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Posts Tagged ‘digital signage’

Win Enterprises MB-60830 Single Board Computer Powered by AMD Embedded G-Series SoC

May 20th, 2013 No comments

At the end of last month, AMD announced their first Embedded SoC family that combines a CPU, a GPU, and a controller hub into one chipset. Win Enterprises is one of the first companies to release a board based on the platform with MB-60830, a single board computer powered by AMD G-Series dual core or quad core SoCs. The board is designed for embedded applications such as digital signage, gaming, medical imaging, kiosks/POS, thin client and factory automation.

MB-60830_AMD_G-Series_SoC
The board specifications are as follows:

  • SoC -  AMD Embedded G-Series SoC dual or quad core.
  • System Memory – 1x DDR3 @ 1600MHZ / SODIMM up to 4GB
  • Storage – 1x SATA 6.0 Gb/s, 1x Half-size Mini-PCIe supporting mSATA for SSD
  • Connectivity – Intel i211 AT Gigabit Ethernet
  • Video Outputs:
    • 1x VGA
    • 1x dual channel 24-bit LVDS
    • 1x HDMI with Optional Chrontel CEC Support
  • Digital I/O – 8-bit programmable
  • LPC – 1x LPC support TPM module
  • Expansion Interface:
    • 1 x Full-Size Mini-PCIe (w/USB, PCle x 1 Single)
    • 1 x Half-Size Mini-PCIe (w/USB, PCle and SATA Single)
  • I/O:
    • Serial Port – 1 x RS232/422/485 & 3 x RS232
    • USB – 2 x USB 3.0 + 4 x USB 2.0
    • Audio -  HD Audio
    • LPC – 1x LPC header for optional TPM module
  • Watchdog Timer – 1 ~ 255 Sec.
  • Power Requirements – DC 8V ~32V
  • Temperature Range – Operating: – 0°C~60°C (32°F~140°F), Storage: -20°C~80°C (-4°F~176°F)
  • Relative Humidity – 10%~90% (non-condensing)
  • Dimensions – 146mm x 101mm (3.5″ Single Board Computer )

Win_Enterprises_MB-60830

MB-6083A (with quad core SoC) and MB-6083B (with dual core SoC) comes with a CPU cooling fan, a COM port, a SATA cable, and a SATA power cable. A CD with relevant utilities is also included. The company did not specify the OS supported, but since it’s an x86 platform both Windows and Linux should be supported.

The company did not provide availability, nor pricing information. Further details may be found on Win Enterprises’ MB-60830 page.

The video below is not directly related to this board, but is still interesting if you are interested in/considering using AMD SoCs for industrial and/or automation applications. The first part of the video gives and overview of AMD G-Series including details about subjects such as power consumption, visualization support, remote management capabilities, and compute processing power. In the second part of the video, they provide recommendations on the SoC to use depending on the application: industrial PC, HMI/operator panel, and machine vision.

Via Embedded Star.

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AMD Unveils AMD G-Series SoCs For Embedded Applications

April 25th, 2013 No comments

In 2011, AMD launched the G-Series APUs (Accelerated Processing Unit) that combines the CPU and GPU into one chipset which then connects to a controller hub to handle I/Os, and recently the company announced AMD G-Series SoC at Design West 2013. The new solution combines a “Jaguar” CPU, a Radeon HD8000 series GPU and a controller hub into one and only SoC, further integrating functions.

Block Diagram of a Typical PC Powered by AMD G-Series SoC

Block Diagram of a Typical PC Powered by AMD G-Series SoC

Both AMD G-Series APU and SoC target embedded systems such as industrial control and automation, digital signage, electronic gaming systems, SMB storage, IP-TV, medical and network appliances, set-top boxes and more. AMD claims G-Series SOCs offer up to 113 percent improved CPU performance compared to G-Series APU, and up to a 125 percent advantage compared to the Intel Atom (Dhyrstone, EEMBC CoreMark). The platform also includes support for DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 4.2x and OpenCL 1.2 yielding up to a 20 percent graphics improvement over G-Series APUs and more than 5x advantage over Intel Atom (3DMark06 + PassMark 2D).

Key benefits of this new platform:
  • SOC Design – Delivers up to 70% overall improvement over AMD G-Series APU, integrates controller Hub functional block as well as CPU+GPU+NB, and manufacturer using 28nm process technology, 24.5mm x 24.5mm BGA package. Up to 33% footprint reduction compare to APU + Controller Hub solutions.
  • “JAGUAR” CPU core – Dual-core and quad-core, up to 2MB shared L2. 113% CPU performance improvement over AMD G-Series APU
  • Next Generation Graphics Core – 20% compute performance improvement over AMD G-Series APU in common benchmarks, DirectX 11.1 graphics support.
  • Power saving features – Power gating added to Multimedia Engine, Display Controller & NB, DDR P-states for reduced power consumption
  • Memory Support – single channel DDR3 up to DDR3-1600 – 1.35V and 1.25V voltage levels supported, up to 2 UDIMMs or 2 SO-DIMMs, and ECC support
  • Integrated Display Outputs – Supports two simultaneous displays, 4-lane DisplayPort 1.2, DVI, HDMI 1.4a, integrated VGA, integrated eDP or 18bpp single channel LVDS.
  • Updated I/O (Depends on exact model) – Four x1 links of PCIe Gen 2 for GPPs, one x4 link of PCIe Gen 2 for discrete GPU, 8x USB 2.0 + 2x USB 3.0, 2x SATA 2.x/3.x (up to 6Gb/s), SD Card Reader v3.0 or SDIO controller
  • Industrial temperature range – -40°C to +85°C

There are 5 G-Series SoC available at launch:

  • GX-420CA – Quad core @ 2.0 GHz with Radeon HD 8400E – 25W TDP
  • GX-415GA – Quad core @ 1.5 GHz with Radeon HD 8330E – 15W TDP
  • GX-217GA -  Dual core @ 1.65 GHz with Radeon HD 8280E – 15W TDP
  • GX-210HA – Dual core @ 1.0 GHz with Radeon HD 8210E – 9W TDP
  • GX-416RA – Quad-Core @ 1.6 GHz without GPU – 15W TDP

AMD_G-Series_SoC_Table

Those 5 SoCs support Windows Embedded 8 and Linux.

AMD G-Series SOC platform will be available in Q2 2013 with prices ranging from $49 to $72 depending on the model.

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PQ Labs iStick A200 Android mini PC Connects to G4 Series Multi-Touch Screens

February 18th, 2013 3 comments

PQ Labs iStick A200 is a Rockchip RK3066 Android 4.1.1 mini PC with 2 GB RAM, 4 GB Flash, an HDMI (female) output, a USB 2.0 Host port, and a miniUSB port for power. Pretty boring stuff if you ask me… And I would not be writing about it, if the company hadn’t interfaced their infrared touch frames to this mini PC to allow 10-point multi-touch on a large screen or projector output, making it a pretty good solution for conferences and interactive digital signage.

PQ Labs iStick A200 G4 TouchFrame

PQ Labs iStick A200 connected to G4 series Touch Screen

Before going further, let’s have a look at the details of specifications for the iStick A200:

  • SoC – ARM Cortex A9 Dual Core @ 1.6Ghz with HyperSpeed (Equivalent to 2.0Ghz Dual Core) and Quad Core Mali400 GPU (cnxsoft: It has to be Rockchip RK3066)
  • System Memory – 2 GB DRAM chipset
  • Storage – 4 GB NAND flash + microSD socket (Up to 32 GB)
  • Video Output – HDMI (female connector)
  • Connectivity – WiFi (802.11 b/g/n) [BCM40181 Chipset]
  • USB – 1x USB 2.0 Host, 1x miniUSB 2.0 OTG
  • Weight – 40g
  • Dimensions – 98mm x 37.5mm x 15.5mm
  • Power supply – DC 5V/2A
  • Temperature range – Operating : 0°C to 55°C | Storage: -25°C to 85°C
  • Humidity range – Operating & Storage: 10% to 90% RH, noncondensing

The device ships with a 5V/2A power adapter, a miniUSB o USB cable, an HDMI cable, and a tiny user manual. It costs $79 on PQ Labs e-Store excluding shipping (To Thailand, I’d have to pay $99 with shipping), so unless you’re going to buy/use it with the touchscreen there’s very little reason to buy it at this price.

On the contrary, if you need to use a touchscreen for your application, it should be worth it, and you’ll probably find the demo below pretty good. The first part of the video (until 2:20) shows the unboxing of this mini PC, and the rest of the video shows the mini PC in action. It’s connected to a projector via the HDMI port, and to PQ Labs G4 series Overlay Touch Frame (40″ model) via USB. The reviewer runs some demo apps such as 3D Browser, 3D Mountain and Google Earth to show 3D rendering and multi-touch capabilities, he also demos a Win8 launcher (also found in some tablets). Some digital signage specific features such as time on/off and portrait orientation are also showcased, and finally he starts YAMTT (Yet Another MultiTouch Test), and 2-point tracking is very fast, 10-point tracking works but a little sluggish, but the reviewer said it’s because of the touchscreen and G4S series models should perform better.

PQ Labs does not sell their touch screens online, but Peau Productions, a reseller and the one who did the video below, sells the model used above (G4 Overlay 40″) for $574. There are lots of different options for the touch frames including G4 or G4S series, overlay (with glass) or integration kits, and different sizes (32″ to 65″). They also sell other sizes (70″ to 103″) but I’m not sure if those are compatible.

PQ Labs also provides an SDK for their touch frames but it’s only available for Windows and Mac OS, so you may not be able to just interface PQ Labs touch frame with any Android devices.

Thanks to Vassil Dimov via Mini PCs Google+ Community

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Embedded Linux Conference 2013 Schedule

January 24th, 2013 2 comments

ELC 2012

The Embedded Linux Conference (ELC 2013) will take place on February 20 – 22, 2013 at Park 55 Hotel in San Francisco, California.

ELC consists of 3 days of presentations, tutorials and sessions. There will be over 50 sessions during those 3 days. I’ll highlight a few sessions that I find particularly interesting, and that did not get presented at ELCE 2012 (AFAICR).

February 20

We are now two years into the new maintainer model for ARM platforms, and we have settled down into a workflow that maintainers have adjusted well to. Still, when new platforms arrive, or when maintainer ship changes hands, there’s sometimes a bit of ramp-up in getting used to how we organize our git tree and how we prefer to see code submitted to fit that model.

This presentation will give an overview of how we have chosen to organize and maintain the arm-soc tree, and advice to developers and maintainers on best practices to help organize your code in a way that makes life easier for everybody involved.Main audience for this presentation is developers working on upstream kernels for ARM platforms, including platform maintainers.

The Yocto Project was announced slightly more than 2 years ago at ELC-E Cambridge and in the OpenEmbedded e.V. General Assembly the day after the conference I proposed to embrace and adopt the Yocto Project as the core for OpenEmbedded.

In the past 2 years the ecosystem has seen tremendous growth, but not always in sane directions. This presentation will detail how the Yocto Project, the OpenEmbedded Project, the community and the companies involved evolved during that time.

The Angstrom Distribution and the Beagleboard will be used as examples since those were first OE classic targets to be publicly converted to the new world order.

This presentation will also try to clear up to confusion about what people actually mean when they say “this runs yocto” :)

LTSI is the Linux Foundation CE workgroup project that creates and maintains long-term stable kernel for industry use. Recently LTSI-3.4 was released, and it is committed to being kept maintained till the community applies bug-fix and security fix patches on LTS-3.4. The community LTS maintainer Greg Kroah Hartman stated it would last at least till May 2014. This would dramatically reduce your own effort to collect such important patches by you. Furthermore, Linux Foundation Yocto project that provides a recipe for custom Linux BSP creation will add support for LTSI kernel from this release. Given this significant improvement I want to help LTSI user to start work with it. In this session, I will introduce the specification of LTSI-3.4 (enhancement from the community kernel) and how to write a Yocto recipe to collect your own enhancement patches on top of the official LTSI-3.4 kernel.

The common clock framework, which was included in the 3.4 kernel in the beginning of 2012, is now mandatory to support all new ARM
SoCs. It is also part of the “one zImage to run them all” big plan of the ARM architecture in the Linux kernel.After an introduction on why we needed this framework and on the problems it solves, we will go through the implementation details of this framework. Then, with real examples, we will focus on how to use this framework to add clock support to a new ARM SoC. We will also show how the device tree is used in this process.The last part of the talk will review how device drivers use this framework, using examples taken from various parts of the kernel.

Multi-core processors are now the rule rather than the exception in high-end applications. But, as we try to port our legacy applications to multi-core platforms, what pitfalls lay in wait? This presentation will outline the conditions that lead to multi-core race conditions and outline the techniques for identifying and redesigning code to successfully function in a multi-core world.

GStreamer is the leading multimedia framework for various OS platforms, notably Linux systems. A variety of multimedia applications can be constructed with well-implemented plugins, which have versatile functions such as image scaling, cropping, color conversion, and video decoding. However, in the case of embedded systems, they should require further system integration to utilize specialized hardware acceleration engines in SoC for optimal performance.

This presentation shows the case study experience of integrating video plugins with a Renesas SoC platform. It will discuss how to access hardware inside a plugin, assigning buffer memory suited for hardware, and eliminating the ‘memcpy’ call.The audience will learn about essential technique for integrating GStreamer into embedded system. An understanding of the basics of video codecs and color formats is required.

February 21

This BoF is intended to bring together anybody that tests the Linux kernel to share best practices and brainstorm new ideas. Topics may range from .config testing, module/built-in drivers, test methods and tools for testing specific driver subsystems, VM/scheduler/interrupt stress testing, and beyond.

The discussion is targeted at Linux kernel developers, test engineers, and embedded Linux product teams/consultants with the common task of testing Linux kernel integrity. Attendees should have a firm grasp of building and deploying the kernel as well as kernel/userspace kernel APIs.

The LLVM project is an extensive compiler technology suite which is becoming commonplace in many industries. Technology built with LLVM is already shipped in millions of Linux devices as a part of Android/Renderscript. Increasingly it is becoming a big part of the development process for embedded projects, all the way up through to high performance computing clusters. This session will provide an update on the status of the LLVM Linux project; a project which is cooperating with both the Linux kernel and LLVM communities to build the Linux kernel with Clang/LLVM.This talk is for experienced developers who are interested in toolchain technology and Linux Kernel programming.

In 2003 I decided to replace twenty-two GNU packages in Linux From Scratch (everything except the compiler, kernel, and libc) with BusyBox, and then rebuild the result under itself. This didn’t remotely work, so I started testing and improving BusyBox until it did, putting in so much work on BusyBox its maintainer handed the project over to me.In 2006 I handed BusyBox off to a new maintainer and started over from scratch on a fresh implementation, Toybox. In 2011 Tim Bird (founder of CELF) convinced me to repurpose Toybox as a new BSD-Licensed Posix-2008 compliant command line for Android.

This panel explains what’s in the “standard” Linux command line: drawing commands from POSIX, LSB, Android Toolbox, Linux From Scratch, and more. How to determine what should be in the base system, and how to know what to exclude, and why the “standards” aren’t enough.

Closed-source binary drivers and libraries are endemic in embedded, with binary blobs essential on many modern boards to use the on-board 2D, 3D, or video acceleration. Recently there has been progress in open drivers from manufactures for various platforms including Intel, from 3D acceleration with OpenGL to hardware video decode/encode with VA API. This presentation will explain why open drivers are better than closed, discuss the options available, and describe what is available in the Yocto Project BSPs for you to use.The audience for this talk is expected to be developers and architects interested in the state of open graphics in Linux. Knowledge of this field will be assumed.

Performance is an important aspect when developing mobile applications as it affects both the interactive user experience and the device battery life. This presentation will introduce techniques and tools (e.g. profilers) useful for creating high-perfomance code starting at the high-level design stage (code organisation, data layout, etc.) and following through to implementation considerations. Specific instruction sets (e.g. NEON) will not be a primary focus, the goal rather being to enable efficient use of these without delving into details, thus giving the presentation a broader applicability.The target audience is developers of compute-intensive (native) applications or libraries who need to achieve the best possible performance. No special expertise beyond general familiarity with userspace Linux programming is assumed.

As costs have come down and the power of embedded platforms has increased, the hacker/maker community is playing an increasingly critical role in the creation of disruptive technologies. The “Next Big Thing” will likely start out as a hacker project using a commodity embedded hardware platform. Intel’s Atom-based offerings continue to grow while targeting new niches in embedded applications. This talk will outline exciting new developments with Atom processors in the embedded space, and how hackers can make best use of these advantages.This talk will be relevant to hackers, hobbyists, and people interested in developing embedded products based on Atom, and is open to all technical experience levels.

February 22

The ‘In Kernel Switcher’ (IKS) is a solution developed by Linaro and ARM to support ARM’€™s new big.LITTLE implementation. It is pairing together an A7 (LITTLE) and an A15 (big) processor into a logical entity that is then presented to the kernel as one CPU. From there the solution is seeking to achieve optimal performance and power consumption by switching between the big or the LITTLE core based on system usage.This session will present the IKS solution. After giving an overview of the big.LITTLE processor we will present the solution itself, how frequencies are masqueraded to the cpufreq core, the steps involved in doing a “€œswitch”€ between cores and some of the optimisation made to the interactive governor.

The session will conclude by presenting the results that we obtained as well as a brief overview of Linaro’s upstreaming plan.

Always Innovating has announced a new product, the MeCam, a self video nano copter to point-and-shoot yourself. The MeCam launches from the palm of a hand and hovers instantly. This talk will review the lessons learned during the design of this product:

  1. hardware “- CPU: the choice and the different trade-offs involved with this selection.
  2. hardware -€“ sensors: the complete list of the 14 sensors, their advantages and drawbacks.
  3. software -€“ core: the architecture of the Linux based system and the key challenges.
  4. software -€“ stabilization algorithm: the experience during the tuning of the different algorithms participating to the self hovering.

This talk targets developer with good expertise in both hardware and software. No deep knowledge in a specific field is mandatory but serious understanding of ARM and the Linux kernel is a plus.

Since Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS), which is default scheduler of Linux mainline kernel, has been introduced in kernel 2.6.23, due to its remarkable performance, we’ve paid little attention to improving the scheduler. In this presentation, we will show the CFS limitations, unsatisfactory fairness among cores and long response time to user interactive tasks by some experimental result. And then we will explain you an example scenario to solve this vulnerable point in multicore environment.

Sometimes you may encounter segmentation fault at malloc or free. It looks a bug of malloc library, but at most case it is not. Some other part destroys heap management area. It is very hard to tell which program actually destroys the heap if the process is very large and uses so many libraries and threads.
In this session I will show you some tips to trouble shoot heap problem.

  1. tips of malloc library in glibc
  2. how to hook and replace malloc
  3. use mspace in dlmalloc to separete memory spaceExpected audience is developers who writes code in C/C++ language and want to solve problems related heap memory.

Summary of the proposal:

This talk describes the presenter’s experience with using the Yocto Project, along with various open source layers, to build a digital signage solution from scratch. The presenter covers how various components are used from the oe-core, meta-web-kiosk, meta-security, meta-virtualization, and meta-nuc layers to get a working solution for digital signage. The talk provides a live demo of the solution, along with access to the source code & build environment.

Targeted Audience:

This talk is targeted to the open source development community. The audience can expect to get more knowledge about how they can build their own digital signage solution with the help of the Yocto Project and various open source layers.

olibc is derived from bionic libc used in Android, which was initially derived from NetBSD libc. olibc is expected to merge the enhancements done by several SoC vendors and partners, such as Qualcomm, TI, Linaro, etc., which is known to be the major difference from glibc, uclibc, and other traditional C library implementations. Typically, the code size of olibc runtime should be about 300 KB. For ARM target, olibc would benefit from ARMv7 specific features like NEON, Thumb-2, VFPv3/VFPv4, and latest compiler optimization techniques. Also, olibc is released under BSD License.

Those are just my choices among over 50 sessions. You can check the full schedule to find out which sessions suit you best.

You can register for ELC 2013 online.

There are two type of fees:

  • Professional Fee (If your company is paying for you to attend this event): 550 USD
  • Hobbyist Fee: 100 USD (up from $70 last year, who said there’s no inflation?)

Prior to ELC 2013, you can also attend the Android Builders Summit on February 18 & 19 for $200 extra, and/or Yocto Project Developer Day on February 19 at no additional cost.

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VIA ARMOS-800 Embedded System Features a Freescale i.MX537 based Pico-ITX Board

January 23rd, 2013 1 comment

VIA Technologies has recently announced the VIA ARMOS-800, an fanless system designed around VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX board powered by Freescale i.MX537 processor. The VIA ARMOS-800 provides a ruggedized low-power system for industrial and in-vehicle applications such as a digital signage.

VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX board and  ARMOS-800 Embedded System

VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX board and ARMOS-800 Embedded System

Here are VIA ARMOS-800 specifications:

  • Processor – 800MHz Freescale Cortex-A8 single core i.MX537
  • System Memory – 1GB DDR3-800 SDRAM using 128M x16 memory devices
  • Storage – „„ 4GB onboard eMMC Flash memory + ob-board micro SD connector
  • Graphics – Supports two integrated graphics processing units: an OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics accelerator and an OpenVGTM 1.1 2D graphics accelerator
  • Video Output – VGA and HDMI
  • Audio I/O – Line-In, Line-out, Mic-in connectors
  • Connectivity:
    • Ethernet – 10/100 PHY transceiver (SMSC LAN8720A)
    • Wi-Fi – Optional VIA 802.11n Wireless module VNT 9271
  • USB – 3x USB connectors + 1x on-board USB 2.0 pin header
  • COM – 1x D-Sub 9-pin female connector
  • CAN – 1x D-Sub 9-pin female connector (TI SN65HVD1050 CAN transceiver)
  • GPIO – 1x D-Sub 9-pin female connector (GPI x4 + GPO x4)
  • Misc – Integrated Watchdog timer, red & green LEDs
  • Power Supply – 5V DC. Typical power consumption: 3.14W
  • Dimensions – 150 mm (W) x 45 mm (H) x 108 mm (D)
  • Operating Temperature – VGA: 40°C up to 80 °C | HDMI: 20°C ~80°C

VIA provides support for Android 2.3 and Embedded Linux 2.6 for this embedded platform. You can find more information on ARMOS-800 product page.

Via: Embedded Star

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Norco BIS-6332A Freescale i.MX6 OPS Compliant Digital Signage Platform

January 22nd, 2013 1 comment

Norco recently unveiled a BIS-6332A, a platform based on Freescale i.MX6 processor compliant with Intel’s Open Pluggable Specification (OPS) mainly to be used as a digital signage player, but also as a fanless Box PC, a media player, a point of sale and more. The open pluggable specification (OPS) defines mechanical and electrical characteristics so that you can easily replace a OPS compliant board or device with another compliant platform.

Norco BIS-6332A

Norco BIS-6332A

Here are the specifications of the device:

  • SoC – Freescale Cortex-A9 i.MX 6 series (Single-core/dual-core/ Quad Core CPUs)
  • System Memory – Onboard 1GB/2GB DDR3 800MHz RAM
  • Storage:
    • 1xMicro SD
    • 4GB/8GB iNAND flash
    • 1x SATAII for 2.5″ HDD or SSD
  • Video Output – 1x HDMI (front panel), 1x HDMI ( extended by OPS slot) and LVDS
  • Connectivity:
    • 10/100/1000Mbps LAN (Atheros AR8033)
    • On-board USB WIFI
    • 3G (optional)
  • USB -  2x USB on front panel, 3x USB provided via OPS slot, one 2x5Pin USB interface
  • Audio – 1x Mic, 1x Headphone
  • LED – Indicator LED, PWR_LED
  • Power Supply – +12V~19V power supplied via OPS slot
  • Temperature Range – Operating Temp: 0℃~55℃ / Storage Temp: -40℃~80℃
  • Dimensions -  200mm× 119mm× 30mm

The company provides Android 4.0 support for the platform, but apparently not Linux.

Inside the player, you can find OPS-4500 motherboard which can provide the features mentioned above, and 2x CAN, 6x USB2.0, 1x Mini USB OTG, 5x 4-wire serial port (COM2: RS422/RS485), a Mini PCIe slot, an IR port and 16 GPIOs.

OPS-4500 Motherboard

OPS-4500 Motherboard

BIS-6332A (and BIS-6332B) are available now at an undisclosed price. You can find more information about the players, and OPS-4500 i.MX6 motherboard on Norco’s ARM products page.

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$159 CuBox Pro: Open Source Development Platform Based on Marvell ARMADA SoC

January 4th, 2013 1 comment

Back in 2011, SolidRun unveiled the CuBox, a miniature open source development platform based on Marvell Armada 510 SoC (88AP510) and aimed at applications such as multimedia, set-top-box, network attached storage (NAS), thin client, digital signage, automation… SolidRun has now announced an upgraded version called CuBox Pro based on the same platform but with 2 GB RAM, and a redesigned casing.

SolidRun CuBox ProHere are the specifications of this development platform:

  • Marvell Armada 510 SoC – 800 MHz dual issue ARM PJ4 processor, VFPv3, wmmx SIMD and 512KB L2 cache.
  • 2GByte DDR3 at 800MHz
  • 1080p Video Decode Engine
  • OpenGL ES 2.0 graphic engine
  • HDMI 1080p Output (with CEC function)
  • Gigabit Ethernet, SPDIF (optical audio), eSata 3Gbps, 2xUSB 2.0, micro-SD, micro-USB (console)
  • Standard Infra-red receiver for 38KHz based IR controllers.
  • No JTAG required. Unbrickable for Developers (i.e. you can’t brick the device to the point you have to physically remove the flash, burn it and solder it again to repair it)
  • Linux based distributions like Ubuntu, Debian and others
  • Android
  • Chrome with flash 10.1
  • Gstreamer with GPU acceleration
  • XBMC Media Center
The CuBox Pro sells for $159 with a universal power supply (5V/2A DC Output, 2.1mm/5.5mm standard connector) and a 4GB microSD with Ubuntu pre-installed. If the original CuBox was sold at a relatively competitive price ($135) in 2011, $159 for this type of system in 2013 is not what I would call a bargain, although it could be an option if eSata and Gbe is a must for your application, as those are not available on most boards. If you just need 2GB RAM, go get yourself an ODROID-U2 ($89) instead. Nevertheless, if you are still interested by this system, you may pre-order the board on Solid-Run Cubox Pro page, and you should receive it later this month.
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