- Category: Marvell
SMILEing micro-cloud
"...researchers from Stanford University and Marvell Semiconductor Inc. dared to upset the conventional wisdom. They introduced a micro-cloud computer, the Smile Plug, and educational software, which they call Smile.
The accompanying cloud computer—the Smile Plug—will be shipping in October. Priced under US $30, it doesn’t require Internet access: It can be connected to hard drives and other peripherals that can store textbooks or quizzes to be distributed to the students. It runs Linux on a Marvell Armada 370 system-on-a-chip, contains a Marvell Avastar Wi-Fi chip, and plugs directly into a wall socket, though it can also run from a battery. Its Wi-Fi chip supports up to 60 devices connected at a time.
MARVELL's Smile Plug web page link
- Category: Uncategorised
Some spare LEGOs + Raspberry PI = Supercomputer Cluster
Detailed instructions on how to build Iridis-Pi cluster with 64 processors and 1Tb of memory are in the linked page.
- Category: Cortex-M4
Battle of the CPUs: Cortex M4 vs. M0
Go slow or go fast? Seems the answer is easy when we want the low power operation. But it is not that simple and here is an interesting comparison of the Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M4 cores found in the NXP's LPC4350.
- Category: STM32F
STM32F4 + Codec
Interesting embedded audio project based on the STM32F405RGT6 Cortex-M4 MCU and Wolfson WM8731 codec.
- Category: Designs
Homebrew Cortex-M4 based Mini PDA
Original Spanish
"Hola a todos,
después de unos 3 meses de trabajo os traigo mi ultimo proyecto, aun sin terminar. Una pequeña PDA basada en un Cortex-M4 a 170Mhz... Realmente aun no tiene ninguna utilizad final, puede ser una agenda, un reloj de muñeca, un calendario, un osciloscopio, una consola de juegos...no se, ya se verá.
De momento me he preocupado en aprender varias cosas que no había hecho nunca, como mandar a fabricar el PCB, diseñar una carcasa a medida en 3D con Google Sketchup o programar los drivers a bajo nivel en C++.
El esquema electrónico no tiene ningún misterio, con lo mínimo para hacer funcionar el micro y poco más.
-Circuito de carga de batería. Nunca antes había utilizado un circuito de este tipo y la verdad es que estan muy bien. Solo necesita una resistencia para ajustar la corriente de carga, la batería carga en 15 o 20 min y tiene una autonomía mínima de 1 hora...
-Conector USB. Aun no he escrito los drivers de USB, de moento solo sirve para cargar la bateria.
-Conector microSD. Aun no he escrito los drivers para manejar la SD, pero ya lo hice en el pasado con las librerias FatFs y tampoco tiene mucho misterio...
-Controlador de touch screen. Un pequeño circuito se encarga de leer el touch screen resistivo y entregarnos el valor via SPI.
-Conector JTAG reducido de 8 pins. He eliminado los que no se utilizaban."
and Ginglish (aka Google translate version)
"Hi all,
after about 3 months of work I bring you my latest project, still unfinished. A small PDA based on a 170Mhz Cortex-M4 ...It really does not have any Utilize end, may be an agenda, a wristwatch, a calendar, an oscilloscope, a game console ... not, we'll see.
At the moment I have been concerned to learn that there were several things ever done, like sending manufacture the PCB, design a cover as in 3D with Google Sketchup or schedule drivers at low level in C + +.
The electronic scheme has no mystery, with the minimum to run the micro and little else.
-battery charging circuit. I had never used a circuit of this type and the truth is that they are very good. You only need a resistor to set the charging current, the battery charges in 15 or 20 minutes and has a range of at least 1 hour ...
-USB connector. I have not written USB drivers from moento only serves to charge the battery.
- microSD connector. I have not written drivers handle the SD, but I did in the past with the libraries FatFs and neither has much mystery ...
- touch-screen controller. A small circuit is responsible for reading the resistive touch screen and deliver value via SPI.
- reduced-JTAG connector 8 pin. I deleted that were not used."
- Category: Android
Supercharge Your Android Emulator Speed
Intel® Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager 1.0.1 (R2) - web page link
"Intel Improves Android Emulator Performance
There is a solution to all of these performance problems. It does come with a caveat that we'll explain. Recall that the Android platform runs applications inside a VM of its own: the Dalvik VM. As such, the underlying hardware that Android runs on is much easier to change, including the CPU architecture. In fact, there have been devices to ship with an Intel x86 chip instead of the more typical ARM-based chips. Intel has full ported Android over to the x86 architecture.
This matters to Android app developers because it has allowed Intel to distribute emulator system images that are based on the x86 architecture. This alone does not solve the problem of emulator performance, however. In fact, in our testing, by just switching to an x86 system image, a variety of things actually ran slower than when we were using ARM. Until the release of the Intel® Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM) driver, that is.
With the Intel® HAXM driver in place, the Android emulator can run the Android system and your apps as fast -- or faster -- than on physical hardware. The speedup is truly dramatic and returns usefulness to the emulator, even running at high resolutions. When combined with GPU emulation -- which helps graphical performance only -- the emulator can now be used again for day-to-day testing (with all of the normal caveats of not using a real device)."
- Category: Uncategorised
Teensy 3.0 Kinetis based dev board - Kickstarter Watch
"The main chip is Freescale's "Kinetis" K-series PK20DX128VLH5 (first batch) or MK20DX128VLH5 (later batches). Freescale has confirmed the silicon die is unchanged, only a move from low volume to high volume testing is denoted by "PK" to "MK". The number printed on the chip in the photo above differs slightly. "
- Category: Operating Systems
Baking Pi - Operating Systems Development
Raspberry Pi gets its own OS written in assembler and a tutorial too.
"This website is here to guide you through the process of developing very basic operating systems on the Raspberry Pi! This website is aimed at people aged 16 and upwards, although younger readers may still find some of it accessible, particularly with assistance. More lessons may be added to this course in time.
This course takes you through the basics of operating systems development in assembly code. I have tried not to assume any prior knowledge of operating systems development or assembly code. It may be helpful to have some programming experience, but the course should be accessible without. This course is divided into a series of 'lessons' designed to be taken in order as below. Each 'lesson' includes some theory, and also a practical exercise, complete with a full answer."