AMD G-Series SDK and Development Boards

Earlier this year, AMD announced its new Embedded processors G-Series aimed at set-top boxes, smart tv, digital signage, point of sales, media servers and more in order to compete with Intel Atom solutions as well as ARM based processors. Please refer to the link above for an overview and details about the 5 processors of the AMD G-series: T56N – Dual core @ 1.6GHz with Radeon HD 6310 GPU T48N – Dual core @ 1.4 GHz with Radeon HD 6310 GPU T40N – Dual core @ 1.0 GHz with Radeon HD 6250 GPU T52R – Single core @ 1.5 GHz with Radeon HD 6310 GPU Today, I’ll discuss about the development boards and software development kits available for this platform. AMD G-Series Development Boards and Reference Designs AMD Provide two reference designs and one development board: AMD Embedded G-Series Platform Mini-ITX Reference Design. No details are publicly available as this […]

Netgem’s IPTV 2.0 Home Cloud SDK

Netgem announced the release of its “Home Cloud” SDK based on IPTV 2.0 open architecture. Here’s an excerpt from the press release: Paris, France  March 15 , 2011  Netgem, an IPTV technology leader, has announced it has made its Home Cloud software development kit (SDK) available to application developers, Internet service providers and operator partners. Netgem is further developing its partner ecosystem to enable third parties to take advantage of its IPTV 2.0 open architecture. This application framework is designed for the development of  live and on-demand TV and multimedia applications. Using the open and fully documented APIs telecom operators and their partners can develop their local ecosystem of applications and services to differentiate their offering from competitors. Since Netgem is a pure technology vendor it does not interfere with the economics of the relationship between operators and developers, who are able to share 100% of the revenue. The full […]

Qemu Linaro Versatile Express Image on Ubuntu 10.10

I’ve installed qemu-linaro and run an ARM image based on the instructions on https://wiki.linaro.org/PeterMaydell/QemuVersatileExpress. I used Ubuntu 10.10 desktop edition. First, install the Linaro images tools: sudo apt-get install linaro-image-tools Download the Linaro release and versatile hardware pack: wget http://releases.linaro.org/platform/linaro-n/nano/alpha-3/linaro-natty-nano-tar-20110302-0.tar.gz wget http://releases.linaro.org/platform/linaro-n/hwpacks/alpha-3/hwpack_linaro-vexpress_20110302-0_armel_supported.tar.gz You can download another hwpack for omap3, i.mx51, pandaboard, beagleboard, ST U8500, etc.. if needed at http://releases.linaro.org/platform/linaro-n/hwpacks/alpha-3/ Download the source, extract it, then configure, build and install qemu linaro: wget http://launchpad.net/qemu-linaro/trunk/2011.03-1/+download/qemu-linaro-0.14.50-2011.03-1.tar.gz tar xzvf qemu-linaro-0.14.50-2011.03-1.tar.gz cd qemu-linaro-0.14.50-2011.03-1 ./configure –prefix=/usr make sudo make install Make sure the prefix is set to /usr in order to overwrite any previous version of Qemu (It installed qemu linaro in /usr/local/ instead in my case). Failure to do so may generate the following error during linaro-media-create: qemu: fatal: cp15 insn ee1d6f70 Instead of compiling qemu, you can install qemu-linaro with apt-get (this will avoid possible version issues between linaro-media-create and qemu): sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linaro-maintainers/tools […]

Video Wall with Beagleboards and ffmpeg

There was a 6-Screen Video Wall at Embedded World 2011, powered by 6 Beagleboard xM (based on Texas Instruments OMAP 3 running @ 1Ghz – Cost: 149 USD / piece), connected vi Ethernet. In the video they explain that the system is running Linux Ångström and the video is played and synchronized over Ethernet with ffmpeg. After doing some research on how to do this, they are probably using omapfbplay with netsync enabled which you can compile as follows: NETSYNC=y OMAPFB=y make However, if you are using Linux Ångström, omapfbplay with netsync is enabled by default. This can also be done with the first version of Beagleboard (without Ethernet) via USB. They can also control each display independently and synchronize the mouse and keyboard thanks to Synergy. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting […]

Toshiba Resistive Multi-touch Screen

Toshiba developed a proprietary algorithm for multi-touch resistive touchscreen and they exhibited a demo at Embedded World 2011. The hardware is based around Toshiba TMPA900 (ARM926EJ-S core running at 200 Mhz) and runs embedded Linux. This type of system is aimed at home appliances (washing machine, refrigerator…), industrial and medical applications and can be used with a pen, stylus or gloved hand. For example, a doctor wearing gloves would be able to use multi-touch gestures on such screens whereas it would not be possible on capacitive touchscreens or standard resistive touchscreens. It was not specified but I suppose that technology would only support 2 points since they only showed two fingers gesture in the demo. This should not be a problem for the type of application. An another advantage of this solutions is that it brings multi-touch technology to cost sensitive industrial applications. The technology is still under development and […]

Amahi 6 (Home Digital Assistant) and Amahi Sync Released Today.

Amahi is an open source home digital assistant (HDA) running on Fedora. It is basically a server to manage all your media files (like a NAS), backup your PC’s data and host some private web applications (calendar, wiki, …) with people on your LAN. Amahi is available on several platforms such as Intel and AMD x86 processors and embedded platforms such as Intel Atom (ECOPC N.1)  and Marvell Sheeva ARM processor (Sheevaplug). They’ve released their latest version Amahi 6 today. Here’s what they say about it: Amahi 6.0: Reliability, Reliability, Reliability! Amahi 6.0 brings a plethora of upgrades, reliability fixes and features, and better hardware support, courtesy of Fedora 14. Here are some of the highlights in this release (see the Amahi 6.0 release notes for all the details as well as the upgrade guide from Amahi 5/Fedora 12). Online Synchronization, Server Alerts and Premium Plans! The Amahi Sync and […]

Low Cost Freescale i.MX53 (Cortex A8) Development Board

Possibly inspired by Texas Instruments low cost Beagleboard (OMAP 3 – 129 USD) and Pandaboard (OMAP4 – 179 USD) and the large following in the development community, Freescale announced its own “Quick Start Development Board” based on i.MX53 for a cost of 149 USD. i.MX53 QSD Board Hardware Description Listed Hardware Features of the i.MX53 Quick Start Development Board: Processor i.MX53 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 Processor Power management IC 1 GB DDR3 memory Display LVDS connector VGA connector Parallel LCD add-on card (via expansion connector) HDMI add-on card (via expansion connector) Audio SPDIF output via HDMI add-on card Freescale SGTL5000 audio codec Microphone jack Headphone jack Expansion Connector Enables parallel LCD or HDMI output Camera CSI port signals I2C, SSI, SPI signals Connectivity Full-size SD/MMC card slot microSD card slot 7-pin SATA data connector 10/100 Base-T Ethernet port Two High-Speed USB host ports Micro USB device port Debug JTAG connector […]

Linaro Development Board “Snowball” by ST Ericsson

ST Ericsson unveiled a development board based on Nova A9500 (dual ARM Cortex A9 processor and MALI 400 GPU) at MWC 2011 called Snowball (or SKY-S9500-ULP-CXX) for the embedded Linux community and professional developers. This board was designed by CALAO Systems and can be pre-ordered on their website for 200 USD (SKY-S9500-ULP-C11 / Software Development Kit – SDK) or 300 USD (SKY-S9500-ULP-C01 / Production development Kit – PDK). The difference between the SDK and PDK is that the former has no expansion connectors, no battery backup for RTC and only support serial over USB port (for Linux console). First, some pictures with description of the snowball development board. The full documentations for Snowball development board can be found in Calao Systems File Repository, where you’ll get the bottom and top assembly diagrams for both C01 and C11, the major components datasheet, documentation and some photos. The specifications of the boards: – […]

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