ARM TechCon 2013 Schedule – ARM Servers, Internet of Things, Multicore, Hardware and Software Optimization and More

ARM Technology Conference (TechCon) 2013 will take place on October 29 – 31, 2013, in Santa Clara, and the detailed schedule for the event has just been made available. In the previous years, the conference was divided into  Chip Designs day (1 day), and the other 2 days were reserved for Software & System Design, but this year it does not appear to be the case. Whether you’ll be able to attend the event or not, it’s worth having a look at what will be discussed there in order to have a better understanding of what will be the key ARM developments in the near future in terms of hardware and software. There will be around 90 sessions categorized into 15 tracks: Accelerating Hardware Development – This track explores the resources, tools, and techniques that designers can employ to quickly bring hardware to market. Topics include multicore design, ARM IP, […]

Rockchip SoCs Comparison Table, RK32xx Quad Core Cortex A12 Coming Up in 2014

They guys at Linux Rockchip have setup a comparison table between Rockchip processors, but it’s not quite complete yet, and Rockchip noticed it, so they’ve just sent them the most recent Company Presentation that provides more details, including a roadmap. In this documentation, we can see the company targets different types of products with their SoCs: Android OTT dongle/box (aka mini PC, HDMI TV dongles…) – RK2928, RK3066, RK3068, and RK3188 Tablets – RK2926, RK2928, RK3028, RK3066, RK3168, and RK3188 EPD E-Book – RK2818, RK2906 and RK2918 MP3 player – RKnanoC On page 12 of the presentation, they have a convenient comparison table for the SoC used in mini PCs and Tablets. Series RK2926 /RK2928 RK3066 /RK3068 RK3168 RK3188 Process 55nm 40nm 28nm HKGM 28nm HKGM CPU Cortex A9 Dual Cortex A9 Dual Cortex A9 Quad Cortex A9 MAX CPU Frequency 1.0 GHz 1.6 GHz 1.2 GHz 1.6 GHz L1 […]

Google Releases Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, Unveils New Nexus 7 Tablet

Yesterday was a big day for Google with several important announcements, including the Chromecast HDMI TV dongle, an updated version of Nexus 7 tablet, and the release of Android 4.3, still codenamed Jelly Bean. In this post, I’ll start with the hardware, and move to explain what’s new with Android 4.3, and where you can download source and images for your device. New Nexus 7 The new Nexus 7 tablet will run Android 4.3 on the following hardware: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 quad-core processor @ 1.5GHz with Adreno 320 GPU @ 400MHz System Memory – 2GB RAM Storage – 16GB to 32GB of storage Display – 7″ IPS display (1920 x 1200) Connectivity – Dual band 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi (2.4G/5G), Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC Camera – 5MP rear camera and 1.2MP front camera Video Output –  HDMI output (via SlimPort) Audio – Stereo speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack, microphone USB – […]

ARM Announces Cortex-A12 processor, Mali-T622 GPU and Mali-V500 VPU

Right before Computer 2013, ARM has made a single announcement for 4 new products for smartphones: Cortex A12 core, Mali-T622 GPU, Mali-V500 video processor unit, and POP IP technology. Cortex A12 processor, with 40 percent more performance than Cortex-A9, positions itself between Cortex A9 and A15 offerings, and brings virtualization, big.LITTLE processing, and up to 1TB addressable memory to mid-range devices. Combined with the new Mali-T622 GPU, it will offer GPU Compute and OpenGL 3.0 solution. Add the new Mali-V500 video IP solution to complete the SoC for tomorrow’s, 2015 more exactly, mid-range smartphones and tablets between $200 and  $350. Cortex A12 will have the following key features: Architecture – ARMv7-A Cortex Multicore – 1-4X SMP within a single processor cluster Multiple coherent processor clusters through AMBA 4 technology Support ARM Thumb-2 TrustZone security technology NEON Advanced SIMD DSP & SIMD extensions VFPv4 Floating point Hardware virtualization support Large Physical […]

Vivante GC4000 is The Best Mobile GPU… When It Comes to Accuracy

Most of the time, mobile GPU comparisons involve benchmarks such as Antutu, Nenamark 2, etc…, or people may consider which games will be able to run smoothly with a particular device, but we seldom compare image quality, for the simple reason it’s usually more difficult to achieve. YOUi Labs has just done that, however, by running the shader code below on several hardware platforms, mainly Android tablets, with the most common mobile GPUs, and used the results obtained with a  Desktop PC GPU, Nvidia Geforce GT 630M, has a reference.

Here are the results: The worst GPUs are Mali-400 MP4 in Exynos 4412 and Geforce ULP in Tegra 3, which can respectively only show 5 and 8 lines before degradation, and the top two GPUs are Qualcomm Adreno 225 in MSM8660A, and Vivante GC4000 in HiSilicon K3V2 processor. Imagination Technologies SGX544 and ARM Mali-T604 also provide decent results, but […]

Libhybris Let You Use Android Drivers & HW Libraries in Linux

One of the main issues with Linux on ARM is the lack of proper GPU drivers for the platform, as most silicon manufacturers now only focus on Android drivers which are not compatible with the Linux kernel, because Android is based on Bionic C library, whereas Linux is based on glibc or its variants. There are two ways to solve this issue: Open Source GPU drivers. This would be the ideal solution, as you would just be able to cross-compile the drivers for the proper, as well as fix bugs without having to ask the silicon manufacturer to fix the driver for you. Bionic to Glibc library. Such library acts like libdl, and allows to load Bionic library and overrides some symbols from bionic with glibc based ones. This is exactly what libhybris does. Ubuntu Touch is capable of using Android GPU drivers to run Ubuntu thanks to this library, […]

Ubuntu 11.10 Image for Hi802 / GK802 is Now Available for Download

About 2 weeks ago, Jasbir released an Ubuntu 11.10 image and installation instructions for GK802 and Hi802 mini PCs based on Freescale i.MX6. I could only find time to give it try yesterday and today. I’ll provide the steps I followed to install the image, and my quick first impressions of the stability and performance of this image. Installation Instructions I mainly followed the instructions provided by Jasbir, and run GParted to increased the partition size on my micro SD card. The image is for a 8 GB micro SD, but those instructions should work on 4GB SD card and greater, as the rootfs partition is only 3GB large. Download the Ubuntu 11.10 image, uboot, as well as the kernel image and modules in a Linux PC:

Copy the image, uboot and the kernel to the micro SD card by typing the commands below:

Replace /dev/<sd_device> by your […]

SECO mITX GPU DevKit Features Nvidia Tegra 3, Supports CUDA 5

SECO mITX GPU DEVKIT is a GPU computing development kit that provides a Mini-ITX Qseven 2.0 carrier board (SECO mITX Carrier Board) with a Nvidia Tegra 3 powered Qseven SoM (QuadMo747-X/T30). The carrier board provides a PCI-e x16 connector (PCI Express x4) intended to allow the connection of CUDA 5 enabled desktop graphics boards. Embedded Control Europe reports that the platform will support Nvidia Kayla platform. The main specifications of the platform are as follows: CPU – Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad-Core ARM Cortex A9 GPU – TBD. But you should be able to insert Nvidia graphics card via the PCI-e x16 connector (PCI Express x4) on the mini-ITX board Memory – 2 GB Storage – 4 GB eMMC + 1x SATA 2.0 Connector Network – 1x Gigabit Ethernet USB – 3x USB 2.0 + 1 OTG port Display – HDMI The platform will support Linux Ubuntu , as well as […]

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