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Mediatek MT8173 Quad Core big.LITTLE ARM Cortex A72/A53 Processor Code Submitted to Linux Mainline

[Update: MT8173 processor has now been announced, and it’s using Cortex A72 and A53 instead of A57/A53, as initially shown in the Linux kernel source code] Mediatek is not exactly known to compliant with open source licences, or be involved with the open source community. But the company is certainly going into the right direction with their cooperation with Google leading to source code release for Android One smartphones, and the recently launched Mediatek Labs for community projects, starting with LinkIt One IoT platform. Mediatek is also regularly submitting code to the Linux ARM Kernel mailing list, and yesterday code was submitted for Mediatek MT8173 SoC, a 64-bit ARMv8 processor with two Cortex 53 and two Cortex 57 cores in big.LITTLE configuration. As far as I know, it could be the first Mediatek SoC with “big” Cortex A57 cores. Code snippet from mt8173.dtsi related to CPU cores:

A short […]

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Linux 3.18 Released

Linus Torvalds released Linux Kernel 3.18 last Sunday: It’s been a quiet week, and the patch from rc7 is tiny, so 3.18 is out. I’d love to say that we’ve figured out the problem that plagues 3.17 for a couple of people, but we haven’t. At the same time, there’s absolutely no point in having everybody else twiddling their thumbs when a couple of people are actively trying to bisect an older issue, so holding up the release just didn’t make sense. Especially since that would just have then held things up entirely over the holiday break. So the merge window for 3.19 is open, and DaveJ will hopefully get his bisection done (or at least narrow things down sufficiently that we have that “Ahaa” moment) over the next week. But in solidarity with Dave (and to make my life easier too 😉 let’s try to avoid introducing any _new_ […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Allwinner A83T Tablet Unboxing, First Boot, and Benchmarks

Allwinner & HonHai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn, sent me an Infocus tablet based on Allwinner A83T processor with eight Cortex A7 cores up to 2GHz, and a PowerVR SGX544 GPU. Today, I’ll list the specifications of this tablet, show unboxing pictures, first boot video, and run Antutu benchmark. Infocus New Tab CS1 A83 / C2107 Specifications The invoice calls the tablet “New Tab CS1 A83”, but Android reports the model as C2107, so I’m not fully sure what will be the actual name. It might well be New Tab CS1 A83, as I could find an Infocus an earlier Infocus New Tab CS1 tablet powered by Allwinner A31. Anyway, here are the specifications I could derive from the device, and running Antutu/CPU-Z on the device: SoC – Allwinner A83T octa-core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 2.0 GHz with PowerVR SGX544MP GPU supporting OpenGL ES 2.0/1.1, OpenCL 1.1, DX 9.3. System […]

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Intrinsyc Introduces Snapdragon 810 Powered Mobile and Tablet MDPs, DragonBoard Development Kit

Intrinsyc has recently announced availability for three development platforms based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 ARM Cortex A53/A57 processor, namely a smartphone Mobile Development Platform (MDP), a tablet MDP, and a DragonBoard development kit integration Open-Q 8094 system-on-module, making these one of the first ARM64 development platforms available to individual developers, or at least small software development companies (approved by Qualcomm). All three platforms will run Android 5.0 Lollipop. Intrinsyc Snapdragon 810 MDP Smartphone Intrinsyc MDP/S specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 (8994)  64-bit octa-core processor with 4x Cortex A57 cores, 4x Cortex A53 cores, Adreno 430 GPU, and Hexagon V56 DSP System Memory – 3 GB LP-DDR4 Storage – 32 GB eMMC 5.0  micro SD slot (under battery door) Display – 6.17” QHD (2560×1600) 490ppi, 10-finger multi-touch capacitive touchscreen Video Output – micro HDMI type D Audio Headset jack with ANC support 8 microphones (2 analog/ 6 digital) with support […]

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BungBungame Photon2 Tablet Features AMD A10 Micro–​​6700T Mullins Processor

AMD A10 Micro–​​6700T is the most powerful AMD Mullins low power processor (4.5W TDP) that competes with quad core Intel Bay Trail-T processors, and even outperforms them in terms of performance, especially GPU performance with Radeon R6 graphics, but possibly not in terms of power consumption. BungBungame Photon2 may be the first tablet to feature this AMD processor, so let’s have a look. BungBungame Photon2 technical specifications: SoC – AMD A10 Micro-6700T quad core APU @ 1.2 to 2.2 GHz. with Integrated AMD Radeon R6 Graphics System Memory – 4GB DDR3L-1333 Storage – 64GB SSD + micro SD card slot up to 128GB Display – 10.1″ touchscreen display, 1920×1200, 16:10 aspect ratio Video Output – Micro HDMI 1.4a Connectivity – 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/MIMO Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, NFC Camera – 2MP rear and front webcams USB – 1x micro USB 2.0 Battery – 31Wh battery good for 6 to 8 hours usage. […]

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Add GPIOs to Windows, Linux, Android Computers and Devices with FTDI USB Adapters / Breakout Boards

It’s possible to to add GPIOs to your computer, (openWRT) router, or Android tablet using some FTDI USB dongles that expose I/Os. On operating systems based on Linux, including Android, you can use the GPIO sysfs interface (/sys/class/gpio) to easily control GPIOs from the command line, and in some cases Rx, Tx, CTS, .. pins can also be used as GPIOs. Zoobab has tried it with various FTDI USB adapters, and Oneping OP-1010 breakout board based on PL2303 HDX chip, and the results are mixed, but it could worth a try. There are currently patchsets ([1] and [2]) awaiting acceptance to mainline kernel that will enable GPIO support for these USB devices, but in the meantime you need to patch the kernel yourself, and then enable the relevant options in the kernel config for example “USB_SERIAL_PL2303_GPIO” or “USB_SERIAL_FTDI_SIO_GPIO”. The first patch is for PL2303 chips, and the second for FT2xxx/FT4xxx […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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MEEGO-T01 HDMI TV Stick Supports Android, Windows 8.1, and Ubuntu/Linux

ARM based HDMI TV dongles have been available for over two years, mostly running Android, but the community has managed to install Linux desktop operating systems such as Ubuntu or Debian on these tiny gadgets with some limitations. But now that Intel is making low power SoC for tablets, at least one company has decided to make an HDMI TV stick powered by Intel “Bay Trail-T” Z3735F/G quad core processor, which can run Android, Windows 8.1, and Linux based desktop operating systems such as Ubuntu. Meegopad MEEGO-T01 (aka APM-D01?) hardware specifications: SoC – Intel Atom Z3735F / Z3735G “Bay Trail” quad core processor @ 1.33 GHz (Bust freq: 1.83 GHz) with Intel HD graphics (2W TDP) System Memory 1 GB DDR3L-1333 for Z3735G (32-bit up to 5.3 GB/s) 2 GB DDR3L-1333 for Z3735F (64-bit up to 10.6 GB/s) Storage – 16 or 32 GB eMMC + micro SD slot Video […]

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AllWinner Announces A83T Octa Core Processor for Tablets

So Allwinner has just announced a new processor. I’ve been disappointed recently when I discovered AllWinner A80 only supports Linux 3.4, whereas most competitors are running Android 3.10 stable kernel, and their partner is distributing A80 OptimusBoard development boards, which looks to be a nice hardware platform, but without any Android or Linux SDK… And with their latest press release you have to wonder… They announced AllWinner A83T processor with “eight highly energy-efficient Cortex-A7 cores that could run simultaneously at around 2.0GHz, and implements the advanced big.LITTLE architecture to maximize the battery life”. The only problem is that with big.LITTLE you need big and LITTLE core, and if AllWinner A83T is just having eight Cortex A7 cores, there’s no big to be found… I guess that just means they can turn cores on and off independently… Allwinner must also have adopted Qualcomm or Mediatek press release “strategy”, as they release […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC