AllWinner V-Series Category - Page 4 of 5 - CNX Software

March 30, 2018March 30, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

Allwinner S3 Dual Camera SoC Includes 128MB RAM, an I2S Audio Interface

Allwinner V3s processor was introduced a little over a year ago with a single Arm Cortex A7 core, 64MB DRAM built-in, and designed for camera applications with parallel CSI and 4-lane MIPI CSI2 interfaces It looks like Allwinner has now launched an updated version with Allwinner S3, still based on Cortex A7, but increasing memory to 128MB, and adding some interfaces like I2S. We don’t have a whole lot of information, apart from a development board (SC1615S) on Taobao with the following (tentative) specifications: SoC – Allwinner / Sochip S3 Cortex-A7 processor with 128MB DDR3 Storage – 16MB NOR Flash, 4GB eMMC flash, SPI NAND flash, micro SD card Display I/F – LCD, LVDS, touch panel connectors, HDMI port Camera I/F – 1x 4-lane MIPI CSI, 1x parallel CSI Audio – HP, 2x MIC, speaker headers, PCM header Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi + Bluetooth (AP6212 or XR819 […]

January 30, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Linux 4.15 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvald has released Linux 4.15 last Sunday: After a release cycle that was unusual in so many (bad) ways, this last week was really pleasant. Quiet and small, and no last-minute panics, just small fixes for various issues. I never got a feeling that I’d need to extend things by yet another week, and 4.15 looks fine to me. Half the changes in the last week were misc driver stuff (gpu, input, networking) with the other half being a mix of networking, core kernel and arch updates (mainly x86). But all of it is tiny. So at least we had one good week. This obviously was not a pleasant release cycle, with the whole meltdown/spectre thing coming in in the middle of the cycle and not really gelling with our normal release cycle. The extra two weeks were obviously mainly due to that whole timing issue. Also, it is […]

September 26, 2017September 26, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

Allwinner SoCs with Mali GPU Get Mainline Linux OpenGL ES Support

OpenGL ES support in Linux for ARM SoC is usually pretty hard to get because of closed source binary blobs coupled with the manufacturers focus on Android. Workarounds include open driver projects such as Freedreno for Qualcomm Adreno GPU, Nouveau for Tegra, or Etnaviv for Vivante GPUs, as well as libhybris library that converts Linux calls into Android calls in order to leverage existing Android GPU binary blobs. Allwinner processors relies on either PoverVR or ARM Mali GPU, and the former does not have any open source project, while some work is still being going for the latter with Lima project, but it’s not ready yet. That means so far, you’re only option was to use libhybris for either GPU family. The good news is that Free Electrons engineers have been working on OpenGL ES support for ARM Mali GPU for Allwinner processor, and have been allowed to release the […]

September 4, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Linux 4.13 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 4.13 and a kidney stone…: So last week was actually somewhat eventful, but not enough to push me to delay 4.13. Most of the changes since rc7 are actually networking fixes, the bulk of them to various drivers. With apologies to the authors of said patches, they don’t look all that interesting (which is definitely exactly what you want just before a release). Details in the appended shortlog. Note that the shortlog below is obviously only since rc7 – the _full_4.13 log is much too big to post and nobody sane would read it. So if you’re interested in all the rest of it, get the git tree and limit the logs to the files you are interested in if you crave details. No, the excitement was largely in the mmu notification layer, where we had a fairly last-minute regression and […]

May 29, 2017March 22, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 55 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-M2 Berry Allwinner V40 Development Board, Allwinner Business Units & SDK/Software Management

SinoVoIP has unveiled yet another new board with Banana Pi BPI-M2 Berry this week-end. It’s actually quite similar to Banana Pi BPI-M2 Ultra board, by they replaced Allwinner R40 with Allwinner V40 processor, removed some features, and use Raspberry Pi 3 form factor. If we look at Allwinner V40 product brief we can see the specifications look almost identical, with V40 potentially exposing an extra CAN bus. The company’s announcement was very confusing since they show Banana Pi BPI-M2 Berry board with Allwinner R40 instead of Allwinner V40. Banana Pi BPI-M2 Berry Banana Pi BPI-M2 Berry specifications: SoC – Allwinner V40 quad Core ARM Cortex A7 processor with ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1G DDR3 SDRAM Storage – micro SD slot, SATA interface Connectivity – 1x Gigabit Ethernet port, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 (AP6212 module) Video Output – HDMI 1.4 port up to 1080p60, 4-lane MIPI DSI […]

May 1, 2017May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Linux 4.11 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architecture

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.11: So after that extra week with an rc8, things were pretty calm, and I’m much happier releasing a final 4.11 now. We still had various smaller fixes the last week, but nothing that made me go “hmm..”. Shortlog appended for people who want to peruse the details, but it’s a mix all over, with about half being drivers (networking dominates, but some sound fixlets too), with the rest being some arch updates, generic networking, and filesystem (nfs[d]) fixes. But it’s all really small, which is what I like to see the last week of the release cycle. And with this, the merge window is obviously open. I already have two pull request for 4.12 in my inbox, I expect that overnight I’ll get a lot more. Linux 4.10 added Virtual GPU support, perf c2c’ tool, improved writeback management, a faster initial WiFi connection […]

March 10, 2017March 11, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 90 Comments

$6 LicheePi Zero ARM Board Runs Linux 4.10, Supports Lots of Add-On Boards (Crowdfunding)

We’ve already covered LicheePi One board powered by Allwinner A13 processor, but it was not for sale out of China, and the developers are now back with LicheePi Zero board/module, slightly bigger than an SD card, featuring Allwinner V3s processor, and offered for as low as $6, or $8 with WiFi via an Indiegogo campaign. LicheePi Zero specifications: SoC – Allwinner V3s ARM Cortex A7 processor @ up to 1.2 GHz with an ARM Mali-400 GPU, 512Mbit (64MB) DDR2 on-chip Storage – micro SD card slot, SPI flash (not 100% clear if it will be populated when shipped to backers) Display – FPC40 RGB Connector with support for 800×480 RGB LCD Audio – Audio codec USB – micro USB OTG port Expansion 2x 15 headers with 2.54mm pitch, breadboard friendly with GPIOs, 2x UART, 1x SPI, 2x I2C,ADC, 1x PWM 2x 30 half-holes with 1.27mm pitch with OTG USB，MIPI CSI，EPHY，RGB […]

December 30, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Allwinner V3s Dual Camera SoC Comes with 64MB DRAM

Most SoCs have a very limited amount of internal SDRAM just enough to load the bootROM code, but a few integrated a few MB of RAM on-chip such as Renesas RZ/A1H with 10MB on-chip DRAM, in order to reduce costs for some applications that may not require external RAM. Allwinner V3s, designed for dual camera solutions, appeared to be such an SoC with 64MB (512Mbit) on-chip DDR2 RAM, but the block diagram seems to imply it is a System-in-Package (SiP) instead. Nevertheless you still get a single chip with an ARM Cortex A7 processor, two ISPs, a video engine, 64MB RAM, and more. Allwinner V3s main features & specifications: CPU – ARM Cortex-A7 @ up to 1.2 GHz Memory – Integrated 64MB DDR2 DRAM Storage I/F – SD 2.0, eMMC 4.41, SPI NAND flash, SPI NOR flash Audio Codec – 92dB audio codec supporting 2x ADC channels and 2x DAC […]