Samsung Launches Exynos-Based Origen Dev Board

siliconbits writes "You may recall a little group of Linux-loving chums called Linaro, which was formed almost a year ago in the hopes of speeding up Linux development. Today at Computex, the company's taking it one step further with the announcement of the Origen development board. Based on Samsung's beefy Exynos 4210 dual core chipset, the kit packs all the essential ports — including HDMI, USB 2.0 host, SD slot, etc. — for keen developers to get their hands dirty on, and its base board is also removable to accommodate future chipsets. Potential buyers are told to keep an eye on Insignal, which will soon be offering the basic Origen package for $199, along with optional parts at an extra cost."

Comments

...what?

[MrEricSir]

A little context would go a long way towards explaining what the hell the summary is babbling about.

Re:...what?

[pushing-robot]

It's a dual-core ARM single board PC.

It's basically a tablet minus the screen, battery, and storage.

If you're looking for a small box for a NAS, router, etc, look elsewhere—it lacks ethernet, SATA, expandable memory, etc.

Re:...what?

[tomthepom]

No it's not terribly clear to anyone not in the field - and the linked article really doesn't shed much light. A quick glossary might help;

Linaro = a bunch of engineers who write Linux based tools and software for ARM devices.
Origen = an ARM based motherboard for developing software for smartphones, tablets and various other small devices with screens.

That's it.

Re:...what?

[LordVader717]

It would also help explaining what the Samsung Exynos is in the first place. From Samsung's website:

General Description
Exynos 4210 is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) based on the 32-bit RISC processor for smartphones, tablet PCs, and Netbook markets. Exynos 4210 provides the best performance features such as dual core CPU, highest memory bandwidth, world's first native triple display, 1080p video decode and encode hardware, 3D graphics hardware, and high-speed interfaces such as SATA and USB.

Exynos 4210 uses the CortexA9 dual core, which is 25% DMIPS faster than the CortexA8 core. It provides 6.4GB/s memory bandwidth for heavy traffic operations such as 1080p video en/decoding, 3D graphics display, and native triple display. The application processor supports dynamic virtual address mapping. This feature will help the software engineers to fully utilize the memory resources with ease.

Exynos 4210 provides the best 3D graphics performance and native triple display. The native triple display, in particular, supports WSVGA resolution of two main LCD displays and 1080p HDTV display throughout HDMI, simultaneously. This is possible due to the capability of Exynos 4210 to support separate post processing pipelines.

Exynos 4210 lowers the Bill of Materials (BOM) by integrating the following IPs: world's first DDR3 interfaces that will prepare bit cross with DDR2; 8 channels of I2C for a variety of sensors; SATA2; the GPS baseband; and a variety of USB derivatives (USB Host 2.0, Device 2.0, and HSIC interfaces with PHY transceivers to be connected with 802.11n, Ethernet, HSPA+, and 4G LTE modem). The application processor also supports industry's first DDR based eMMC 4.4 interfaces to increase the file system's performance.

Exynos 4210 is available as FCMSP Package on Package (PoP), which has a 0.45mm ball pitch with LPDDR2 configuration. The MCP will depend upon the customer's requirement.

Exynos 4210 Block Diagram
Features

ARM CortexA9 dual core subsystem with 64-/128-bit SIMD NEON
- 32KB (Instruction)/32KB (Data) L1 Cache and 1MB L2 Cache
- 1.2Hz and 1.0GHz Core Frequency: Voltage 1.2V
64-bit Multi-layered bus architecture
Internal ROM and RAM for secure booting, security, and general purposes
Memory Subsystem:
- SRAM/ROM/NOR/NAND Interface with x8 or x16 data bus
- OneNAND Interface with x16 data bus
- 2-ports 32-bit 800Mbps LPDDR2/DDR2/DDR3 Interfaces
8-bit ITU 601/656 Camera Interface
Multi-format Video Hardware Codec: 1080p 30fps (capable of decoding and encoding MPEG-4/H.263/H.264) and 1080p 30fps (capable of decoding MPEG-2/VC1)
JPEG Hardware Codec
3D and 2D graphics hardware, supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0, and OpenVG 1.1
LCD single or dual display, supporting 24bpp RGB, MIPI
Native triple display, supporting WSVGA LCD dual display and 1080p HDMI, simultaneously
Composite TV-out and HDMI 1.3a interfaces
GPS baseband integration with GPS RF interface
2-ports (4-lanes and 2-lanes) MIPI DSI and MIPI CSI interfaces
1-channel AC-97, 2-channel PCM, and 3-channel 24-bit I2S audio interface, supporting 5.1 channel audio
1-channel S/PDIF interface support for digital audio
8-channel I2C interface support for PMIC, HDMI, and general-purpose multi-master
3-channel high-speed SPI
4-channel high-speed UART (up to 3Mbps data rate for Bluetooth 2.1

Yet Another Development Board

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with development boards is that there are gazillions of them out there, and almost all of them exist to try and sell you various bits of silicon. A development board is normally only interesting when you want to try and make something with it.

Linux drivers

[ArcRiley]

This would be worth so much more if the board's chipsets supported freely licensed drivers. As it stands only proprietary drivers are available for most of the hardware which may or may not work with the kernel version/variant you want to use.

Re:Linux drivers

[c0lo]

This would be worth so much more if the board's chipsets supported freely licensed drivers.

It seems that Linaro full support for Origen (see close to the end of the PDF) will be available in Q3/2011.

Re: $199? Intel Atom board goes for $79

[proverbialcow]

That's like comparing apples to hammers.

You know what they say: "When all you've got is an iPhone, everything starts to look like you're getting screwed."

Trustzone lockdown?

[kent.dickey]

I've bought about 5 different ARM-based development boards over the past 2 years.

One big issue is ARM CPUs have a security feature called TrustZone which can run an OS with privileged code, but still restrict some hardware to only "secure" software (basically, a hypervisor above the OS). Unfortunately, for example, TI in its OMAP platforms has decided to force Linux to run non-secure always in the cheap development platforms. This is a problem for me since I want to be able to change those registers, and in some cases ARM CPUs have a variety of bugs which require setting workaround bits in CPU registers which cannot be changed by non-secure code. And of course those bits aren't set.

This problem affects the PandaBoard, Beagleboard, and a Zoom board I got from LogicPD with an OMAP chip. All use TI OMAP chips, all boot Linux in non-secure mode. I've been happy with a board I got from Freescale, the MX.51, which lets me run secure code just fine. Unfortunately, Freescale development boards are around $1000, and these TI-based boards are around $200.

So, does anyone know how Samsung is going to handle TrustZone--will Linux be able to run in secure mode?