Allwinner A1X

Last updated
One of the many single-board computers based on the Allwinner A10 SoC. Cubieboard.jpeg
One of the many single-board computers based on the Allwinner A10 SoC.

The Allwinner A1X is a family of single-core SoC devices designed by Allwinner Technology from Zhuhai, China. Currently the family consists of the A10, [1] A13, [2] A10s [3] and A12. The SoCs incorporate the ARM Cortex-A8 as their main processor [4] and the Mali 400 as the GPU.

Contents

The Allwinner A1X is known for its ability to boot Linux distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and other ARM architecture-capable distributions from an SD card, in addition to the Android OS usually installed on the flash memory of the device.

A1x Features

A generic tablet based on the Allwinner A13 core. AllWinner A13 Tablet.jpg
A generic tablet based on the Allwinner A13 core.

Video acceleration

Display controller

Memory

Connectivity

Storage and boot devices

Implementations

Many manufacturers have adopted the Allwinner A1X for use in devices running the Android operating system and the Linux operating System. The Allwinner A1X is used in tablet computers, set-top boxes, PC-on-a-stick, mini-PCs, and single-board computers.

Operating System support

Linux support

The Allwinner A1X architecture is referred to as 'sunxi' in the Linux kernel source tree. The source code is available at GitHub. [9] At the moment, stable and full hardware support is limited to 3.0.x and 3.4.x kernels. Recent mainline versions of the kernel run, but do not offer NAND access and have only limited 3D-acceleration. [10]

FreeBSD support

There is a work in progress on support Efika on FreeBSD. At the moment, not all on-board peripherals are working. [11] [ when? ]

OpenBSD support

As of May 2015, OpenBSD's armv7 port supports the Cubieboard and pcDuino boards based on the Allwinner A1X. [12]

NetBSD support

NetBSD contains support for the Allwinner A10. [13]

Documentation

No factory sourced programmer's manual is publicly available for the A10S CPU.

Allwinner A-Series

Apart from the single-core A1x (A10/A13/A10s/A12), two new more powerful Cortex-A7 Allwinner SoCs have been released by Allwinner, the A10-pin-compatible dual-core Allwinner A20, and the quad-core Allwinner A31. [14]

Related Research Articles

ARM is a family of RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for computer processors. Arm Holdings develops the ISAs and licenses them to other companies, who build the physical devices that use the instruction set. It also designs and licenses cores that implement these ISAs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">QEMU</span> Free virtualization and emulation software

The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a free and open-source emulator that uses dynamic binary translation to emulate a computer's processor; that is, it translates the emulated binary codes to an equivalent binary format which is executed by the machine. It provides a variety of hardware and device models for the virtual machine, enabling it to run different guest operating systems. QEMU can be used with a Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) to emulate hardware at near-native speeds. Additionally, it supports user-level processes, allowing applications compiled for one processor architecture to run on another.

Boot ROM is a piece of read-only memory (ROM) that is used for booting a computer system. It contains instructions that are run after the CPU is reset to the reset vector, and it typically loads a bootloader. There are two types of boot ROM: a mask boot ROM that cannot be changed afterwards and a writable boot ROM such as an EEPROM or a flash memory chip.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solid-state drive</span> Computer storage device with no moving parts

A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuits to store data persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-state device, or solid-state disk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BeagleBoard</span> Single board computer

The BeagleBoard is a low-power open-source single-board computer produced by Texas Instruments in association with Digi-Key and Newark element14. The BeagleBoard was also designed with open source software development in mind, and as a way of demonstrating the Texas Instrument's OMAP3530 system-on-a-chip. The board was developed by a small team of engineers as an educational board that could be used in colleges around the world to teach open source hardware and software capabilities. It is also sold to the public under the Creative Commons share-alike license. The board was designed using Cadence OrCAD for schematics and Cadence Allegro for PCB manufacturing; no simulation software was used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SheevaPlug</span> 2009 compact plug computer

The SheevaPlug is a "plug computer" designed to allow standard computing features in as small a space as possible. It was a small embedded Linux ARM computer without a display which can be considered an early predecessor to the subsequent Raspberry Pi.

Rockchip is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Fuzhou, Fujian province. It has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Hong Kong. It designs system on a chip (SoC) products, using the ARM architecture licensed from ARM Holdings for the majority of its projects.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PandaBoard</span> Single board computer

The PandaBoard was a low-power single-board computer development platform based on the Texas Instruments OMAP4430 system on a chip (SoC). The board has been available to the public at the subsidized price of US$174 since 27 October 2010. It is a community supported development platform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ARM Cortex-A8</span> Processor core in computers

The ARM Cortex-A8 is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ARM Cortex-A7</span> 2011 computer microprocessor core

The ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore is a 32-bit microprocessor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture announced in 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mali (processor)</span> Series of graphics processing units produced by ARM Holdings

The Mali and Immortalis series of graphics processing units (GPUs) and multimedia processors are semiconductor intellectual property cores produced by Arm Holdings for licensing in various ASIC designs by Arm partners.

The MK802 is a PC-on-a-stick produced by Rikomagic, a Chinese company using mostly two series of systems on a chip architectures:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cubieboard</span>

Cubieboard is a single-board computer, made in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. The first short run of prototype boards were sold internationally in September 2012, and the production version started to be sold in October 2012. It can run Android 4 ICS, Ubuntu 12.04 desktop, Fedora 19 ARM Remix desktop, Armbian, Arch Linux ARM, a Debian-based Cubian distribution, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allwinner Technology</span> Fabless semiconductor company

Allwinner Technology Co., Ltd is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company specialized in mixed-signal systems on a chips (SoC). The company is headquartered in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China.

In computing, a devicetree is a data structure describing the hardware components of a particular computer so that the operating system's kernel can use and manage those components, including the CPU or CPUs, the memory, the buses and the integrated peripherals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OLinuXino</span>

OLinuXino is an open hardware single-board computer capable of running Android or Linux designed by OLIMEX Ltd in Bulgaria.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banana Pi</span> Series of Chinese single-board computers

Banana Pi is a line of single-board computers produced by the Chinese company Shenzhen SINOVOIP Company, its spin-off Guangdong BiPai Technology Company, and supported by Hon Hai Technology (Foxconn). Its hardware design was influenced by the Raspberry Pi, and both lines use the same 40-pin I/O connector.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amlogic</span> American fabless semiconductor company

Amlogic Inc. is a fabless semiconductor company that was founded on March 14, 1995, in Santa Clara, California and is predominantly focused on designing and selling system on a chip integrated circuits. Like most fabless companies in the industry, the company outsources the actual manufacturing of its chips to third-party independent chip manufacturers such as TSMC. Its main target applications as of 2021 are entertainment devices such as Android TV-based devices and IPTV/OTT set-top boxes, media dongles, smart TVs and tablets. It has offices in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Beijing, Xi'an, Chengdu, Hefei, Nanjing, Qingdao, Taipei, Hong Kong, Seoul, Mumbai, London, Munich, Indianapolis, Milan, Novi Sad and Santa Clara, California.

Pine Store Limited, doing business as Pine64, is a Hong Kong–based organization that designs, manufactures, and sells single-board computers, notebook computers, as well as smartwatch/smartphones. Its name was inspired by the mathematical constants π and e with a reference to 64-bit computing power.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pinebook</span> Notebook intended for open-source software

The Pinebook is a low-cost notebook developed by Hong Kong–based computer manufacturer Pine64. The Pinebook was announced in November 2016 and production started in April 2017. It is based on the platform of Pine64's existing Pine A64 single board computer, costing US$89 or $99 for the 11.6" and 14" model respectively. Its appearance resembles the MacBook Air. The Pinebook is sold "at-cost" by Pine64 as a community service.

References

  1. 1 2 "A10_Allwinner Technology". Archived from the original on 2015-11-22. Retrieved 2015-11-21.
  2. ↑ "A13_". Archived from the original on 2014-05-02. Retrieved 2014-04-30.
  3. ↑ "A10s_". Archived from the original on 2014-04-29. Retrieved 2014-04-30.
  4. ↑ Ltd, Arm. "News – Arm®". Arm | The Architecture for the Digital World. Retrieved 15 April 2023.
  5. ↑ "Datasheet" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-07-17. Retrieved 2012-09-27.
  6. ↑ "Data sheet" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-07-17. Retrieved 2012-09-27.
  7. ↑ "PengPod Wiki". Archived from the original on 2014-02-17.
  8. ↑ "Blog | Tinkerforge".
  9. ↑ "linux-sunxi". GitHub . Retrieved 2014-06-30.
  10. ↑ "Linux mainlining effort - linux-sunxi.org". linux-sunxi.org. Retrieved 15 April 2023.
  11. ↑ Ganbold (26 December 2012). "Allwinner A10". freebsd-arm (Mailing list). Retrieved 24 June 2014.
  12. ↑ "OpenBSD/armv7". OpenBSD . Retrieved 2015-05-30.
  13. ↑ "NetBSD/evbarm on Allwinner Technology SoCs". NetBSD . Retrieved 2015-05-30.
  14. ↑ "Allwinner throws A20 dual-core and A31-quad-core processors into ARM fray".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.