More Technical Details & Benchmarks about Nvidia Tegra K1 “Denver” 64-bit ARM SoC

The 32-bit version of Nvidia Tegra K1 have generally received good reviews in terms of performance, especially GPU performance, and the company has also provided good developer’s documentation and Linux support, including open source drivers for the Kepler GPU (GK20A) found in the SoC. But as initially announced, Tegra K1 with also get a 64-bit ARM version codenamed “Denver”, and Nvidia provided more details at Hotchips conference. The 64-bit Tegra K1 will still feature a 192-core Kepler GPU, but replace the four ARM Cortex A15 cores found in the 32-bit version, by two ARMv8 “Project Denver” cores custom-designed by Nvidia. The multi-core performance of the dual core 64-bit Tegra K1 @ 2.5 GHz may end up being equivalent to the quad core 32-bit Tegra K1 @ 2.1 GHz, but the single core performance will be much better thanks to a  a 7-way superscalar microarchitecture (vs 3-way for Cortex A15), as […]

Linux 3.16 Released

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.16 over the week-end: So nothing particularly exciting happened this week, and 3.16 is out there. And as usual (previous release being the exception) that means that the merge window for 3.17 is obviously open. And for the third time in a row, the timing sucks for me, as I have travel coming up the second week of the merge window. Many other core developers will be traveling too, since it’s just before the kernel summit in Chicago. So we’ll see how the next merge window goes, but I’m not going to worry about it overmuch. If I end up not having time to do all the merges, I might delay things into the week of the kernel summit, but I’ll hope to get most of the big merging done this upcoming week before any travel takes place, so maybe it won’t come […]

Linaro 14.07 Release with Linux Kernel 3.16 and Android 4.4

Linaro 14.07 has just been released with Linux Kernel 3.16-rc6 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.50 (LSK), and Android 4.4.4. This month, Linaro has continued development on Juno 64-bit ARM development board, as well as other member boards from Broadcom (Capri), Qualcomm (IFC6410), Hisilicon D01, Samsung (Arndale / Arndale Octa), etc.. Android have been upgraded to version 4.4.4 with images released for Pandaboard, Arndale, Nexus 10, and Nexus 7, built with Linaro GCC 4.9. Here are the highlights of this release: Linux Linaro 3.16-rc6-2014.07 released GATOR version 5.18 (same version as in 2014.04) updated basic Capri board support from Broadcom LT. Good progress in upstreaming the code: now the topic has 21 patch on top of v3.16-rc4 vs 53 patches on top of v3.15 in 2014.06 cycle removed cortex-strings-arm64 topic as the code is accepted into the mainline new topic from Qualcomm LT to add IFC6410 board support updated Versatile Express ARM64 […]

ARM and Qualcomm Release a New Guide About 32-bit to 64-bit SoCs

ARM and Qualcomm have been pretty successful with ARMv7 SoCs in the mobile space in recent years, and while 32-bit ARM (Aarch32) processors certainly have a few more years, both companies are now moving to 64-bit ARM (Aarch64 / ARMv8), and they released a document showing what has been achieved with ARMv7, the differences between ARMv7 and ARMv8, and new capabilities that will be attainable with 64-bit processing. The document covers the following: Introduction ARM Business Model The Mobile Computing Revolution (Tablets replacing Laptops) Android on ARMv7-A and ARMv8-A ARMv8-A Architecture Backward Compatibility to ARMv7-A ARM Cortex A-53 and Cortex-A57 ARM big.LITTLE Technology The Transition to the ARMv8-A Architecture (Fast Models, Tools, Linaro…) Qualcomm Technologies: Transitioning to 64-Bit with Integrated Mobile Design Custom and ARM Designed Processors: The Right Technology to Any Market Multiple Foundries, Flexible Production Flexible design practices in action (Performance, price point, development time. Snapdragon 410 vs […]

ARM TechCon 2014 Schedule – 64-Bit, IoT, Optimization & Debugging, Security and More

ARM Technology Conference (TechCon) 2014 will take place on October 1 – 3, 2014, in Santa Clara, and as every year, there will be a conference with various sessions for suitable engineers and managers, as well as an exposition where companies showcase their latest ARM based products and solutions. The detailed schedule for the conference has just been made available. Last year,  there were 90 sessions organized into 15 tracks, but this year, despite received 300 applications,  the organizers decided to scale it down a bit, and there will be 75 session in the following 11 tracks: Chip Implementation Debugging Graphics Heterogeneous Compute New Frontiers Power Efficiency Safety and Security Software Development and Optimization Software Optimization for Infrastructure and Cloud System Design Verification There are also some paid workshops that take all day with topics such as “Android (NDK) and ARM overview”, “ARM and the Internet of Things”, or “ARM […]

Mediatek MT6795 Octa Core ARM Cortex A53 Processor to Launch in Q4 2014

Mediatek had already announced two 64-bit ARM SoCs with MT6732 and MT6752 boasting respectively four and eight Cortex A53 cores for mainstream and premium smartphones. There are now reports that the company will launch an eight core 64-bit LTE SoC with HMP architecture. Since HMP (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing) is only used for big.LITTLE processing, and Mediatek does not have an history of making their own custom ARM cores, we can safely assume the processor will feature four Cortex A53 little core, and four Cortex A57 big cores. [Update: finally it’s eight ARM Cortex A53 cores, no HMP here]. What we know about MT6795 so far: Processor – 64-bit Octa core ARM Cortex A53 cores @ 2.2 GHz GPU- Imagination Technology G6200 @ 700 MHz Memory I/F – 2x LPDDR3 @ 933 MHz (PoP) Camera I/F – 20MP@30fps using a dual ISP Display – Up to WQXGA (2560×1600) Video Decoding – 4K2K […]

Linaro Announces 64-bit ARM Android Port on Juno ARM Development Platform

Last week, Linaro 14.06 was released and one of the highlights was Android booting on ARMv8 models, but the organization has actually ported Android to a new 64-bit ARM platform. Juno ARM Development Platform is actually software development platform for ARMv8-A, including Juno Versatile Express board and an ARMv8-A reference software port developed by Linaro. Juno VExpress Board has the following key hardware features: SoC – 2x ARM Cortex A57 cores @ 1.1 GHz (2MB L2 cache), 4x Cortex A53 cores @ 850 MHz (1MB L2 cache) in big.LITTLE configuration with Mali-T624 GPU @ 600 MHz. Compliant with SBSA specifications Level 1. I/O FPGA – Xilinx SPARTAN-6 MCU – ARM Cortex M3 for Motherboard Configuration Controller (MCC) System Memory – 8GB DDR3L @ 1600 MHz Storage – User and configuration micro SD card lots, 64MB NOR flash, configuration EEPROM Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet + 10M “configuration” Ethernet Video Output – […]

Linaro 14.06 Release with Linux Kernel 3.15 and Android 4.4.3

Linaro 14.06 has been released last week with Linux Kernel 3.15 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.44 (LSK), and Android has been updated to 4.4.3. One interesting development this month is that Android for ARMv8 (64-bit ARM) is booting on the fast models using ARM Trusted firmware and U-Boot.  SELinux has been enabled in Android. I could not see much new member hardware, except possibly B2120 (HDK) reference board for STMicro STiH407 “Monaco” STB SoC. Here are the highlights of this release: Linux Linaro 3.15-2014.06 GATOR version 5.18 (same version as in 2014.04) updated basic Capri board support from Broadcom LT cortex-strings-arm64 topic (same as in 2014.02) updated Versatile Express ARM64 support (FVP Base and Foundation models, Juno) from ARM LT. updated Versatile Express patches from ARM LT more HiP0x Cortex A15 family updates from HiSilicon LT (hip04_eth, hip04_defconfig) updated LLVM topic Big endian support (same as in 2014.05) ftrace_audit topic from […]

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