CNXSoft – Embedded Software Development

After the Arndale board based on Samsung Exynos 5250 processor (dual core Cortex A15), Insignal is in the process of completing the development of Arndale Octa board powered by Exynos 5410 with 4 Cortex A15 and 4 Cortex A7 (aka Samsung Exynos 5 Octa), and howchip.com is now accepting “pre-orders”, at an undisclosed price, and the board is expected to ship by July.

Arndale Octa Board Block Diagram

A picture of the board is not available yet, but the specifications are (sort of):

• ARM Cortex-A15 (eagle or big core) Quad CPU with NEON/VFP as high performance processor with 32/32KB I/D Cache, 2 MB L2 Cache.
• ARM Cortex-A7 (kingfisher or little core) Quad CPU as power-efficient performance processor with 32/32 KB I/D Cache, 512 KB L2 Cache. This processor is architecturally aligned with Cortex-A15
• 128-bit multi-layer Network-on-Chip (NoC) architecture
• Cache Coherent Interface (CCI) among Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7, G2D, and SSS
• DRAM access through two channels of 32-bit LPDDR3 interface@800 MHz (12.8 GB/Sec)
• 64 KB ROM for secure booting and 336 KB internal RAM for security function
• External SRAM/PROM/NOR Interface with x16 data bus
• Multi-core timer and generic interrupt controller/combiner for multi-core CPU system
• 32 Channel DMA controller (16 Channels MDMA and 16 Channels PDMA)
• Real time clock (RTC)
• Highly structured power management system for mobile applications
• Flexible clock management system with nine system PLLs
• 3D graphic accelerator with multi-core GPU. This GPU supports OpenGL ES1.1 and 2.0, OpenVG 1.0.1
• Separate 2D graphic accelerator
• Multi-format codec (MFC). It provides encoding and decoding of MPEG-4/H.263/H.264/Divx up to 1920×1080@60fps and decoding of MPEG-2/VC1 video up to 1920X1080@30fps
• Two kinds of high performance JPEG codec for various compression formats
• Five generic scalers and one image rotator
• 1/2/4/8 bpp palletized or 16/18/24 bpp non-palletized color TFT support
• WQXGA LCD display through embedded DisplayPort and WUXGA for MIPI DSI interface.
• HDMI V1.4 interface for TV monitor
• Highly customized image enhancer
• Three channels of MIPI CSI interface for three camera support (stereo cameras with a front-view camera)
• High performance ISP engine with DRC, 3DNR, VDIS, ODC, FD, and 3AA features. The ISP engine can accommodate one of these scenarios: 13 MP@30fps, 13MP@24fps + 3 MP@24fps
• Dedicated peripherals for camera module control (ADC, PWM, SPI and UART)
• Ultra low-power audio decoding mode with internal SRAM
• I2S/PCM (3 Channel), AC-97 (1 Channel), and SPDIF Tx (1 Channel)
• SD3.0/MMC5.0 interfaces (2 Channels, 8-bit, .1.8 V only) and SD3.0 interfaces (1 Channel, 4-bit, wide-range)
• Super-speed (5 Gbps) USB3.0 DRD (2 Channels) with USB2.0 backward compatibility
• High-speed/full-speed USB 2.0 Device/OTG (1 Channel)
• USI with high-speed I2C (4 Channels) and I2C (4 Channels)
• SPI (3 Channels) and 3 Mbps UART (4 Channels) for Bluetooth 2.0
• On-chip HSIC (2 Channels) MIPI-HIS (1 Channel) for modem chip I/F
• Sturdy crypto engine with DTRNG, hardware hash function accelerator, provision keys, and monotonic counters
• 12-bit general purposed ADC (10 Channels), on-die thermal sensors (4 units), logic-speed monitors for dynamic voltage/frequency scaling of CPU and GPU, and adaptive back-bias controllers for logic speed and leakage optimization

The list above is more about Exynos 5410 specifications than the board itself, that will come with (Gb?) Ethernet, USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, eMMC and SD card slot for storage, HDMI output, a serial port for debugging, and more.

The company will also provide a sound board, a connectivity board, a camera Board and an LCD Board. There’s no information about software, and documentation for now, but we can safely assume Android will be supported fully, and Linux will also be available.

The highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone should become available later this month in three versions depending on the country where you reside:

• GT-I9500 – Exynos 5 Octa @ 1.6 GHz without LTE
• GT-I9505 – Snapdragon 600 @ 1.9 GHz with LTE
• SHV-E300S – Exynos 5 Octa @ 1.8 GHz with LTE

GS4 will also be the first device to feature Exynos 5 Octa octo-core processor, so until people get their hands on the device, one way to know how fast it can perform is to get some benchmarks running on the devices.

SamMobile received the latest Antutu benchmarks for GT-I9500, and as expected, the results are pretty impressive with a score of 28018. This score is about 19% higher than GT-I9505 (Snapdragon 600)  which scores 23607 points.

As usual, the detailed scores are not available which is pretty annoying, but I’d assume both the CPU, thanks to the 4 ARM Cortex A15 cores, and the GPU, (Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX544MP2) contributed to this very good score, the fastest ever recorded on ARM devices (Update: Oops, just remembered Nvidia Tegra 4 got 36,000 on the reference tablet).. It’s not quite as high as the ~91,000 points I got with my x86 PC, but this is more than enough to run any current mobile applications, as well as some desktop applications, for example once Ubuntu Touch is ported to the device.

I’d assume the kernel is still based on IKS (In-Kernel Switching) big.LITTLE implementation (TBC), so the 8 cores are not used during the benchmark, and only the 4 Cortex A15 are used. Once HMP implementation (Heterogeneous Multiprocessing) is complete, and all 8 cores can be used at the same time, the device will probably pass the 30,000 mark @ 1.6 GHz. In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, check out IKS vs HMP post. The Korean version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 (SHV-E300S) should already score of over 30,000 points since it runs at 1.8 GHz.

padhz.com compared three of the fastest Quad Core Cortex A9 processors: Rockchip RK3188, Samsung Exynos 4412, and Nvidia Tegra 3. In their detailed report (in Chinese) they compare the performance, power consumption, video play back and more. As expected, it turns out RK3188 is the best, followed by Exynos 4412, and then Tegra 3, which correspond to the inverse of their release dates. Keep reading to find the details.

The Contestants

They use 3 tablets for the comparison: Nexus 7 (Tegra 3), Ramos W42 (Exynos 4412), and Cube U30GT2 (RK3188).

That’s quite a combination of different resolutions, available memory, Android versions and battery capacities, but let’s carry on.

Benchmark Results (Antutu, Nbench, GLBenchmark…)

RK3188 is the clear winner in all categories (except flash write), even with 2D/3D tests despite the higher resolution. For some reasons Ramos W42 seems to have a dismal IO performance, but this is not the point of this test.

RK3188 is also the clear winner with NBench which test the integer and floating point performance of the CPU, as well as memory bandwidth.

GL Benchmark shows similar results for GPU performance. The benchmark has been run in 1080p offscreen mode, so the tablet screen resolution does not affect the results.

padhz also ran Nenamark which puts RK3188 at the top, but this time, closely followed by Tegra 3, with Exynos 4412 a bit further behind.

Application Tests

Instead of just running benchmark to compare the best, they also performed some usual tasks, such as installing and uninstalling large applications, loading a PDF, loading games…

Comparison of Times to Install and Uninstall Large Applications.

The results are quite surprising as installing large application on the Cube tablet can be about twice as slow as on the other 2 tablets. I guess this has less to do with RK3188 performance than with the poor flash performance we’ve detected in Antutu. PDF loading times are about the same in all tablet, yet slightly slower in RK3188. The guys at padhz think it’s because of the larger screen resolution, which could be a valid explanation. There’s very little difference between games loading times in either of the 3 tablets. For testing web performance, they used pages with Flash which is not supported in Nexus 7, but they still found that it’s faster to load in the Exynos based tablet than the Rockchip based tablet.

Video Playback

They’ve also testing video playback of videos with different codecs and container formats using MXPlayer. To understand the results we need to learn a bit a Chinese first. The top fields are self-explanatory, but the Chinese text in the result fields translate as follows (Correct me If I’m wrong):

• 无 – “No”, in the sense “N/A”.
• 不支持 – “Not supported”
• 播放流畅 – “Play smoothly”
• 没有声音 – “No sound”
• 严重卡顿 – “Lots of lag”
• 明显卡顿 – “Obvious lag”
• 轻微卡顿 – “Minor lag”
• 卡顿无声 – “Audio cuts”

That means RK3188 does not support 2160p videos, nor EVO container aka Enhanced VOB (this should be fixable), but would still seem to be very capable in a media player, as it supports all other files perfectly.

Game Testing

Need for Speed ​​achieved an average framerate above 30fps in Cube U30GT2, beating both the Nexus 7 (25 fps) and Ramos W42 (27fps). However in other games, such as Gangstar Rio, the RK3188 based tablet was the slowest of the three tablets, presumably because of the larger screen resolution.

Power Consumption

In the first test, they put the tablets into standby at 18:00, turn the devices on at 10:00 the following day, and let it on for a further 30 minutes, and see the battery charge levels. They did not start off with the same battery levels on all devices, so I’m not sure the comparison is 100% valid, as battery discharge may not be linear, and each device has a difference battery capacity.

Yet, it seems when it comes to power consumption, the Tegra 3 easily beats the other two processors in standby mode, most probably because of the 5th companion core, and Ramos W42 appears to consume more energy when the screen is on than the other two.

Finally they ran the battery test from GLBenchmark after charging all tablets to 100% with the following results:

The 3 line is the time it took the test to fully discharge the battery, and the last line correspond to the power consumed per hour, and has been calculated by dividing the battery capacity by the time it took complete the benchmark. The Nexus 7 is clearly the best performer, followed by Cube U30GT2, and Ramos W32.

However, the battery test a above are more a tablet battery test than a processor power consumption test, as there are so many components affecting the power consumption, one of the most important being the display itself.

Rockchip RK3188 will bring us high performance devices, with great multimedia capabilities, at a much lower cost than either Tegra 3 and Exynos 4412 based designs. So I’m looking forward to putting my hands on one of the RK3188 mini PCs to do my own testing…

Via Liliputing

Yesterday, Samsung announced the HomeSync, a media server featuring a dual core processor at 1.7 GHz, 1GB RAM, 8GB eMMC, and a 1TB hard drive. HomeSync is said to be running a modified version of Android Jelly Bean.

Here are HomeSync specifications:

• Processor – Dual Core @ 1.7GHz (I’d guess it should be the Exynos 5250, but why all the mystery?)
• System Memory – 1GB DDR3
• Storage – 8GB eMMC ＋ 1TB HDD
• Connectivity
  • LAN – Gigabit Ethernet
  • WiFi – 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz & a/n 5GHz HT40 2×2 MIMO Channel Bonding
  • Bluetooth – V4.0
• USB – 2x USB 3.0 Host, 1x Micro USB (11pin)
• Video Output – HDMI out
• Audio – Optical Audio (Audio Amp. Connection)
• Video Codec – H.264, H.263, MPEG4, VC-1, Sorenson Spark, WMV7/8, MP43, VP8, DivX
• Audio Codec – MP3, AAC LC/AAC＋/eAAC＋, WMA 9std/10pro/Lossless, FLAC, Vorbis, AMR-NB/WB, Wav, Mid, AC-3
• DRM – HDCP 1.3/2.1, Playready, Widevide, Trustzone

Samsung explains HomeSync can be your own Home Cloud storage thanks to the 1TB hard drive, and supports 8 separate (encrypted) accounts which should be enough to cover most families, and allows each user to upload and download content from multiple devices, and share with other family members.

Since HomeSync is not based on Google TV, you’ll get access to the full Play Store and use (most of) the apps you can already use  on your smartphone and tablet. An Android app will also be provided to let you control Samsung media player wirelessly with an Android smartphone either emulating a touchpad, or mirroring the display (Miracast).

Engadget is at MWC 2013 and had the chance to try out the device, mainly with the Android remote app.

Samsung did not disclose any pricing information, but we already know HomeSync will be available from April 2013, first in the US, and then internationally.

I’ve just received an early sample of ARMBRIX Zero (aka ARMBRIX-5250-A), a development board based on Samsung Exynos 5250 dual cortex A15 processor with 2GB RAM, a microSD slot, 1x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 Host, 1x USB Device, 10/100 Ethernet, HDMI output, SATA 3.0, some Audio I/O ports, and 3 expansions headers. This is basically a low cost version of the Arndale board, with things such as eMMC 4.5 (Sorry I’ve missed the eMMC socket at the back of the board) sensors missing.

Today, I won’t turn the board on (I’ll explain why at the end of the post), but instead show some pictures of the development and debug boards.

ARMBRIX Zero Development Board (Click to Enlarge)

If you had previously seen the board picture before, you’ll noticed it has a grown a heatsink. The heatsink is probably here to stay, but may be slightly different (e.g. lower) when you receive your board. The bottom acrylic plate won’t be part of the board you’ll receive in case you wonder. The board came with a microSD card loaded with Android Jelly Bean (4.1).

Top View of ARMBRIX Zero Development Board (Click to Enlarge)

The board has three expansion headers, but only CON16 (MIPI Master/Slave, 1x I2C, GPIO) and CON19 (3x serial interfaces, 2x I2C, 2x ADC, JTAG, USB, MMC, and reset) are soldered. CON20 provides access to I2S, Interrupt and GPIO pins, and the System bus (EBI). Pin descriptions for all 3 headers are available in this PDF. (This is an early version, and there may be changes before final release, but this should give you an idea). this PDF

Left to Right: microSD slot, Line OUT, Line IN, and SPDIF (Click to Enlarge)

Left to Right: miniUSB device, HDMI, USB 3.0 Host, RJ45 + 2 USB 2.0 Host, and Power (Click to Enlarge)

The package included a debug board with 2 DB9 connectors that gives access to UART2 (CON2) for serial console, UART3 (CON3), and a JTAG connector. Currently, ARMBRIX does not plan to sell this board, but if there is enough demand, they may change their mind. You just need to connect it to CON16 on the development board, and connect CON2 to your computer serial port via a null modem cable to access the serial console.

But since I don’t have a null modem cable at home, and my PC does not come with a serial port. I’ll just use the TTL to USB debug board I’m using with other boards and devices.

Standard USB TTL Debug Board Connected to ARMBRIX Zero.

You just need to connect 3 pins from CON19 to your debug board. Pin 13 to GND, Pin 14 (Rx) to Tx, and Pin 16 (Tx) to Rx. That means ARMBRIX debug board may not be needed for most people.

I would have liked to show the board boot, run some benchmark, and talk about its performance, but it won’t boot because I only have a 5V/2A power supply, and as mentioned in the board description, a 5V/3A power supply is recommend. If you plan to connect a SATA hard drive, and/or an external LCD you’d probably need even more power. ARMBRIX told me they use a 5V/5A for testing.

The next step is to go shopping, and hopefully I’ll be able to show you much more.

Joo-Young Hwang, principal engineer at Samsung, presents F2FS (Flash-Friendly File System), a new file system designed for storage in mobile devices at the Embedded Linux Conference in Barcelona, Spain, on November 5, 2012.

Abstract:

Recent mobile devices adopt various flash storages as a primary storage. File system support for those flash storages is a must for flash device performance and lifespan. I will present a new file system, called F2FS, designed for mobile flash storages. F2FS is designed considering the characteristics of the underlying flash storage which has flash translation layer (FTL). F2FS outperforms EXT4, which is a popular file system for Android phones, in most of benchmarks. I will describe motivation, design, and implementation of the file system, then show performance comparison data with EXT4. Target audiences are those who are interested in file system support for flash storages such as eMMC and SSD. Kernel and file system expertise helps but is not mandatory to listen to this talk.

F2FS vs EXT4 – Bonnie++ Benchmark Results
DUT: Pandaboard with Linux 3.3 running in a 64GB eMMC with a 12GB partition

The talk is divided into 4 sections:

• Introduction – NAND flash memories (SSD, eMMC, SD card) and current file systems and memory management used.
• F2FS Design Overview
• Performance Evaluation Results – Ext4 vs F2FS on eMMC in Pandaboard (Linux) and Galaxy Nexus (Android).
• Summary

You can also download the slides for this presentation. You can find more information on F2FS lwn article. F2FS has been added to Linux 3.6 and greater.

Samsung Electronics unveiled the very first big.LITTLE Cortex A7/A15 SoC at CES 2013. Exynos Octa will feature 4 Cortex A15 cores together with 4 Cortex A7 cores, and make use of big.LITTLE processing to optimize energy using In-Kernel Switching (IKS), where the kernel uses Cortex A15 or Cortex A7 cores depending on the load, or Heterogeneous MultiProcessing (HMP), where different tasks are assigned to different cores, and both Cortex A15 and A7 can be used simultaneously. Check my earlier post “Big.LITTLE Processing Implementations and Current Status” for an overview on how this all works.

The new Intel processors for smartphones/tablets are now very close to ARM when it comes to power consumption, and ARM may regain a clear lead thanks to big.LITTLE processing technology, which is currently shown to consume about 40% less power than equivalent tasks run on Cortex A15 (only) processors. Samsung claims it may offers up to 70 percent higher energy efficiency compared to the previous quad-core (Cortex A9) Exynos.

Glenn Roland, vice president and head of new platforms and OEM, EA, demonstrates the processing power of the Exynos 5 Octa by running “Need for Speed Most Wanted” on a reference platform.

Exynos 5 Octa is targeted at high-end smartphones and tablets, but the company did not provide any availability for this SoC. We do not know which GPU is used either, but I suspect it could be Mali-T658, the fastest ARM GPU available in 2013.