Category: Allwinner A-Series

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Development Board Unboxing And Review

Olimex A13-OLinuXino-MICRO Development Board Unboxing And Review

Every Friday, Olimex organizes an online competition where they give away one of their board. They’ll ask a (usually simple) technical question on their twitter account at 22h00 (GMT+7), and all you have to do is to reply to their tweet with the correct answer within one hour. The winner is then selected randomly with random.org. There are usually 50 to 100 respondents so the odds are pretty good. I played a few times, and finally, I was lucky enough to win an A13-OLinuXino-MICRO development board at the beginning of December. I received it yesterday, after UPS took a whooping 15 days to deliver the board (Way to go UPS!). The board can be purchased on Olimex for 35 Euros plus shipping and taxes, or even lower if you order larger quantities. A13-OLinuXino-MICRO is a stripped down version of A13-OLinuXino-WIFI with the following specs: SoC – AllWinner A13 Cortex A8 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments on Rhombus Tech EOMA-68 CPU Card Prototype

Rhombus Tech EOMA-68 CPU Card Prototype

Do you remember Rhombus Tech AllWinner A10 EOMA-PCMCIA CPU card that targets a BOM cost of $15 US, that was announced at the end of last year? Well, after much wait, the first prototype is now available. This CPU module is based on AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 processor, with 1GB RAM, a NAND Flash, one USB OTG port, microSD slot, HDMI, PMIC, an Ethernet PHY (at the back), an expansion header, and the EOMA-68 connector giving access to peripherals signals (SATA, Ethernet, RGB/TTL, I2C etc…). It can act as a Linux/Android stand-alone computer or be connected to a baseboard. One of the first project will be a laptop for the Chinese market. AllWinner A10 SoC may be a little underpowered to be used in laptop compared to the latest ARM processors, but since EOMA-PCMCIA is a standard, pin-to-pin compatible modules will eventually be designed and manufactured with different/faster (ARM) processors. […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Open Hardware System on Module Project

Open Hardware System on Module Project

“JM” has started working on a system-on-module project with the goal “to create a whole range of SoM boards and motherboards that can handle a large number of embedded projects”.  He has just released schematics and layout files created with Kicad for a dual NXP LPC1764 SO-DIMM module and the baseboard under GPL3 license.  The next goal is to release an AllWinner A10 SoM and corresponding baseboard. Kicad is an open source schematics capture and PCB layout software that can run in Windows, Linux and Mac. If you want to read the schematics or try it out, you can freely download it. In Ubuntu you could just use apt-get:

The hardware files for the module and carrier board are available here. JM explains that the LPC module and baseboard have already been manufactured and tested, so it could just be a matter of adapting the module for AllWinner A10/A20. […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments on AllWinner Publishes A31 and A20 Processors Details

AllWinner Publishes A31 and A20 Processors Details

Several tablets based on AllWinner A31 quad core processor have been announced this week,  such as Onda V972, but we did not really have full details on the processor. We now know more since AllWinner added product pages for two new (sun6i architecture. [Edit: A20 is actually sun7i…]) processors: AllWinner A31 and AllWinner A20. AllWinner A31 Specifications AllWinner A31 is a quad core Cortex A7 processor with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU (8 shader engines). CPU – ARM Cortex-A7 Quad-Core with 256KB L1-Cache/1MB L2-Cache GPU – POWER VR SGX 544 with Eight logic cores. Open GL ES2.0, Open CL1.x and DX 9_3 compliant. Memory – Dual-Channel LPDDR2/DDR3/DDR3L Controller, Dual-Channel NAND FLASH Controller and 64-bit ECC Video UHD H.264 4K ×2K @30fps video decoding Full HD video decoding BD Directory, BD ISO and BD m2ts video decoding H.264 High Profile 1080P@60fps encoding 3840×1080@30fps 3D decoding Complies with RTSP, HTTP, HLS, RTMP, MMS streaming […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 31 Comments on Cubieboard Unboxing and Quick Start Guide

Cubieboard Unboxing and Quick Start Guide

I’ve received another cool board this week with the Cubieboard development board. As a quick reminder, the Cubieboard is the only proper low cost AllWinner A10 development board available, and comes with 512MB/1GB RAM, 4GB NAND Flash, 10/100 MBit Ethernet, HDMI output, 2x USB Host port, 1x USB OTG port, a microSD socket, a SATA interface, an IR sensor and 2 headers to access extra pins such as GPIOs, I2C, SPI,VGA pins, CVBS pins etc… CubieTech had a successful Indiegogo campaign where the 1GB board was available for $59 including worldwide shipping (and as low as $19 for early birds), and you can now buy it from resellers. [Update: It’s now available with several cables, USB to TTL debug board, and an enclosure for $80 on dx.com] Cubieboard Unboxing The board comes with a SATA cable and a USB cable for power. There’s no power supply so you’ll need you […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 26 Comments on $240 Onda V972 AllWinner A31 Quad Core Android Tablet with 9.7″ Retina Display

$240 Onda V972 AllWinner A31 Quad Core Android Tablet with 9.7″ Retina Display

We finally get a product based on AllWinner Quad Core A7 SoC! The Onda V972 is a 9.7″ inch tablet features the latest AllWinner A31 quad-core A7 processor with an 8 core Power VR SGX544MP2 GPU, 2GB RAM & 16 GB Flash, and running Android 4.1 Jelly bean (Upgradable to 4.2). Here are the full specifications of this tablet: SoC – AllWinner A31 Quad Core A7 + 8 Core Power VR SGX544MP2  GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB Flash + microSD socket Display – 9.7″ capacitive touchscreen IPS display (Resolution: 2048*1536) Camera – 5.0MP rear camera with Auto Focus and 2.0MP front camera Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with Wi-Fi Display and Direct support USB – USB 3.0 port. 3G support via external dongle. Video Out – HDMI – Apparently only 1080p, not 4K TBC. Video Playback – 4K HD Video Playback supporting MP4/3GP/3G2/RM/RMVB/ASF/FLAC/APE/MOV etc… Audio Codecs […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments on AllWinner A10s Processor Overview

AllWinner A10s Processor Overview

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 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on 2D/3D Graphics Linux Demo (X11, EGL, GLES2, Qt4) on AllWinner A10 Tablet

2D/3D Graphics Linux Demo (X11, EGL, GLES2, Qt4) on AllWinner A10 Tablet

Xlab (Maxim Kouprianov) has tested 2D & 3D capabilities of AllWinner A10 SoC (with Mali-400 GPU) on a Ployer MOMO11 Bird Edition tablet running OpenEmbedded with kernel 3.0.52+ testing X11, EGL, OpenGL ES2 and Qt4 on the platform, and the results are pretty smooth as you can see in the video below, although there appears to be some flickering in LunaSysMgr demo. The tools used in the demos are xfwm4 (Xfce Windows Manager), es2gears_x11, cube (Qt), LunaSysMgr (Qt/WebOS) and glmark2-es2. Qt4 acceleration is done via XlibGL platform which in turns uses X11-EGL. He used the Mali drivers version r3p0 (mali400-gles20-gles11-linux-x11-ump) and xf86-video-mali on sunxi-linux github repository mainly maintained by rz2k. You can get more details on how to build Mali-400 support for AllWinner A10 on http://linux-sunxi.org/Mali400, and GPU benchmark results for A10 show the drivers seem to work as expected. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time […]