MediaTek Introduces Helio X20-Based Board for a Broad Range of Applications
by Anton Shilov on July 6, 2016 12:30 PM EST
MediaTek will be introducing a special development board based on its Helio X20 SoC that is compatible with Linaro’s 96Boards specification and is aimed at developers, who are working on various low-power applications running Android. MediaTek uses development boards like this to help address new IoT markets in addition to smartphones and tablets.
The Helio X20 Development Board is listed as suitable to initiate design for consumer applications such as virtual reality headsets, advanced driver assisted systems (ADAS), mobile point-of-sale, smart signage, vending machines and other similar verticals. The platform from MediaTek is compatible with Linaro’s 69Boards hardware specification for consumer electronics devices, hence, it comes equipped with basic input/output capabilities, such Wi-Fi + Bluetooth, USB 2.0/3.0 (with OTG), microSDHC socket for memory cards (or embedded NAND flash storage), display output(s), 40-pin and 60-pin low-profile headers for hardware makers and so on. As for dimensions, we are talking about a low-profile “credit card” form-factor: 85 x 54 x 12 mm.
Right now, despite being made on a 20nm planar process node, MediaTek’s Helio X20 (two ARM Cortex-A72 cores, eight Cortex-A53 cores, ARM Mali-T880 MP4 graphics, dual-channel LPDDR3 memory controller, etc.) is one of the most powerful 64-bit mobile SoCs. Its heterogeneous multi-core architecture allows developers to delegate background/simple tasks to low-power A53 cores, while using high-performance A72 cores for workloads that require more general-purpose horsepower. Such design could be useful for a variety of consumer applications and for now, the Helio X20 Development Board will be the most powerful 96Boards-compatible platform when it comes to compute performance. The default board will come with 2GB of dual channel LPDDR3 at 933 MHz, and 8GB of eMMC 5.1 storage.
Furthermore, advanced features of the Helio X20, such as imaging capabilities (32 MP camera support, 3D depth hardware engine), world-mode LTE modem, and hardware-accelerated 4K video playback with 10-bit color depth, should enable developers to create a wide variety of consumer applications using the tiny board.
“The Helio X20 Development Board will enhance the range of 96Boards development platforms, enabling commercial and hobbyist developers working on the next generation of products and software,” said David Rusling, chief technology officer of Linaro.
The MediaTek Helio X20 Development Board is compatible with Google Android and will be available from ArcherMind Technology in China to begin. Pricing will scale depending on interest.
Source: MediaTek
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SetiroN - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
And still 0 kernel sources.Mediatek should be sued out of market.
vladx - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
They're Chinese(Taiwan), your lawsuits can't touch them.name99 - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
I'm sorry. For those of us not in the know, what exactly is THIS particular outrage about, and what has Huawei done that supposedly justifies suing them?Suing typically implies the breaking of a contract of some sort. What is the contract to which Huawei was party, and how did they break that contract?
tuxRoller - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
The terms of the GPL, primarily.name99 - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
There've been vague complaints about this for around two years now, but I have yet to see anyone actually taking legal action. Since at least some Mediatek code has been released into the wild, there's certainly scope for people to look at it and see if there are what look to be GPL violations.My suspicion is that while one may not like Mediatek's attitude, they are not in technical violation of GPL, that they're fenced-off enough in terms of writing plug-ins and such like (ie "stand-alone"-ish code like drivers) that in a court of law they would not be found to be building on GPL'd code, just on top of APIs. (And presumably the lesson of Google vs Oracle, more or less, is that API's and SPI's are not copyrightable.)
Which means that, as far as I can tell, they're basically in the same category as almost every tech company. We all wish nV, ATI, Apple, or Intel would publish more tech details than they do; but it's their choice as to how open they want to be, and one can't run around claiming one has a right to sue them just because one doesn't like how they've made that choice.
jospoortvliet - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
There really might be GPL violations but enforcement of that is traditionally pretty lax. Most kernel developers either don't care much or at least don't want to bother litigating and the companies who pay them usually loath wasting time on lawsuits and lawyers in general. Plus, those who do litigate usually only enforce opening up the code, not paying any royalties or otherwise put on the thumbscrews. Last but not least, the big players like IBM and Red Hat and others part of the Linux foundation want to GROW the ecosystem and prefer to use pull rather than push to do it: scaring companies into complying with the GPL might simply make them pick other technologies rather than contribute to the kernel. This attitude doesn't make it right to violate the GPL, it just makes it easy to get away with.Things are changing a bit due to a new, disturbing trend: copyright trolls who sue companies for GPL violations, raking in millions. Mediatek probably wants its products to be sold in Europe and the EU so at some point they actually might have to fix this or their customers will get sued into oblivion.
speculatrix - Saturday, July 9, 2016 - link
You could try complaining to Amazon that they are selling products which use unlicensed software - because that's the effect of violating the GPL -and try and get Mediatek products banned.EBay too claim they block sales of products that violate intellectual property rights.
thebrave - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Their customers (mostly) get all the sources, it's just that OEMs don't see any benefits to releasing for free something that they paid for.Also, sorting source code by licence is a pain (had to do it in a previous life), take a long time, and errors are very costly (for the company and for the individual dev) so I see why those smaller OEMs are not rushing to do it.
I also remember that MTK is famous for often licensing IP, so it may also be that their codebase is more of a puzzle/minefield that Qualcomm/Samsung.
Geranium - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
MediaTek SoCs are like a FX-8370 paired with R5 250.vladx - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
More like U series i5+R5-250.