost and excellent software support of the platform. There are several models, but the two most popular right now […]

MCU Development Kits

This micro-controller development boards list does not intend to be exhaustive. On the contrary, I only plan to list the boards that I find remarkable either by the level of community support, price or features, and I plan to keep the list shorter than 10 boards. Arduino Boards The Arduino boards are little development boards usually based on AVR MCUs, but a new version will also support ARM based ATMEL SAM3U micro-controller. What’s great about the Arduino is the low price (Starting at around 10 Euros), the huge community behind, the tutorials and the “shields“, some extension boards to add features to the basic boards. There are too many boards and versions to list here, so check out the list on Arduino website. The most commonly used boards appear to be Arduino Uno and Arduino Mega. Blog Posts: 16 Euros Arduino Leonardo Board is Now Available First ARM-Based Arduino Board […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC