CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

February 20, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

U-Boot & Linux BSP for STMicro STM32 Discovery Board

If you want to run Linux on STM32 Discovery board, more exactly STM32F429 Discovery board, it’s now possible thanks to Emcraft Systems’ BSP for STM32F429 Discovery Board. It will only work on that particular version of the discovery board as it features 64Mbit external SDRAM, which is required for uClinux, and missing on other STM32 Discovery boards. You can either get u-boot and (uC)Linux from the company’s github account which contains the required patches, but lacks complete documentation, and a default config file for the kernel for example, or purchase a BSP ($33) with 3-month support, and pre-built u-boot and Linux binaries. There’s also publicly available documentation explaining how to flash the bootloader and the kernel among other things, and links to relevant external resources, without the need to spend any money.

February 20, 2014February 20, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Samsung GH7 Quad Core 64-bit ARM SoC Code Submitted to Linux

Following my post about Samsung Exynos 5260 hexa core processor, I’ve been informed that some other patches have been submitted about Samsung GH7 ARMv8 SoC, which should be the other processor announced at MWC 2014. A look at the device tree file shows four ARMv8 cores:

+/ {
+	model = "SAMSUNG GH7";
+	compatible = "samsung,gh7";
+	interrupt-parent = &lt;&amp;gic&gt;;
+	#address-cells = &lt;2&gt;;
+	#size-cells = &lt;2&gt;;
+
+	cpus {
+		#address-cells = &lt;2&gt;;
+		#size-cells = &lt;0&gt;;
+
+		cpu@000 {
+			device_type = "cpu";
+			compatible = "arm,armv8";
+			reg = &lt;0x0 0x000&gt;;
+			enable-method = "spin-table";
+			cpu-release-addr = &lt;0x0 0x8000fff8&gt;;
+		};
+		cpu@001 {
+			device_type = "cpu";
+			compatible = "arm,armv8";
+			reg = &lt;0x0 0x001&gt;;
+			enable-method = "spin-table";
+			cpu-release-addr = &lt;0x0 0x8000fff8&gt;;
+		};
+		cpu@002 {
+			device_type = "cpu";
+			compatible = "arm,armv8";
+			reg = &lt;0x0 0x002&gt;;
+			enable-method = "spin-table";
+			cpu-release-addr = &lt;0x0 0x8000fff8&gt;;
+		};
+		cpu@003 {
+			device_type = "cpu";
+			compatible = "arm,armv8";
+			reg = &lt;0x0 0x003&gt;;
+			enable-method = "spin-table";
+			cpu-release-addr = &lt;0x0 0x8000fff8&gt;;
+		};
+	};

+/ {

+ model = "SAMSUNG GH7";

+ compatible = "samsung,gh7";

+ interrupt-parent = <&gic>;

+ #address-cells = <2>;

+ #size-cells = <2>;

+ cpus {

+ #address-cells = <2>;

+ #size-cells = <0>;

+ cpu@000 {

+ device_type = "cpu";

+ compatible = "arm,armv8";

+ reg = <0x0 0x000>;

+ enable-method = "spin-table";

+ cpu-release-addr = <0x0 0x8000fff8>;

+ };

+ cpu@001 {

+ device_type = "cpu";

+ compatible = "arm,armv8";

+ reg = <0x0 0x001>;

+ enable-method = "spin-table";

+ cpu-release-addr = <0x0 0x8000fff8>;

+ };

+ cpu@002 {

+ device_type = "cpu";

+ compatible = "arm,armv8";

+ reg = <0x0 0x002>;

+ enable-method = "spin-table";

+ cpu-release-addr = <0x0 0x8000fff8>;

+ };

+ cpu@003 {

+ device_type = "cpu";

+ compatible = "arm,armv8";

+ reg = <0x0 0x003>;

+ enable-method = "spin-table";

+ cpu-release-addr = <0x0 0x8000fff8>;

+ };

The patch also include code for Samsung SSDK-GH7 board with 2GB RAM. That’s about all we know for now. Thanks to David for the tip.

February 20, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Samsung Exynos 5260 Hexa Core Cortex A15/A7 big.LITTLE Processor

Samsung has been teasing with “Exynos Infinity” before Mobile World Congress 2014, and many expect the Korean company to announce their 64-bit mobile processor (Exynos 6 ?). But it’s likely another Exynos SoC will (also) be announced, as a quick search shows recent patch submissions for Exynos 5260, which happens to be an hexa-core processor using two ARM Cortex A15 cores @ 1.7 GHz, and four ARM Cortex A7 cores @ 1.3 Ghz in big.LITTLE configuration supporting HMP (Heterogenous Multi Processing) / GTS (Global Task Scheduling). The official name might be something like Exynos 5 Hexa (5260). There’s also a device tree file for Samsung XYREF5260 EVT0 development board. It would probably be possible to go through the patches to find out more, but there’s an easier solution, and some blogs have already posted details about a leak showing Exynos 5260 used in the upcoming Galaxy Note3 Neo, where we learn […]

February 20, 2014February 20, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Try Ubuntu Touch on Your Computer with Ubuntu Touch Emulator

Canonical has just announced Meizu (China) and Bq (Europe) will be the first manufacturers to launch Ubuntu Touch phones at the end of 2014. But if you want to try Ubuntu Touch, and don’t own a Google Nexus 4 or 7, or simply don’t want to flash Ubuntu Touch to your devices, you can do so using Ubuntu Touch x86 Emulator in your computer running Ubuntu , or in an Ubuntu Virtual machine in Virtualbox or VMWare. The emulator has been available since last November, but Ricardo Salveti announced an updated version, the first public preview, with the following changes: Better TLS handling (not using the Android slots, but using pthread_set/getspecifics instead) Qt packages compatible with OpenGL ES 2.0 available at https://launchpad.net/~rsalveti/+archive/qt-gles-test It has been tried on Ubuntu Trusty (14.04), but I could run it just fine on Ubuntu Saucy (13.10), by following the instructions below in a terminal: Download […]

February 19, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Mele X1000 Android Media Player Supports Blu-Ray Navigation, 3D Video Playback

Mele X1000 is an Android TV Box based on Telechips TCC8935 dual core processor, 1GB RAM, and 4GB Flash that claims to support Blu-Ray navigation and 3D Video playback, something that is seldom supported in Android devices, but can still be found in a few products including HiMedia Q5 II (Hisilicon Hi3716) and VidOn.me A200 (AllWinner A31). Mele X1000 specifications: SoC – Telechips TCC8935CG dual core Cortex A9 @ 1.2GHz + Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4GB NAND Flash, SATA, and SD card slot Video Output – HDMI v1.4, CVBS (AV out) Audio Output – HDMI, AV out, optical S/PDIF Video Codecs – MPEG-1/2/4, MPEG-4 ASP, H.264, DivX 3/4/5/6, XviD, VP6, H.263, WMV9, WMV3, VC1, RV 8/9/10 Video Containers – AVI, ts, tp, trp, vob, mkv, mp4, mpv, iso, asf, flv, dat, mpg, mpeg, swf, ogm, wmv, asf, rm, rmvb up to 1080p Audio Support – […]

February 19, 2014March 10, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

AMLogic S802 / M802 Android 4.4 SDK, Documentation and Reference Schematics Are (Almost) Available

We’ve seen in the past AMLogic sometimes pushes some updated GPL software releases on their Open Linux website. So I went to have a look a few days ago, and to my surprise they already had instructions to download and build Android 4.4 for AMLogic M802 (Tablet) and S802 (STB), “user’s guides”, as well as links to reference schematics for the tablets… Nice!!! I started with 4.4_ReleaseInfo for “Mbox” (S802), which explains how to get the SDK release on 2014-01-27 (kk-amlogic-20140127):

repo init -u ssh://git@openlinux.amlogic.com/kitkat/platform/manifest.git -b kk-amlogic
repo sync
repo init -m openlinux_kk-amlogic_20140127.xml
repo sync

repo init -u ssh://[email protected]/kitkat/platform/manifest.git -b kk-amlogic

repo sync

repo init -m openlinux_kk-amlogic_20140127.xml

repo sync

Unfortunately the joy stopped right there, as you need to send your SSH public key to your representative. I’ve just done that, and sent an email to support [at] amlogic.com, and mbox-android [at] amlogic.com on Sunday, and I have yet to gain access. I’ve found the “mbox-android” email in from Mbox page (similar to screenshot above) in a field right of “reference schematics” column, which has been removed […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

February 18, 2014February 18, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

dmesg gets Human Readable Output

Many Linux command line tools, such as ls or du, have a “human” option to make it more readable by… humans. When you want to get the kernel log, to find otu potential problems, you’d usually run dmesg, which dump the complete log in one go and looks like: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct [ 0.000000] Linux version 3.11.0-15-generic (buildd@roseapple) (gcc version 4.8.1 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.8.1-10ubuntu8) ) #25-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jan 30 17:22:01 UTC 2014 (Ubuntu 3.11.0-15.25-generic 3.11.10) [ 0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.11.0-15-generic root=UUID=9c042788-fa75-4fc4-9b12-598c809410e8 ro quiet splash [ 0.000000] KERNEL supported cpus: [ 0.000000] Intel GenuineIntel [ 0.000000] AMD AuthenticAMD [ 0.000000] Centaur CentaurHauls [ 0.000000] e820: BIOS-provided physical RAM map: [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000000000000-0x000000000009f7ff] usable [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000000000009f800-0x000000000009ffff] reserved [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000000f0000-0x00000000000fffff] reserved [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000000100000-0x00000000bfd9ffff] usable [ 0.000000] BIOS-e820: […]

February 18, 2014October 2, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

STMicro Unveils $10 mbed-enabled and Arduino Compatible Nucleo Development Boards

STMicro already announced a $24 NFC development kit a few days ago, and they’ve now announced new ultra low cost STM32 development boards. STMicro Nucleo development boards are based on different STM32 MCU based on ARM Cortex M0, M3 and M4, feature Arduino headers, and are supported by mbed platform. There are currently four boards available: NUCLEO-F401RE – Based on STM32F401RET6 ARM Cortex M4 MCU @ 84 MHz with 512KB flash memory, 96 KB SRAM NUCLEO-F030R8 – Based on STM32F030R8T6 ARM Cortex M0 MCU @ 48 MHz with 64KB flash memory, 8KB SRAM NUCLEO-F103RB – Based on STM32F103RBT6 ARM Cortex M3 MCU @ with 128KB flash memory, 20 KB SRAM NUCLEO-L152RE – Based on STM32L152RET6 ARM Cortex M3 MCU @ 32MHz with 512KB flash memory, 32KB SRAM All four boards share the following specifications: STM32 microcontroller with LQFP64 package Two types of extension resources Arduino Uno Revision 3 connectivity STMicroelectronics […]