The Allwinner A10 CPU has been developed in, and is sold in, the
People's Republic of China. Its mass-volume price is around $7, yet it
is a 400-pin highly feature-rich 1.2ghz ARM Cortex A8 with a MALI400
GPU. It has the distinction of having the highest bang-per-buck ratio of
any SoC available at the time of writing, by quite a margin. Its price
and features is causing massive disruption of the tablet market in China
(a minor recession was caused by widespread cancellation of prior
committments to other SoCs!), as every factory in Shenzen scrambles to
compete with hundreds of other factories for the same end-user market:
tablets and PVRs.
For comparison: TI has brought out a new $5 ARM Cortex A8, but it is
limited to 500mhz and it is extra cost for the version with a PowerVR 3D
GPU. Ingenic's jz4770 is about $7 in mass-volume but it is a 1ghz MIPS
with a Vivante GC600 3D GPU. Details are harder to get hold of regarding
the jz4770, but its interfaces are known not as feature-rich as the
Allwinner (no HDMI output for example). AMLogic's Cortex A9 is $13 in
mass-volume, but is limited to 800mhz and a maximum of 512mb of RAM.
Preorders
If you would like to register your interest in an EOMA-68 CPU card
with an Allwinner A10 CPU, please follow the instructions at the orders page. Developers can find out more details of the Open Hardware Project progress on the pcb page.
News
Updates are available at the news
page. Latest is that the owner of the Factory in China has reviewed the
draft component layout for the EOMA-68 CPU module, to double-check that
everything will fit in the available space.
2160p Hardware-accelerated Video playback (4x the resolution of 1080p)
2D Accelerated Graphics (G2D) Engine
a NAND Flash Controller that is capable of 8-way concurrent DMA (8 NAND ICs)
4 SDIO interfaces (SD 3.0, UHI class)
USB 2.0 Host as well as a 2nd USB-OTG Interface (USB-OTG can be reconfigured as USB 2.0 Host, automatically)
24-pin RGB/TTL as well as simultaneous HDMI out
SATA-II 3gb/sec
10/100 Ethernet (MII compatible)
a 2nd 24-pin RGB/TTL interface that is multiplexed (shared) on the same pins for a standard IDE (PATA) interface.
GPIO, I2C, PWM, Keyboard Matrix (8x8), built-in Resistive Touchscreen Controller, and much more.
Unsurprisingly, this CPU has been chosen as the first CPU for an
EOMA-68 CPU module. The critical decisive factor however was the
immediate support of Allwinner's Board of Directors for releasing full
GPL Source Code, to help the RHT Initiative to foster better relations
and closer ties with Free Software Developers.
Getting Involved
EOMA-68 CPU card is an open source software and hardware project that
relies on the community participation. You can get involved in several
ways:
Joining arm-netbooks@lists.phcomp.co.uk mailing list for discussions
or questions (registration required at
http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook)
Contributing to the source code (kernel, bootloader, ...)
Downloading and trying Linux images available at Allwinner A10 images. You can also download the nightly build images, If you want to test the latest U-boot and/or Kernel images.
Reporting bugs / features requests in github issue tracker, see source code page for links to corresponding repositories.
Adding information to the Wiki (these pages) mainly for how-tos, news and general description of the project
Digging out register programming information from the u-boot and kernel sources and add to A10 register guide
