amlogic News - Page 12 of 17 - CNX Software

September 2, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linux 4.2 Release – Main Changes, ARM and MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds released Linux Kernel 4.2 last Sunday: So judging by how little happened this week, it wouldn’t have been a mistake to release 4.2 last week after all, but hey, there’s certainly a few fixes here, and it’s not like delaying 4.2 for a week should have caused any problems either. So here it is, and the merge window for 4.3 is now open. I already have a few pending early pull requests, but as usual I’ll start processing them tomorrow and give the release some time to actually sit. The shortlog from rc8 is tiny, and appended. The patch is pretty tiny too. Go get it, Linus Some notable changes made to Linux 4.2 include: File systems New features for F2FS including per file encryption CIFS support SMB 3.1.1 (experimental) Cryptography – Jitter Entropy Random Number Generator, Chacha20 stream cipher and Poly1305 authentication (RFC7539),New RSA implementation. See lwn.net […]

August 13, 2015August 14, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Mygica ATV1900AC Android Lollipop TV Box Unboxing and Teardown

Geniatech sent me two samples of their latest Android devices this morning with Mygica ATV1900AC TV box powered by Amlogic S812 quad core Cortex A9 processor, and Mygica ATV586 DVB-T2 receiver powered by Amlogic S805 quad core cortex A5 processor. Beside relatively high-end specs with 802.11ac, Gigabit Ethernet, 2GB RAM, and 16GB eMMC, one of the former main selling point is the Android Lollipop firmware that is said to brings significant improvement over Android 4.4 KitKat. But today, I’ll focus on the hardware side with pictures of the devices and its internals, before writing the results of my tests in a few days. Mygica ATV1900AC Unboxing Geniatech sent me both boxes in a DHL parcel, and both are Mygica branded retail packages. Mygica ATV1900AC packages shows some of its key features like Android Lollipop support, 4K UHD, H.265, 802.11ac WiFi, voice search and so on… Most TV boxes ship with […]

April 28, 2015April 29, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Intel Atom Z3735F mini PC Power Consumption in Android

I’ve already measured power consumption running Antutu and playing a 4K video on Rockchip RK3288 and Amlogic S812 platform, as described in “Power Consumption of Amlogic S812 and Rockchip RK3288 TV Boxes“, and now that I have an Intel Bay Trail-T mini PC running Android 4.4 with Wintel W8, I was interested in comparing its power consumption to the ARM platform. [Update: I forgot to mention measurements have all been done @ ~5V.] The test normally consists in several steps: Boot the device Run the latest Antutu benchmark Connect a USB hard drive Play a 4K video in Kodi from the hard drive Diconnect the hard drive Power off the device But since the current draw was a little to high at times, I got a few issues with my setup. First, I had to boot twice hence the “Power On 1” and “Power On 2” strings on the chart, […]

March 27, 2015March 28, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 37 Comments

Amlogic is Working on S905 and S912 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 Processors

The relatively popular Amlogic S805 and S812 Cortex A9 processors are soon going to be joined by Amlogic S905 and S912 processors, both featuring ARM Cortex A53 64-bit cores, with the former destined to entry-level media players, and the latter for higher end devices including 4K60 / HDMI 2.0 support, as well as H.265 and AVS+ hardware video codecs. The company is now showcasing its new processors at China Content Broadcasting Network Exhibition (CCBN) 2015 in Beijing until March 28. Details are sparse, but we still know a few features for the new Amlogic 64-bit ARM processors: CPU – Quad Core ARM Cortex A53 CPU @ 2.0 GHz with 512KB unified cache. GPU – S905: 5 core Mali-450MP to 750MHz with OpenGL ES 11./2.0 and OpenVG 1.1 support, unnamed 2.5D GPU S912: TBD Video – 4K@60 Hz video decoding 10-bit HEVC and AVS+ codec support; H.264 up to 4K 30 […]

February 17, 2015February 18, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Power Consumption of Amlogic S812 and Rockchip RK3288 TV Boxes

The recent post comparing the power consumption of ODROID-C1 vs Raspberry Pi boards, as made me want to give another try at power consumption measurements. Regular reader already know I made a power measurement board and cables capable of hading different connectors (micro USB, mini USB, power barrels, etc..), but eventually it failed to deliver enough current to the boards for any meaning testing. But since I now have a better power supply, and multi-meter, it was worth another try, especially since I could draw some pretty charts. I decided to test the three most popular Chinese SoCs for mini PCs namely Amlogic S812 (4x Cortex A9), Rockchip RK3288 (4x Cortex A17), and Allwinner A80 (4x Cortex A15 + 4x Cortex A7) using respectively Eny M8S, Open Hour Chameleon, and A80 OptimusBoard. If you are paying attention, you must have noticed Allwinner A80 is not part of the title, that […]

February 9, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Linux 3.19 Release – Main Changes, ARM and MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds released Linux Kernel 3.19 yesterday: So nothing all that exciting happened, and while I was tempted a couple of times to do an rc8, there really wasn’t any reason for it. Just as an example, Sasha Levin used KASan and found an interesting bug in paravirtualized spinlocks, but realistically it’s been around forever, and it’s not even clear that it can really ever trigger in practice. We’ll get it fixed, and mark it for stable, and tempting as it was, it wasn’t really a reason to delay 3.19. And the actual fixes that went in (see appended shortlog) were all fairly small, with the exception of some medium-sized infiniband changes that were all reverting code that just wasn’t ready. So it’s out there – go and get it. And as a result, the merge window for 3.20 is obviously also now open. Linus Linux 3.18 improved performance of […]

February 3, 2015February 3, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Android 5.0 Lollipop SDK for Amlogic Processors and Image for MK808B Plus

Amlogic has just released Android 5.0 SDK for Amlogic S805, S802, and S812 processors on their OpenLinux website, but before you get too excited, this is only available people who have signed an SLA with the company, or somehow got a username/password to their git server. Although most people can’t access the SDK, it still means that popular Amlogic S8xx devices are likely to be upgraded to Android 5.0 in the weeks or months ahead. The company has not released any Android 5.0 SDK for older AML-8726M? processors however, so apart from WeTek Play, I would not expect any other Amlogic single or dual core devices to get a Lollipop treat. If you own a MK808B Plus TV dongle, you don’t even need to wait, as WeTek ported Android 5.0, more exactly CyanogenMod 12, to the cheap HDMI TV Stick for evaluation, and since finally they don’t intend to design […]

January 27, 2015January 27, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Amlogic S805 Datasheet Released

A datasheet release should not really be news, but not all companies are as open as Freescale, and possibly for fear of IP theft or patent trolls, most companies decide to keep datasheet, technical reference manuals, and other documentation confidential, and only release them under NDA, so it may take months before they come out, if ever. Thanks to Hardkernel and their ODROID-C1 board, Amlogic has allowed the release of Amlogic S805 datasheet (PDF 123 pages). The document is divided into two sections: Section I : System General Description Features Summary CPU and GPU subsystem Memory Map Power Domain Clock and Reset Unit System Boot General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) Interrupt Controller Direct Memory Access (DMAC) Timer Real Time Clock Section II: Interfaces MMC/SD/SDIO Controller Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) Serial Peripheral Interface Communication Controller Serial Peripheral Interface Flash Controller (SPI) Universal Asynchronous Receiver and Transmitter (UART) Infrared Remote Universal Serial Bus (USB) […]