DragonBoard 410c Development Board Quick Start Guide and Android Benchmarks

Linaro’s 96Boards initiative was announced in February with the introduction of Hikey board, and while progress has been rather slow, there are now two boards available for sale: Lemaker Hikey and Qualcomm Dragonboard 410c. The main advantage of these board is that 96Boards is not only an hardware specification, but also a software specifications that mandate most code to be open source, with recent versions of Linux and U-boot, and in the case of Dragonboard 410c work is being done with Freedreno open source GPU drivers. Now that I’ve got a board I’ll explain my experience with the purchasing process, take a few pictures, and show how to get started with Android, and install the latest version, before running a few benchmarks. Ordering DragonBoard 410c Development Board I normally don’t like purchasing from North American and European distributors, because of the potential documentation involved to comply with silly laws, high […]

Amlogic S912 Processor Could Feature an ARM Mali-T830 GPU

Amlogic S912 launch has been delayed by a few months, and if we are to believe the data from GFXBench (test 1; test 2), the reason could be that they switched the design from a Mali-T7xx GPU to a more powerful Mali-T830 GPU. S912 processor is still based on four Cortex A53 core @ up to 2.0 GHz like in S905, but the GPU will be much more powerful. One person noticed these results and wrote an analysis and comparison (in Korean) against the Mali-860MP2 GPU found in Mediatek MT6755 SoC (Helio P10) SoC.  Offscreen  Manhattan 3.1  Manhattan  T-Rex  ALU  ALU2  Fillrate  Texturing  MT6755  4.8  7.2  17.2  6.0  1012  S912  4.4  7.0  16.3  34.7  5.3  1283  1000 So while Mali-860MP2 is faster for all listed benchmark the advantage is not that great. His analysis  compared benchmarks (read post for details) concludes that the GPU in S912 could be clocked at […]

Amlogic S805 vs S905 Benchmarks Comparison

After publishing a benchmark comparison between Amlogic S905 and Rockchip RK3368 yesterday, I was asked to do the same with Amlogic S805 and Amlogic S905. Since I already had the data, I just went ahead to write this post. Bear in mind that Amlogic S805 TV boxes run Android 4.4, while Amlogic S905 devices all feature Android 5.1. So while the table below should give a good estimate of the actual performance improvement between the two generation devices, Amlogic S905 performance will be amplified thanks to optimizations in Android 5.1, for instance the use of ART runtime instead of Dalvik. With that in mind here are the results comparing the results I got with Videostrong K1 Plus (Amlogic S905) and MXQ S85 (Amlogic S805) TV boxes. Amlogic S905 Amlogic S805 Ratio CPU Quad core Cortex A53 @ 2.02 GHz Quad core Cortex A5 @ 1.488 GHz GPU ARM Mali-450MP ARM […]

Amlogic S905 vs Rockchip RK3368 Benchmarks Comparison

The first Amlogic S905 TV boxes have started to ship,  and I received Videostrong K1 Plus a few days ago, but due to some issues with Google Play Store, I’ve decided to postpone the review. In the meantime, I’ve side-loaded popular benchmark apps including Antutu, Vellamo, and 3Dmarks to the device to compare it to its main 64-bit ARM competitor: Rockchip RK3368. I used benchmark results from Beelink i68 review and compared them to K1 Plus, both devices running Android 5.1. A ratio greater than 1 (green) mean S905 is better, while a ratio lower than 1 (red) means RK3368 fares better. Amlogic S905 Rockchip RK3368 Ratio CPU Quad core Cortex A53 @ 2.02 GHz* Octa core Cortex A53 @ 1.2GHz GPU ARM Mali-450MP PowerVR G6110 Antutu 5.x Overall 28,027 34,171 0.82 Multitask 4,260 4,041 1.05 Runtime 2,721 2,949 0.92 RAM Ops 1,960 2,346 0.84 RAM Speed 2,420 2,601 0.93 […]

Ambiq Micro Apollo Low Power MCUs Promise Cortex M4F Performance at Cortex M0+ Energy Efficiency

Ambiq Micro is a US company founded in 2010 that focuses on “extremely low power” semiconductors leveraging their patented Subthreshold Power Optimized Technology (SPOT) platform. Earlier this year, they announced their first low power Cortex-M4F MCU Apollo family with claims of 5 to 10 times lower power consumption compared to other micro-controllers with the same performance. According to an EETimes article, they’ve at least partially backed their claims with a live demonstration at ARM TechCon 2015.   Before checking out the test results, let’s have a look at the main features of Apollo MCU family: 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4F processor @ up to 24 MHz, with FPU, and wake-up interrupt controller with 12 interrupts Up to 512KB flash, 64-KB low-leakage RAM “Rich set of timing peripherals” Peripherals I2C/SPI master; I2C/SPI; UART; 10-bit, 13-channel, 1MS/s ADC Temperature sensor with ±2°C accuracy Voltage Range –  1.8 to 3.8V Power Consumption: active mode: 30µA/MHz (executing […]

Run x86 Linux and Windows applications in Raspberry Pi and other ARM Linux Devices with Exagear

A few weeks ago, I finally decided to buy a Raspberry Pi 2 board as it could always be useful for some testing, at least for comparison purposes. I ended up buying it from Ebay for $40, as it’s $3 to $5 more expensive locally. Nevertheless, I was not sure what I’ll use it first for, but after seeing a tweet for Exagear Desktop software that allows ARM boards to run x86 Linux or Windows applications, the latter through wine. The program is available for Raspberry Pi, Raspberry Pi 2, and ARMv7 devices for $19.95 to $29.95. I asked for a version for testing purposes, and I was given a Google Drive link to download Exagear for Raspberry Pi 2, as well as a 3-month trial key. Installation is very easy. I started by downloading and installing Raspbian Jessie the usual way on a 32GB micro SD card. It went […]

Ugoos AM1 TV Box and Some Amlogic S905 Benchmarks

A few TV boxes based on Amlogic S905 processor are currently up for pre-order such as MXQ Pro and Beelink MINI MX mini PCs with 1GB RAM, 8GB storage, and which are due to ship later this month.  Ugoos is also working on their own AM1 TV box and AM2 TV stick based on Amlogic S905 processor, with some better specs, and today released a few more details about Ugoos AM1. Ugoos AM1 specifications: SoC –  Amlogic S905 quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 2.0GHz with penta-core Mali-450MP GPU @ 750 MHz System Memory – 2GB DDR3 (Samsung);  4GB version likely later on Storage – 16GB eMMC flash + SD card slot Video Output – HDMI 2.0 Audio – HDMI, optical S/PDIF Connectivity – 10/100/1000M Ethernet (Realtek RTL8211F), 802.11 b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 (AP6335 module) USB – 3x USB 2.0 host ports Misc – IR receiver Power Supply –  […]

Huawei Kirin 950 Octa-core Processor Comes with 4 Cortex A72 Cores, 4 Cortex A53 Cores, and a Sensor Hub

Smartphone based on MediaTek Helio X20 (MT6797) processor with 10 cores including two Cortex A72 cores should start shipping next month, but MediaTek will soon be joined by another Asian company with a mobile SoC with Cortex A72 cores with Huawei that has recently demonstrated their Kirin 950 Octa-core processor with four Cortex A72 coers and four Cortex A53 cores, achieving over 82,000 points in Antutu 5.6 (why an older version?) on a reference board. For reference the top 10 Antutu scores so far in 2015, only got as high as ~77,000 points fro Meizu Pro 5.  Since the benchmark was run on a reference, it’s possible the score will drop once it’s in a tighter package. Some key features of Kirin 950 processors: CPU – 4x Cortex A72 cores @ 2.3 GHz, 4x Cortex A53 cores @ 1.8 GHz GPU – ARM Mali-T880MP4 GPU @ 900 MHz Co-processor – […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case