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FEATURES
A31 CPU GPU Screen Size Resolution Video Memory Wireless OS
Quad-Core Cortex-A7 SGX544MP2

A20
Dual-Core Cortex-A7 Mali-400MP2

A10
Single-Core Cortex-A8 Mali-400

13.3, 10.1, 9.7

2048 1536 1920 1200 1024 768

10.1, 9.7
1024 768 1024 600

10.1, 9.7
1024 768 1024 600

4K 2K
2GB DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2

2160P
1GB DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2

2160P
1GB DDR3

WIFI+BT+GPS+3G Android 4.2 or up

WIFI+BT+3G Android 4.2 or up

WIFI+BT+3G Android 4.2 or up

13.3" Tablet

FEATURES
A31 CPU GPU Screen Size Resolution Video Memory Wireless OS
Quad-Core Cortex-A7 SGX544MP2

13
20481536 19201200

4K2K
2GB DDR3L/LPDDR2

WIFI+BT+FM+GPS+3G Android 4.2 or up

3G/4G Tablet

FEATURES
A31 CPU GPU
Quad-Core Cortex-A7

A20
Dual-Core Cortex-A7

A10
Single-Core Cortex-A8

SGX544MP2

Mali-400MP2 10.1, 9.7, 8

1024768 1024600

Screen Size 13, 10.1, 9.7, 8 Resolution Video Memory Wireless OS

1024768 19201200 1024768

Mali-400 10.1, 9.7, 8

1024600 1024768

4K2K 2GB DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2 WIFI+BT+GPS+3G/4G Android 4.2 or up

2160P 1GB DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2 WIFI+BT+3G Android 4.2 or up

2160P 1GB DDR3 WIFI+BT+3G Android 4.2 or up

2G Tablet

FEATURES
A31 CPU
Quad-Core Cortex-A7

A20
Dual-Core Cortex-A7

A10
Single-Core Cortex-A8

A13
Single-Core Cortex-A8

GPU SGX544MP2 Screen 9.7, 8 Size 1024768 Resolution800600 Video 4K2K Memory 1GB DDR3 Wireless WIFI+2G OS

Mali-400MP2 9.7, 8
1024768 800600

Mali-400 9.7, 8
1024768 800600

Mali-400 8, 7
800600 800480

2160P 1GB DDR3 WIFI+2G Android 4.2 or up

2160P 1GB DDR3 WIFI+2G Android 4.2 or up

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Copyright 2013 Allwinner Technology Co., Ltd.

Just got my Gooseberry Board

Today I was surprised to wake up to a parcel from gooseberry. It was all secured in a brown envelope with a thin rope tied around and then sealed with candle wax. I loved how the guys at gooseberry taken the time to pack all of the parcels so no one in between messes with the parcel. Looking back, i did get the board quite fast, i guess it was the excitement and doubt that made it seem longer. Here is a picture of the packaging:

Here is a picture of the board, which is almost the same as the one provided on the website.

The holes for screws and mountings are well placed at the front, (3 In the front near the ports) but only 1 at the back. This maybe a bit difficult to customize a case for this, but I like the screws placements for the front end, since the front has to be sturdy if you have to keep disconnecting and reconnecting the cables. Once i took out the board it looked smaller and more fragile than I had imagined. I at once wanted to attach it to my 24" LCD, since i was already using Mini-HDMI with my

PC. Once i connected, I pressed the button that says "power" but nothing happened. I then Noticed that there was a "UBOOT" button which was labeled as the "RESET" button in the gooseberry Images at the site.

In the picture you may have noticed the "ENTER" "HOME" and "ESC" button, i tried The display did take a while to load in my case, and it showed an error "Hertz out of Range" a couple of times on my LCD. It was kind of Confusing. And I couldn't tell whether the system is on or off since the LED isn't blinking on the board. Here is a picture of the only LED i could find which is labeled Near the MIC input and "CHG LED" (Maybe battery charge LED).

Once the Display loads, it shows an Android Loading Screen on first boot,(wasn't ready for a pic) And then the lockscreen of the ANDROID OS loads. However i couldn't unlock the screen as i didnt have the mini USB converter. Another disappointment was that the OS was in CHINESE Also no pic of that, will provide it in a while. Also if you turn off the device and restart it, the clock goes back to 8:00. I think that's because it doesn't have a battery to store the time and date. :S Or maybe because i haven't set up my device properly. Later on I did a quick run to the market and purchased an Micro SD Card and a Mini USB MALE to USB FEMALE Converter. I expected the keyboard to show some sign of life once i connected it and didn't expect the mouse to work, since it would be needing some Cursor drivers or something. The SD Card loaded and i could see the Icon on the homescreen. I tried playing around with the buttons by using the POWER button, i think it acts like a KeyLock Button, because through that i activate/deactivate the LCD from a Power saving state. And once i press it for long, it gives me a screen with two options, Im assuming it asks whether i want to shutdown or not (but i don't know chinese).

Here is The Allwinner A10 CPU. Better than the Raspberry Pi And on the left, you can see the small white ribbon connector. That is for attaching a camera. And the other Bigger white ribbon connector on the right is for the touchscreen/lcd

Here is the Realtek Wifi Chip on the board. As you can see, it looks much like an Addon.

Here is the Motherboard model: A721 along with the revision: v 4.2.0 and the BUILD date: 26.03.2012

Here are The Hynix Ram Chips. I think they are 4 128MB DDR3 Chips.

This is the 4GB Micron Flash Memory Chip:

I Don't know what the "MOTO" is for, but there is an outlet for a speaker, along with the Battery Supply and LED pinout ---EDIT: It's for the motor / vibrator

Here are the rest of the pin outs That could be used to attach other hardware and stuff, more on the developer and modification side i guess.

I Still can't believe this board is so tiny, and i Can't wait to get a proper system running completely fine on this board. Looking forward to Ubuntu on this board.

Here is a picture of it from a tablet:

You guys may find the following links helpful: http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/ http://elinux.org/Hack_A10_devices http://www.shainde.org/tablettes http://www.lyxfsz.com/en/products_view.htm?id=25 http://www.lyxfsz.com/en/index.htm Have any of you guys any tips to get the Keyboard/Mouse Working?? I hope we can start helping each other build our systems ----EDIT: I have got the Mouse working, it worked really well on the first shot once i modified my USB cable to be a proper OTG cable Managed to change the language to English Here are some pictures

Last edited by ryandigweed on Tue Jul 31, 2012 8:37 pm, edited 3 times in tot Rhombus-Tech/ allwinner a10

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Allwinner A10 - ARM Cortex A8 SoC

The Allwinner A10 CPU has been developed in, and is sold in, the People's Republic of China. Its mass-volume price is around $7, yet it is a 400-pin highly feature-rich 1.2ghz ARM Cortex A8 with a MALI400 GPU. It has the distinction of having the highest bang-per-buck ratio of any SoC available at the time of writing, by quite a margin. Its price and features is causing massive disruption of the tablet market in China (a minor recession was caused by widespread cancellation of prior committments to other SoCs!), as every factory in Shenzen scrambles to compete with hundreds of other factories for the same end-user market: tablets and PVRs. For comparison: TI has brought out a new $5 ARM Cortex A8, but it is limited to 500mhz and it is extra cost for the version with a PowerVR 3D GPU. Ingenic's jz4770 is about $7 in mass-volume but it is a 1ghz MIPS with a Vivante GC600 3D GPU. Details are harder to get hold of regarding the jz4770, but its interfaces are known not as feature-rich as the Allwinner (no HDMI output for example). AMLogic's Cortex A9 is $13 in mass-volume, but is limited to 800mhz and a maximum of 512mb of RAM.

Preorders
If you would like to register your interest in an EOMA-68 CPU card with an Allwinner A10 CPU, please follow the instructions at the orders page. Developers can find out more details of the Open Hardware Project progress on the pcb page.

News
Updates are available at the news page. Latest is that the owner of the Factory in China has reviewed the draft component layout for the EOMA-68 CPU module, to doublecheck that everything will fit in the available space.

Features
Features of the Allwinner A10 include:

1.2ghz Cortex A8 ARM Core MALI400MP OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU DDR3 Controller 800MHz 1GB max 2160p Hardware-accelerated Video playback (4x the resolution of 1080p) 2D Accelerated Graphics (G2D) Engine a NAND Flash Controller that is capable of 8-way concurrent DMA (8 NAND ICs) 4 SDIO interfaces (SD 3.0, UHI class) USB 2.0 Host as well as a 2nd USB-OTG Interface (USB-OTG can be reconfigured as USB 2.0 Host, automatically) 24-pin RGB/TTL as well as simultaneous HDMI out

SATA-II 3gb/sec 10/100 Ethernet (MII compatible) a 2nd 24-pin RGB/TTL interface that is multiplexed (shared) on the same pins for a standard IDE (PATA) interface. GPIO, I2C, PWM, Keyboard Matrix (8x8), built-in Resistive Touchscreen Controller, and much more.

Unsurprisingly, this CPU has been chosen as the first CPU for an EOMA-68 CPU module. The critical decisive factor however was the immediate support of Allwinner's Board of Directors for releasing full GPL Source Code, to help the RHT Initiative to foster better relations and closer ties with Free Software Developers.

Getting Involved
EOMA-68 CPU card is an open source software and hardware project that relies on the community participation. You can get involved in several ways:

Joining arm-netbooks@lists.phcomp.co.uk mailing list for discussions or questions (registration required at http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook) Contributing to the source code (kernel, bootloader, ...) Downloading and trying Linux images available at Allwinner A10 images. You can also download the nightly build images, If you want to test the latest U-boot and/or Kernel images. Reporting bugs / features requests in github issue tracker, see source code page for links to corresponding repositories. Adding information to the Wiki (these pages) mainly for how-tos, news and general description of the project Digging out register programming information from the u-boot and kernel sources and add to A10 register guide

Preliminary Device Installation Instructions

This is still TBD. In the meantime, information is available on elinux.org on Hacking A10 Devices. Also there is a tool for reversing the "fex" format of the boot-up stage: https://github.com/amery/sunxi-tools. Also there is a page describing the A10 Boot Process and A10 MMC Boot, including a link to the tool for packing a bootloader application. There is also a page containing Allwinner A10 images of prebuilt filesystems, a page on Building Debian From Source Code for Mele and a page about Scripts to build source code and generate a bootable SD card

Pin Connections for the Module

This section is in note-form

SPI2 and JTAG0

pads, multiplex2, multiplex3 function, required to have one SD/MMC become a JTAG port:

PB13 SPI2_CS1 NC PB14 SPI2_CS0 JTAG_MS0 PB15 SPI2_CLK JTAG_CK0 PB16 SPI2_MOSI JTAG_DO0 PB17 SPI2_MISO JTAG_DI0

Power Consumption (Mele A1000 A10)

u-boot idle, 0.23A@5V = 1.15W Android idle. 0.34A@5V = 1.7W Android busy navigating some web page: 0.55A@5V = 2.75W Android 2.3.3 + youtube + video 720p = ~4.6W Android 2.3.3 + SATA HDD + video 1280p = ~7.3W Ubuntu 12.04 (headless) + SATA HDD + deluge (torrent client) + minidlna (dlna server) = ~5.0W-6.5W (sometimes max 7.8W)

Forums and links to products with the Allwinner A10

http://tabletrepublic.com/forum/cortex-a8-allwinner-a10/ http://www.wits-tech.com/pages/board.jsp wits-tech developer

kit (page

is in chinese)
http://www.cnx-software.com/category/processors/allwinner-a1xa10-a13/ https://www.miniand.com/forums/forums/2 http://forum.doozan.com/list.php?6 http://liliputing.com/2012/07/linux-distributions-that-can-runon-an-mk802-mini-pc.html http://www.bitsandchips.it/13-mobile/1639-sistem-on-a-chipanalisi-della-piattaforma-ultra-low-cost-allwinner-a10

hacking the mele a1000

http://git.rhombus-tech.net/? p=eoma.git;a=blob;f=pcb/allwinner_a10/library/allwinner.lib

KiCAD library for the Allwinner A10 processor Tags: cpus Links: evaluated cpus Last edited Thu Nov 8 14:58:58 2012

List of tablets powered by Allwinner A10 processor

This new processor is becoming very popular among tablet manufacturers, as its low price, high performance and, low power consumption.

I would like to list all tablets powered by Allwinner A10 processor, anyone is welcome to help. Allwinner A10 Tablets AllDro Speed Ainol Novo 7 Advanced Ainol Novo 7 Advanced II Ainol Novo Elf Ainol Novo Aurora AirPad 7p Allview AllDro Speed Audemars Piguet PC741 Aura LY-F1 Ampe A90 Benss B7 BRONCHO A710 Bmorn V9 plus Bmorn V11 Bmorn V11 Extreme CherryPad Edwin C807 Cougar Box Chip A10R Cougar Box Chip A10C Dropad A8HD Eken MB1001 Eken T01A Eken t10a Eken A90 Eneoze 7 inch or 10 inch Gemei G9 Gemei G2 GOCLEVER TAB A73 Gpad GA10 Hyundai A7 ICOO D90W Icoo D70W Iview 760TPC LY-F1 (Netpad A10, TPGA-7AWN, A710) Leoxsys Leopad i7-1500 Mobiitab 7 Momo11 Bird Moonpad2 newman P81 OEM Novo 7 Advanced Onda VX610W Onda Vi20W Onda Vi10 deluxe edition Onda Vi20W deluxe Onda Vi30W deluxe

Onda Vx610w Onda VX580W Deluxe Edition Onda Vi40 Onda Vi10 elite Ployer Momo8 Ployer Momo9 Ployer Momo15 Primux BORA 7 Qware Pro3 Rexing V7 Sanei N70 N71 N72 N73 N80 N81 Saycool A710 Scroll Excel Sigotech V700 Skypad Alpha 2 Sumvision Cyclon Astro Teclast P76 Resistive Teclast P76ti Teclast P85 Teclast A10t Tracer OVO Visual Land Connect Visual Land Prestige 7 VitalASC Center-ST0716 ***** A7

List of Allwinner A1X devices

this entry has 17 Comments in ARM, Hardware by admin May 29, 2012 Considering all Allwinner A1x devices can boot from a special prepared sd-card and the upcomming development of Linux and XBMC on these devices, I thought it would be nice to create a list with potentional devices. Most of them dont have easy access to UART consoles and such, so are not really suitable for development purposes, but as soon as more and more sd-card images are getting released, you might not have to use any development tools. Just enjoying all the goods. I will divide the list into four sections. The first one are the tablets, which is the biggest list. The second would be any settop box like device like the Mele A1000 and A2000, but also the MK802 HDMI dongle type. The third one are the handheld devices as nicely pointed out by onthebridge: and the fourth one are the devices which are planned or announched, but not yet available. This are devices like the EOMA68 card from Rhombus-tech. Here comes the list, I will try to keep it up to date. Allwinner A10 Tablets AllDro Speed Ainol Novo 7 Advanced Ainol Novo 7 Advanced II Ainol Novo Elf Ainol Novo Aurora AirPad 7p Allview AllDro Speed Audemars Piguet PC741 Aura LY-F1 Ampe A90 Benss B7 BRONCHO A710 Bmorn V9 plus Bmorn V11 Bmorn V11 Extreme CherryPad Edwin C807 Cougar Box Chip A10R Cougar Box Chip A10C Dropad A8HD Eken MB1001 Eken T01A Eken t10a Eken A90 Eneoze 7 inch or 10 inch Gemei G9 Gemei G2 GOCLEVER TAB A73 Gpad GA10 Hyundai A7 Momo11 Bird Moonpad2 newman P81 OEM Novo 7 Advanced Onda VX610W Onda Vi20W Onda Vi10 deluxe edition Onda Vi20W deluxe Onda Vi30W deluxe Onda Vx610w Onda VX580W Deluxe Edition Onda Vi40 Onda Vi10 elite Ployer Momo8 Ployer Momo9 Ployer Momo15 Primux BORA 7 Qware Pro3 Rexing V7 Sanei N70 N71 N72 N73 N80 N81 Saycool A710 Scroll Excel Sigotech V700 Skypad Alpha 2 Sumvision Cyclon Astro Teclast P76 Resistive Teclast P76ti Teclast P85 Teclast A10t

ICOO D90W Icoo D70W Iview 760TPC LY-F1 (Netpad A10, TPGA-7AWN, A710) Leoxsys Leopad i7-1500 Mobiitab 7 Settop boxes Mele A1000 Mele A2000 MINI-X Handhelds iGame Yinlips YDPG16 Planned or Announched A13-OLinuXino Hyston Google TV box

Tracer OVO Visual Land Connect Visual Land Prestige 7 VitalASC Center-ST0716 WoPad A7

MK802 PineRiver H24

Yinlips YDPG18A

Rhombus-Tech EOMO68 A10 Sunlike UMPC-1021

If you guys know of more out there, please post them into the comments and I will update the list. Want to know what you can do with the Allwinner devices; What about Ubuntu? or What about OpenELEC / XBMC
(sources; Slatedroid, XBMC Forum, Gathering of Tweakers)

Open ARM GPU Drivers FOSDEM 2013 Video and Call to ARM Management
February 14th, 2013 cnxsoft 2 comments As I previously wrote, FOSDEM organizers are slowly uploading FOSDEM 2013 videos. One of the most interesting talk Open ARM GPU Drivers is now available. Ive also uploaded it to YouTube (embedded below) to give it more exposure. Luc Verhaegen has also written a recent blog post entitled Hey ARM! where he announces the release of the modified source for Quake 3 Arena demo, and asks ARM to join them in making an open source driver.

Open ARM GPU Drivers @ FOSDEM2013

This session covers the following key points:

Problem Binary drivers are mainly designed to run in Android, and its very difficult to have proper GPU drivers for Linux, and companies are not interested to release open source drivers or even just documentation, as they are not convinced it will benefit them in any way. Legal This is actually the main issue, as open sourcing existing driver is a legal nightmare, and may cost a lot of money. ARM Mali Overview Mali-200/400, 450 & T6xx Lima Project Status No big secrets left in command-stream, compiler is tough due to Mali architecture, and actual driver work will start after FOSDEM. Full GNU/linux systems available. Qualcomm Adreno Overview Adreno 2xx/3xx Freedreno Project Status WIP driver. Command-stream and Shader architecture is mostly known. WIP xf86 (exa), mesa (gallium) drivers available. No proper GNU/linux available (The developer is currently using Android) Nvidia Geforce ULP (Tegra) Overview Tegra-re Project Status Early research, early shader disassembler and early command stream capture. Limited availability of GNU/linux systems (AC-100, Trimslice). Vivante GCxxxx Overview Etnaviv project Status Early research: Slowly prying apart command stream, full command stream capture and replay, and shader disassembler and assembler. Broadcom Videocore Overview The Raspberry Pi is a closed platform Open source driver release by the Raspberry Pi foundation is just a shim (message-passing interface between ARM and the GPU), and the GPU itself runs a RTOS that handles the real processing. Videocore Project Status Research stage: documentation, assembler/disassembler., compiler work started, scalar processor fully reverse engineered, and some some Hello World code is available for booting the Raspberry Pi. 9 people are currently working on this project. Imagination PowerVR SGX Overview PowerVR SGX (5xx), and Rogue (6xx) in the future

Open Source Project Status (from the slides): Lima driver demos on Mele A1000 Cube demos and Quake 3 Arena timedemo.

You can also download the presentation slides for his sessions

Quake 3 Arena Time Demo Source Code for Lima and Limare Driver
As I just mentioned, part of the session was a demo of Quake 3 Arena running on top of Lima drivers in Mele A1000 set-top box running Linux. Luc has now made the source code available on github, and you can get it as follows:
git clone git://github.com/libv/ioquake3-mali_fb.git

You can them compile it natively in any AllWinner A10 device:

make ARCH=arm

Youll also need to get a full Quake 3 Arena version first as the binary data files (paks files) must be copied to ~/ioquake3/baseq3 (NB: Those files can not be redistributed, as they belong to ID Software), and edit demofour.cfg as follows:
cg_drawfps 1 timedemo 1 set demodone "quit" set demoloop1 "demo four; set nextdemo vstr demodone" vstr demoloop1

You can now run the game demo with (I havent tried, so Im not sure of the quake binary name):
ioquake3.arm +exec demofour.cfg

The full games is not playable yet, and Luc welcomes fixes for input support, sound, or even for the missing GLES2 shaders.

Call to ARM Management to Work with Open Source Developers

Luc Verhaegen claims Absolutely nothing stops us now from delivering an open source driver that broadly matches the binary driver in performance! And this is exactly what we will be doing next!, and calls upon ARM to join them: We are not going away, we are here to stay. We cannot be silenced or stopped anymore, and we are becoming harder and harder to ignore. It is only a matter of time before we produce an open source graphics driver stack which rivals your binary in performance. And that time is measured in weeks and months now. The requests from your own customers, for support for this open source stack, will only grow louder and louder. So please, stop fighting us. Embrace us. Work with us. Your customers and shareholders will love you for it.

Open source developers are not the only ones to ask for this, if youve ever wanted to use Linux with proper 2D/3D GPU drivers on ARM, you are in the same boat, and even Linaro engineers complain about this (Linaro is an organization working on open source software for ARM SoCs, and ARM is obviously a core member), because those need to be updated for each kernel version, and its a nightmare as they have to go through the GPU companys FAE which talks to the engineer and back. This wastes a lot of time (and money), as a task that could be done within a few hours/days with open source drivers, may instead take days or weeks because of binary blobs. An example is Linux Mali-400 support on Hardkernel ODROID-X/U2, they announced their intention to provide hardware GPU acceleration months ago, last month they released an Ubuntu image which can support GPU drivers (but not the driver), and they could only release the drivers yesterday (Ill have to try that). The point is that it could have taken a much shorter time with open source drivers. I understand there must be complicated legal issues, but there must certainly be a way to provide open source drivers, as it would just benefit everyone (from end users to engineers to SoC companies). Since Lima developers have now proven they can match the performance binary drivers for their research driver, and seem to be committed to deliver a proper open source driver for Mali-400, that should be a sufficient reason for ARM to cooperate with open source developers, even if it is only by releasing the GPU documentation.

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Android, Freescale i.MX, Graphics, Ingenic JZ74xx, Linux, Marvell Armada, NVidia Tegra 3, NVidia Tegra 4, Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, Rockchip RK30xx, Samsung Exynos, Testing, Texas Instruments OMAP 4, Texas Instruments OMAP 5, Video Tags: arm, fosdem 2013, gpu, imagination, lima, mali, nvidia, open source, qualcomm, raspberry pi, videocore, vivante

Headless Connected Oscilloscope based on Cubieboard or Beaglebone

February 8th, 2013 cnxsoft 3 comments Warsaw ELHEP (Electronics for High Eenergy Physics Experiments) Group is currently working on MMS (Mobile Measurement System) Project. This project features what I would call a headless connected oscilloscope, which can be detected on the network via SSDP, send the data via Websocket, and display it on iOS, Android, or Windows Phone devices. This oscilloscope does not feature any screen, and receives/transmits data via Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.

ARM SCOPE Board Connected to Cubieboard The original hardware is based on three main boards:

CTI-VMAX ARM9 with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet connectivity. ARM SCOPE v1.0.1 with 8 channel ADC. ARM SCOPE v1.0.2 with 4 high speed ADC (100MSPS).

The ELHEP researchers have been looking at replacing CTI-VMAX with low cost boards, and after considering several options, they chose to design two versions of their oscilloscope: one based on Cubieboard, and the other on the Beaglebone.

Beaglebone with Oscilloscope CAPE and ARM SCOPE Boards So they designed expansions boards for the Cubieboard and Beaglebone in order to connect the ARM SCOPEs. This project involved hardware development, software development (Linux firmware in Beaglebone/Cubieboard, MMS protocol, and app development), and once everything is setup you can see the waveform on a mobile device as shown below.

MMS Project on the iPhone Their mobile app first discovers the measurement equipment on the network (left), remotely configures the device (middle), and displays the waveform (right). The researchers/students are still working on perfecting the project. You can find out more on MMS Project page (in Polish).

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Android, Hardware, Linux, Testing, Texas Instruments Sitara Tags: Android, Linux, beaglebone, cubieboard, elhep, ios, oscilloscope, windows phone

Quake 3 Arena Demo Using Lima Driver is (Slightly) Faster than Mali-400 Binary Driver
February 7th, 2013 cnxsoft 4 comments As mentioned previously, Luc Verhaegen was to give a talk about the status of Lima driver (reverse-engineered Mali-200/400 GPU driver), as well as other GPU open source implementation, at FOSDEM 2013. This is now done, and part of the talk included a demo of Quake 3 Arena (q3a timedemo) running on tablet featuring AllWinner A10 SoC (Cortex A8 @ 1Ghz, Mali-400MP1 GPU @ 320 Mhz, and DDR3 memory @ 360MHz), and a 1024600 LCD. The fact it works is already a great achievement in itself, but this demo runs at 47.2fps with Lima driver (limare), whereas it can be rendered at 46.2fps using the binary driver. In his blog, Luc also explains that apart from being 2% faster, it also uses 3% less cpu than the binary driver! Take that binary blobs! Theres still more work to do however, as this Quake 3 Arena port is not playable yet for 2 reasons: 1. Theres no input support via the touchscreen driver yet. 2. Luc only included the shaders needed to run the timedemo, but the full game requires more shaders. He goes on to explain that Lima is not fully open source just yet, as they are still using the binary shader compiler, but he will push Q3A demo source code soon. If you want to learn more of the steps he and others went through to reverse-engineer Mali-400 driver, and optimize it for Q3A timedemo, read Quake 3 Arena timedemo on top of the lima driver!

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Graphics, Linux Tags: driver, fosdem 2013, gpu, lima, open source

Smallart U-Host AllWinner A10 mini PC is Available for $20

January 3rd, 2013 cnxsoft 37 comments Last July, I reviewed Smallart U-Host (U1A), an Android TV stick based on AllWinner A10 with 1GB RAM and 4GB RAM. At the time, I had a positive opinion of the device as the Android firmware was stable, and mostly did it was supposed, and it was feasible

to run Linux distributions on the device. At that time, it was sold for $70, but this morning, Clint, one of my reader, informed me he spotted an AllWinner A10 device selling for $20.50 on Dealextreme.

This device and the user interface resembles very much to Smallart U-Host, but the model name reported on Dealextreme is U2. According to Smallart U2 page, this device is based on Rockchip RK3066, so its just another naming mistake on DealExtreme. The rest of the specs are identical to Smallart U-Host:

SoC Allwinner A10 (Cortex A8) @ 1.5GHZ System Memory 1GB DDR3 RAM Storage 4GB NAND flash + microSD slot (upt to 32GB) Video Output HDMI + mini USB OTG Video Format AVI, RM/RMVB, MKV, WMV and MOV USB USB 2.0 host port WiFi 802.11 b/g/n Dimensions 9.7 cm x 4.1 cm x 1.2 cm Weight 38g

The device is sold with a power adapter, a 8cm HDMI cable (8cm), a USB cable (80cm) and an English user manual, exactly the same accessories I received with Smallart UHost (aka Oval Elephant). The $20 price tag is either a mistake, or the device does not sell that well and they want to get rid of existing stock.

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Android, Hardware, Linux Tags: Android, Linux, ics, mini-pc, smallart

Top 10 Posts of 2012 on CNXSoft Blog

December 31st, 2012 cnxsoft 5 comments This is the last day of the year, so its probably a good time to look back and see what interested people on this blog. This has been a banner year for low cost ARM devices and boards starting with the Raspberry Pi, then MK802 and the new mini PCs / HDMI TV dongles / PCs-on-a-stick (whatever you want to call them) that came after, always cheaper and faster. Those low cost devices have in turn made people really interested in ARM Linux, and lots of development on those little devices and boards started. The top 10 posts of 2012, according to page views, reflect just those trends: 1. 74 USD AllWinner A10 Android 4.0 Mini PC (May 2012) MK802 started the whole low cost mini PCs craze, and drove the most traffic to this blog this year. People got excited about the price, form factor, and the possibility to run both Android and other Linux based operating systems. 2. MK802 II Mini PC Now Costs as Much as Raspberry Pi Model B. Lets Compare Them! (December 2012) This post features the 2 stars of 2012: the Raspberry Pi and MK802 II HDMI TV donglwe (MK802 with 1GB RAM). As both device can now be bought for $35, and allow you to do very similar things, its was time for a head-to-head comparison. Ive just written about it last week, and it got Slashdotted. 3. WM8850-MID Android 4.0 Tablet Unboxing and Review (June 2012) At the time, this Eken W70 clone featuring Wondermedia WM8850 Cortex A9 processor was a real bargain for $72 (including shipping). The firmware has a few issues however, and thats what drove people to this post: looking for solutions. 4. AllWinner A10/A1X Processor Resources, Development Board and SDK (December 2011) This post was written just about one year ago, but traffic was steady all year, as people want to find out how to hack their AllWinner A10 tablets, media players and mini PCs. 5. Mele A1000: AllWinner A10 (Cortex A8) Based Hackable Android STB (March 2012) The Mele A1000 was my first Android device, and it got popular thanks to its relatively low cost, available ports (3x USB, SATA, VGA,

HDMI), and serial port which made it ideal for development of U-boot and the kernel. I still think its a good platform, but since then low cost development boards such as the Cubieboard has made it a little less attractive, and interest has somewhat faded in the last few months. 6. Valueplus Tizzbird Stick N1: Android 4.0 HDMI/USB Media Player Dongle (March 2012) - The Tizzbird Stick N1 was one the first mini PCs, and was showcased at CeBit 2012 several months before MK802. Unfortunately, it took many more months to finalize the design, and the product never took off, as other cheaper Telechips TCC892x based mini PCs appeared on the market. The only reason it got traffic is because I mentioned it in the $74 MK802 post at the top of this list. 7. Mele A1000 Android 2.3 STB Unboxing and Review (April 2012) In March, I was still waiting for the Raspberry Pi launch, but I noticed Barry Kauler (Puppy Linux) bought the Mele A1000 to keep him busy while he was also waiting for his Pi, and seeing the development around AllWinner A10, I decided to buy one as well. Apparently, I was not the only one interested as many people came here to read my review of this nice hackable media player. 8. Mele A2000 Android 2.3 Media Player Powered by AllWinner A10 (April 2012) The Mele A2000 is the little sister of the Mele A1000, which the same hardware, just a difference casing. 9. Linaro Android Puts Stock Android To Shame on TI Pandaboard (OMAP4430) (June 2012) Linaro showcased a demo showing an optimized version of Android could deliver twice the performance of stock Android on a particular benchmark running in Pandaboard. Bero commented on my post with details, and the post quickly became viral as developers wanted to give it a try. It turned out the improvement is actually more like 15 to 20%, but this is enough to double the framerate of this benchmark due to Vsync synchronization. It may also work in real games. 10. Raspberry Pi Emulator in Ubuntu with Qemu (October 2011) In 2011 and early 2012, the Raspberry Pi foundation promised much in terms of schedule, but initially failed to deliver, and many people get desperate enough to check the instructions to emulate an ARMv6 device and run Debian in QEMU to get started with development, before the Raspberry Pi hardware is available. That will be the last post of 2012, so the hardware team (pictured below) and I would like to wish you a very happy and prosperous new year 2013, which Im sure will be as exciting as 2012 for Linux/Android gadgets and boards, and we should see the first big.LITTLE processors and corresponding devices, ever cheaper tablets, smartphones and mini PCs, an interesting Intel vs. ARM fight for mobile devices, a proper XBMC ARM set-top box close to $50, new mobile OSes based on Linux (Tizen, Sailfish OS, Firefox OS), and more

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Android, Graphics, Hardware, Linux, Telechips TCC89XX, Texas Instruments OMAP 4, WonderMedia WM8XXX Tags: Android, Linux, debian, development board, linaro, mele, mini-pc, mk802, pandaboard, qemu, raspberry pi, sdk, tablet, ubuntu, valueplus

MK802 II Mini PC Now Costs as Much as Raspberry Pi Model B. Lets Compare Them!
December 26th, 2012 cnxsoft 32 comments MK802 mini PC quickly went viral as it launched in May 2012 for $74 US, and since then many Chinese manufacturers have jumped into the market bringing both new faster devices, and the price down. AllWinner A10s, a low cost version of AllWinner A10 used in MK802, was also launched specifically for this market to bring costs even lower. Today, Ive been informed an HDMI TV dongle based on AllWinner A10s that sells for $36.55 on Tinydeal.com which is a very good price, but decided to check on Aliexpress to look for comparable deals, and found one shop selling MK802 II for $34.91 including shipping via China Post, which makes it cheaper than the Raspberry Pi model B selling for $35 excluding shipping.

Raspberry Pi vs MK802 II NB: Devices are not shown at the same scale. Both products target 2 different markets, as MK802 is oriented to the consumer market, and Raspberry Pi targets the educational market, but in practice, it appears people may use the device for similar purpose, for example as a media player or a platform for tinkering with Linux. Since both products have the same price, and software support & availability have improved since their launch, Ive just created a side-by-side comparison below. MK802 II SoC RAM Storage USB Ethernet AllWinner A10 CPU: Cortex A8 @ 1.5GHz GPU: Mali-400 Raspberry Pi Model B Broadcom BCM2835 CPU: ARM11 @ 700MHz (OC: 1 GHz) GPU: Videocore IV 512 MB SD card slot

1 GB 4GB NAND Flash + microSD slot 1x USB 2.0 Host + 2x USB OTG 2x USB 2.0 Host ports (One USB OTG is reserved for power) N/A (via USB dongle only) 10/100 Mbit

Wi-Fi Video Output Audio Output

802.11 b/g/n HDMI HDMI

Expansion Headers N/A Size Casing Included Accessories Video Codecs (HW) 9.7 x 2.8 x 1.2cm Yes HDMI Cable USB Cable OTG Cable User Manual H.264, MPEG 1/2/4, VC-1, VP8, and AVS

N/A (via USB dongle only) HDMI and Composite HDMI and 3.5mm stereo out jack Yes. Provide access to GPIO, I2C, SPI, etc DSI (for LCD display) and CSI-2 (for camera) interfaces are also available 8.56 x 5.6 x 2.1cm (Board only) No (Cases can be ordered separately) N/A

Linux Support

Android Support

Community Support

H.264 only. MPEG-2 and VC1 can be added by purchasing corresponding licenses Good. Very good. Stable bootloader and kernel, with SD Several distributions are available for images provided by the community, but the platform, and Debian is officially no official distro support supported (Raspbian) Poor (for now) Very good. Android 2.3 without GPU acceleration Android 4.0 ICS Android 4.0 in progress No official community support, but several (seller) sites provides forums for MK802 such as miniand, and sunxi- Very large community via Raspberry Pi linux.org community works on Forums. AllWinner Linux development in the open.

If you just look at the hardware specs, theres no comparison, and MK802 II provides much better value than the Raspberry Pi with a much faster CPU, more RAM, internal storage and more. Only the GPU processing power may be subject to debate, but I dont really have data to make a proper comparison. So if you just want to run the device as a media player for example, Id just go with MK802 II since youll get a smoother experience and more video codecs are supported. The only caveat is that youll have to use Android (and see the status bar during video playback), as although Linux video support is available, its not ready for prime time, and never will. However, the Raspberry Pi is still a better solution for several use cases:

Hardware hacking You need to make use of the GPIO headers to control external devices. Connection to old TV The Raspberry Pi has a composite video output which allows it to be connected to older TV lacking HDMI Beginners If youre not familiar with Linux, using AllWinner A10 devices may prove challenging, and its much easier with the Raspberry Pi thanks to official Linux distributions, and the Raspberry Pi community.

Categories: AllWinner A1X, Android, Hardware, Linux Tags: Android, Linux, mini-pc, mk802, raspberry pi

Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Development Board Unboxing And Review

December 21st, 2012 cnxsoft 2 comments Every Friday, Olimex organizes an online competition where they give away one of their board. Theyll ask a (usually simple) technical question on their twitter account at 22h00 (GMT+7), and all you have to do is to reply to their tweet with the correct answer within one hour. The winner is then selected randomly with random.org. There are usually 50 to 100 respondents so the odds are pretty good. I played a few times, and finally, I was lucky enough to win an A13-OLinuXinoMICRO development board at the beginning of December. I received it yesterday, after UPS took a whooping 15 days to deliver the board (Way to go UPS!). The board can be purchased on Olimex for 35 Euros plus shipping and taxes, or even lower if you order larger quantities. A13-OLinuXino-MICRO is a stripped down version of A13-OLinuXino-WIFI with the following specs:

SoC AllWinner A13 Cortex A8 processor at 1GHz with Mali400 GPU System Memory 256 MB RAM (128Mbit x 16) Storage microSD card slot for booting the Linux image Video Output VGA video output. LCD signals are available on connector. Audio I/O 3.5mm headphone jack + Microphone input pads (no connector) USB 1x USB host +1x USB OTG which can power the board UEXT connector To connect UEXT modules like Zigbee, Bluetooth, Relays, etc 3 GPIO connectors (2x 40-pin and 1x 10-pin) Those give access to NAND flash, GPIOs, I2C, UARTs and SDIO2 signals, as well as 5 system pins: +5V, +3.3V, GND, RESET, NMI. LCD Connector You can connect an optional 7 LCD provided by Olimex, or connect your own. Misc 1 reset key, 1 U-boot/FEL key, 2 LEDs, 4 mounting holes, UART1 header and pads for JTAG and UART0.

Power 5V DC input power supply Dimensions 100 x 85 mm

As usual, I will first post some unboxing pictures, then try Linux on the board, and give some kind of review.

A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Unboxing
The board comes in a small Olimex branded package, and as is the case for the Raspberry Pi, the only item in the package is the board.

Lets have a look at the top of the board first, where all the components and connectors are placed.

Top of A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Board (Click to Enlarge) The back of the board shows markings for the GPIO connectors, VGA, UARTs, JTAG and some test points for the different voltages on the board.

Bottom of A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Board (Click to Enlarge) Ive also taken a picture of the Olimex board with two other well-known low cost boards

Raspberry Pi vs Cubieboard vs A13-OLinuxino-MICRO A13-OLinuXino is larger than the Cubieboard and almost twice as big as the Raspberry Pi.

Getting Started with Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO

First youll need to get some external accessories such as:

A power supply A 5V/2A power supply to connect to the 5+ jack or the miniUSB port. A microUSB port might have been preferably since most mobile phones used this type of USB connector. A USB hub This is optional but since theres only a USB Host port, it is required unless you only plan to connect one USB device (e.g. USB keyboard). USB to Serial Board Again, this is optional but it is really useful for debugging purpose in case theres an issue with the bootloader and/or kernel, or you simply dont want/need to plug the board to a VGA monitor. Display VGA monitor or LCD Keyboard and mouse Wi-Fi / Ethernet USB Dongle Optional a microSD for Linux and storage

One good thing with Olimex is that they have free users manuals for their boards. That may seem trivial, but the Cubieboard simply do not have one, and the Raspberry Pi does have one, but you need to pay for it. Of course, all boards have some free resources online, but its still nice to have most of what you need in one document. So lets download A13-OLinuXino-MICRO users manual first. It a 30-page PDF document that gives you an overview of the board, explains how to get started with the board, and gives a detailed hardware description of the board (pin and connectors

descriptions), some information about AllWinner A13 SoC, and some links to the design files (schematics & PCB layout in PDF and Eagle format). Since the board does not have flash, you need to load a Linux image to a microSD card first. Olimex currently just has a preliminary Debian image for the board (A13_Micro_Debian_first_preliminary_release-06122012.rar 737 MB). This is a compressed SD card image, so simply uncompress it, and dump it to a microSD card with dd (Linux) or Win32DiskImager (Windows). Time to connect the board. Ive inserted by Debian SD card, and connected a USB keyboard, the serial to USB adapter I use with the Mele A1000 to UART1, a VGA cable to my monitor and a power supply to the microUSB port. Everything looks fine, I can see U-Boot and the kernel output in putty and the VGA monitors light, but the boots take over 2 minutes, as its stuck in udev, as it apparently tries to find another USB host that does not exists, and times out after 120 seconds.
Waiting for /dev to be fully populated... udevadm settle - timeout of 120 seconds reached, the event queue contains: /sys/devices/platform/sw-ohci.1/usb3 (581) /sys/devices/platform/sw-ohci.1/usb3/3-0:1.0 (582) /sys/devices/platform/sw-ohci.1/usb3/usb_device/usbdev3.1 (583)

Finally, I can login (Username: root | Password: password), and check a few things about the board in the serial terminal:
Debian GNU/Linux wheezy/sid A13Micro ttyS0 A13Micro login: root Password: Last login: Thu Jan 1 00:17:25 UTC 1970 on ttyS0 Linux A13Micro 3.0.52+ #10 PREEMPT Wed Dec 5 16:01:52 EET 2012 armv7l The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software; the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright. Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable law. root@A13Micro:~# uname -a Linux A13Micro 3.0.52+ #10 PREEMPT Wed Dec 5 16:01:52 EET 2012 armv7l GNU/Linux root@A13Micro:~# free -mh total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 165M 32M 133M 0B 4.0M 12M -/+ buffers/cache: 16M 149M Swap: 0B 0B 0B root@A13Micro:~# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs 1.8G 729M 992M 43% / /dev/root 1.8G 729M 992M 43% / devtmpfs 83M 0 83M 0% /dev tmpfs 17M 120K 17M 1% /run

tmpfs 5.0M tmpfs 34M tmpfs 34M root@A13Micro:~#

0 0 0

5.0M 34M 34M

0% /run/lock 0% /tmp 0% /run/shm

So theres 165 MB available for Linux, as the rest of the 256MB RAM is mainly reversed for A13 GPU, and the rootfs is 1.8GB with 729 MB used. Since Ive got a 4GB microSD card, lets increase the rootfs size to make full use of the available space on the microSD: 1. Run fdisk to delete and re-create the rootfs partition (p2)
fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

2. Reboot the board, and resize the partition:

resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2

3. Enjoy the extra space:

4. df -h 5. Filesystem rootfs Size 3.6G Used Avail Use% Mounted on 731M 2.7G 22% /

When Ive then tried to login via the VGA screen, I realize the USB keyboard did not work at all with this board, which could explain the many USB debug message I could see in the serial terminal If you want to use LCD instead of VGA, the script files to do so are in script_GPIO_LCD_800x480 directory in the FAT partition of the microSD card.

More Information and Technical Support

If you prefer to build u-boot & the kernel yourself, and use your own rootfs, you can follow the instructions in Building bootable SD-card with Debian Linux Image for A13OLinuXino. Those are the instructions for A13-OLinuXino, so you may have to adapt the instructions for A13-OLinuXino-MICRO. If you want to use/test the latest kernel and bootloader, theres an easier method using sunxi-linux nightly builds. If you dont want to keep the rootfs but update the kernel and U-boot you can do as follows:
wget https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxibsp/raw/master/scripts/sunxi-media-create.sh chmod 755 sunxi-media-create.sh wget http://dl.linux-sunxi.org/amery/sunxi3.0/latest/a13_olinuxino_hwpack.tar.xz /sunxi-media-create.sh /dev/sdX a13_olinuxino_hwpack.tar.xz norootfs

This will create an image for A13-OLinuXino board (512MB RAM), and if you try directly the system will crash at boot time. So until a13_olinuxino-micro_hwpack.tar.xz becomes available, youll need to copy the script.bin file from the Debian image to the FAT partition.

You can get hardware and software support on Olimex Forums and consult A13OLinuXino-MICRO Wiki (In construction). If you are modifying the the kernel or uboot source code or find bugs related to the kernel/u-boot, contacting sunxi-linux mailing-list may be a better option.

Conclusion
If I just look at the board specifications and compare it to other low cost boards such as the Raspberry Pi or Cubieboard, Olimex A13-OLinuXino may not look the best value at 35 Euro + shipping, and Debian is not really stable on this board right now, although Im pretty sure it will eventually be. One of the advantage of the Olimex board is the VGA connector which is missing on the other 2 boards aforementioned. A13-OLinuXino-MICRO also has 4 expansion headers, including the UEXT connector that gives you access to over 20 low cost modules. This can make the board very attractive for embedded projects as its relatively straightforward to add some features such as GSM/GPRS, sensors, GPS. RF connectivity Finally, all Olimex boards are open source hardware, which means youll get access to hardware design files (and not only PDF) and source code, which is not fully the case for most other boards, especially for the schematics in original format and PCB layout.

Read more: http://www.cnx-software.com/category/processors/allwinner-a1x-a10a13/#ixzz2L8MGkT1H