Between the AllWinner A10 and AllWinner A13 processors, there’s now an alternative. AllWinner A10s is based on AllWinner A13 architecture (sun5i), but adds HDMI and Ethernet MAC which makes it suitable for mini PCs and set-top boxes. The first time I heard about this processor was in August with IP878 mini PC, and in October, one reader (Alex) informed me AllWinner had posted more details about his new processor.
Here are the key features of this (relatively) new SoC:
- CPU/GPU – ARM Cortex-A8 Core with 32KB D-Cache/ 32KB I-Cache / 256KB L2 Cache, and Mali-400
- VPU
- HD Video Decoding 1080p@30fps of VP8/6, H.264/H.263, WMV9/VC-1, WMV7/8, MPEG-4/2/1, Xvid codecs
- HD Video Encoding 1080p@30fps with H.264 codec
- Video Out – HDMI 1.4 (1080p),
- Memory
- Up to 1GB DDR2/DDR3 up to 533MHz (16/32 bits Data Bus)
- MLC/TLC/SLC/EF-NAND
- ECC 64-bit
- Peripherals:
- USB2.0 OTG, USB2.0 HOST OHCI/EHCI
- SD Card V.3.0, eMMC V.4.2
- SPI, TWI and UART
- TS Port
- EMAC
- CSI
- I2S
- IR interface, GPIOs, etc…
- Audio Codec:
- Integrated Audio Codec
- MIC/FM/LINEIN Input
As usual, Android should be the main (and only) OS supported directly by AllWinner (The company), but work is done on sun5i kernel and u-boot by sunxi-linux.org developers’ community. AllWinner A13 support should be pretty good at this time, but I’m not sure about the status of A10S support.
Olimex is currently working on an AllWinner A10S development board with 512MB RAM, micro SD-card socket, SD-MMC card socket for WIFI card or storage, 100Mbit Ethernet, HDMI, USB Host & OTG, LCD Connector, Audio In/Out, UEXT connector and GPIO headers. Since the company works closely with sunxi-linux community, it’s virtually a certainty Linux will be properly supported on this platform. The next AllWinner SoC will be a quad-core Cortex A7 processor codenamed AllWinner A40, and should be announced later this month.
[Update: AllWinner A10S datasheet and preliminary Olimex A10S-OLinuXino schematics are available on github.]
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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