Allwinner H6 Processor for 4K HDR Set-Top Boxes Supports USB 3.0, PCIe, and Smart Card Interfaces

Allwinner H6 is a new quad core Cortex A53 processor designed for 4K set-top boxes. It will support “6K” video decoding for 10-bit HEVC, VP9, and H.264, integrate HDR10 and HLG video processing, support high speed interfaces like USB 3.0 and PCIe, as well as security features like two ISO7816 smart card interfaces and DRM solutions. Allwinner H6 specifications: CPU –  Quad-core ARM Cortex A53 with NEON, hardware Java acceleration, and FPU 3D GPU – Dual shader ARM Mali-T720 with support for OpenGL ES3.1/3.0/2.0/1.1, OpenCL 1.1/RenderScript, Microsoft DirectX 11 FL9_3 Memory I/F – DDR4/DDR3/DDR3L interface Storage I/F – 1x eMMC 5.0 flash interface, 1x NAND Flash interface for SLC/MLC/TLC flash memory with up to 80-bit error-correcting code (ECC), 1x SPI NOR Flash interface, 1x SD Card 2.0 Multimedia via Allwinner Phoenix 3.0 VE Engine Video Decoder H265/HEVC Main/Main10 [email protected] High-tier ;4K@60fps, up to 6Kx4K@30fps H264/AVC BP/MP/[email protected], MVC, 4K@30fps VP9,Profile 0/2, […]

Emdoor EM-QL8170 is One of the First LTE Tablets Designed Thanks to Allwinner & Qualcomm Partnership

Allwinner and Qualcomm announced a partnership last year to help Chinese manufacturers design entry-level LTE tablets based on Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, and Allwinner collaborated with Emdoor one several designs including EM-QL8170 LTE tablet with a Snapdragon 210 processor and a 6.98″ display. Emdoor EM-QL8170 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 (MSM8909) quad core Cortex A7 processor up to 1.3 GHz with Adreno 304 GPU @ 400 MHz System Memory – 1 or 2 GB DDR3L Storage – 8 or 16 GB flash + micro SD slot Display – 6.98″ IPS touchscreen display with 1280×720 resolution Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1 LE, and GPS Cellular Connectivity – LTE Cat 4 with 2x micro SIM card slots Camera – 2.0MP front-facing camera, 8.0MP rear camera Audio – 1x microphone, 1x 3.5mm audio jack, likely some speaker somewhere… USB – 1x micro USB port Battery – 2850 mAh battery Dimensions – 189.7 […]

Allwinner V3s Dual Camera SoC Comes with 64MB DRAM

Most SoCs have a very limited amount of internal SDRAM just enough to load the bootROM code, but a few integrated a few MB of RAM on-chip such as Renesas RZ/A1H with 10MB on-chip DRAM, in order to reduce costs for some applications that may not require external RAM. Allwinner V3s, designed for dual camera solutions, appeared to be such an SoC with 64MB (512Mbit) on-chip DDR2 RAM, but the block diagram seems to imply it is a System-in-Package (SiP) instead. Nevertheless you still get a single chip with an ARM Cortex A7 processor, two ISPs, a video engine, 64MB RAM, and more. Allwinner V3s main features & specifications: CPU – ARM Cortex-A7 @ up to 1.2 GHz Memory – Integrated 64MB DDR2 DRAM Storage I/F – SD 2.0, eMMC 4.41, SPI NAND flash, SPI NOR flash Audio Codec – 92dB audio codec supporting 2x ADC channels and 2x DAC […]

Imagination PowerVR G6230 is the First GPU To Pass Khronos OpenVX 1.1 Conformance

The Khronos Group is the non-profit consortium group behind open standards and APIs for graphics, media and parallel computation such as OpenGL for 3D graphics, OpenCL for GPGPU, OpenVG for 2D vector graphics, etc… OpenVX is one of their most recent open, royalty-free standard, and targets power optimized acceleration of computer vision applications such as face, body and gesture tracking, smart video surveillance, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), object and scene reconstruction, augmented reality, visual inspection, robotics and more. The first revision of the standard was released in 2014, and the latest OpenVX 1.1 revision was just released in May 2016. We’ve already seen OpenVX 1.1 support in Nvidia Jetson TX1 module & board, but Khronos has a conformance program to test  implementations, and if successful, allow companies to use the logo and name of the API. The version first GPU to pass OpenVX 1.1 conformance is Imagination Technologies PowerVR […]

Allwinner H2 Linux & Android SDK, and Allwinner XR819 WiFi Driver Released

Orange Pi Zero is an interesting little ARM Linux board thanks to its low price, but also because it features a new Allwinner H2 / H2+ quad core Cortex A7 processor very similar to Allwinner H3 minus the 4K video decoding part, as well as Allwinner XR819 WiFi module, which I have not seen on any other boards so far. But hardware without software is pretty much useless, so developers will be happy to find out that Allwinner H2 SDK with Linux (lichee) and Android has been released or leaked, and it also includes the Allwinner XR819 WiFi driver. You’ll find the SDK on Zoobab server with three main directory / files: Android folder – Android 4.4.2 SDK lichee folder – Linux 3.4.39 source code. However you’d probably better use Linux 3.4.113 currently released by sunxi-linux, or Linux mainline. The latter does have some limitations, and may or may not […]

Orange Pi Zero Allwinner H2+ Board with WiFi and Ethernet is Up for Sale for $7 and Up

Orange Pi Zero development board powered by Allwinner H2+ quad core Cortex A7 processor with 256 to 512MB RAM, Ethernet, and USB ports is now available for sale on Aliexpress for just $6.99, with shipping adding $3.39 in my case bringing the total to $10.38. Orange Pi Zero specifications: SoC – Allwinner H2(+) quad core Cortex A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU @ 600 MHz System Memory – 256 to 512 MB DDR3-1866 SDRAM Storage – micro SD card slot Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet + 802.11 b/g/n WiFi (Allwinner XR819 WiFi module) with u.FL antenna connector and external antenna USB – 1x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port Expansion headers – Unpopulated 26-pin “Raspberry Pi B+” header + 13-pin header with headphone, 2x USB 2.0, TV out, microphone and IR receiver signals Debugging – Unpopulated 3-pin header for serial console Misc – 2x LEDs Power […]

C.H.I.P Board and Allwinner A13/R8 SoCs To Get VPU Support in Linux Mainline

Allwinner has mixed relationships with open source communities such as Kodi, especially due to issues with its closed-source CedarX VPU drivers, and some GPL violations. However to address the former, linux-sunxi community has been working on open source Cedrus library for the video processor unit on Allwinner processors, that’s been successfully tested on boards such as Orange Pi One. Free Electrons has gone  further, as they’ve made sure Cedrus now works with Linux mainline kernel, currently Linux 4.8, and tested it on Allwinner R8 based Pocket CHIP. The work has been done by Florent Revest, a 19 years old intern at the company, who delivered a new sunxi-cedrus driver, a Video4Linux (V4L2) memory-to-memory decoder kernel driver, and corresponding VA-API backend, with the implementations currently available on Github here and there respectively. Currently only MPEG2 and MPEG4 are working, but adding other codecs such as H.264, and video encoding is possible […]

Allwinner R40 Quad Core ARM Processor, Successor of Allwinner A20, Supports SATA & Gigabit Ethernet

One of the most common complaints I get from readers when I publish news about new ARM processor is “Why didn’t they include SATA?”. So far Allwinner A20 is the only really low cost ARM processor that includes a SATA port, but it’s been released a few years, and its dual core Cortex A7 processor is getting old. We’ve been hearing rumors about an upgraded version for one or two years with Allwinner A40 or more recently Allwinner A20E, and finally the company has now published details about Allwinner R40 processor on their revamped website, which they claim to be the successor of Allwinner A20. Allwinner R40 key specifications: CPU – Quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 Processor GPU – Mali-400 MP2 GPU Memory I/F – 32-bit DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2/LPDDR3 Storage I/F – 8-bit NAND flash, SD3.0,  eMMC 5.0, and 1x SATA Networking – 2x MAC: 1x EMAC (10/100M Ethernet), 1x GMAC  (Gigabit Ethernet) Display […]