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Mali Hardware Development

Anthony
Note: This was originally posted on 17th November 2009 at http://forums.arm.com

I've been working on a hardware design that I'd love to start work on, but don't know where to look for components.  Ideally, I'd love to have a dual/quad Cortex A9 MPCore along with Mali 400 graphics.  But I'm not really sure about where to look for chips that are actually physically available, or even upcoming.  Simply googling for a particular ARM core doesn't really turn up much information.  (For example, the only upcoming mpcore device I could find is a new TI OMAP chipset, but I don't want to have anything to do with PowerVR if Mali gets anywhere near the driver support I think it's going to get.)

Does ARM have resources available where hobbyists/prototypers can look for real-world parts?  (I'd love to design my own chip, but I don't think I could afford the fees! ;-) I just want a nice SoC with multiple cores, mali 400 graphics, and some simple interfaces (usb otg, i2c, uart, flash, etc).  From there, I could create a development board. But it's surprisingly difficult to find parts with usable graphics components!
  • Note: This was originally posted on 17th November 2009 at http://forums.arm.com

    I've been working on a hardware design that I'd love to start work on, but don't know where to look for components.  Ideally, I'd love to have a dual/quad Cortex A9 MPCore along with Mali 400 graphics.  But I'm not really sure about where to look for chips that are actually physically available, or even upcoming.  Simply googling for a particular ARM core doesn't really turn up much information.  (For example, the only upcoming mpcore device I could find is a new TI OMAP chipset, but I don't want to have anything to do with PowerVR if Mali gets anywhere near the driver support I think it's going to get.)

    Does ARM have resources available where hobbyists/prototypers can look for real-world parts?  (I'd love to design my own chip, but I don't think I could afford the fees! ;-) I just want a nice SoC with multiple cores, mali 400 graphics, and some simple interfaces (usb otg, i2c, uart, flash, etc).  From there, I could create a development board. But it's surprisingly difficult to find parts with usable graphics components!


    Catalogued parts/chips with multi-core Cortex-A9 and Mali-400 are not yet readily available - it would have indeed been cheaper than making your own ;-). There are products being designed with this configuration however. The ST-Ericsson U8500 based development board(MOP500) is the closest match you will find for your requirements.
    So which OS are you looking to prototype (or spend hobby time) on?
  • Note: This was originally posted on 17th November 2009 at http://forums.arm.com

    From what I've seen, the U8500 has much more than I really need (namely the cellular/hspa modem, hdmi, etc).  I'll be glad to wait for parts to release next year, it's just a matter of knowing exactly what is coming, or if I should look for another solution.  My hardware design already has cellular/modem/wifi/accelerometers/etc, but all are implemented modularly, not as part of a SoC.  (currently a PIC32 is working with all these parts.)

    The PIC is using a custom OS/bootloader that lets me test all the functionality.  But once it's moved to an ARM processor I'm planning on using ubuntu linux, or possibly participating in a Moblin porting project.   ;)

    But that may never happen if I can figure out what MCU/MPU chipsets are available for purchase (present/future).  It would be nice if there were an index of some kind showing what chips are available, and what is in them.  I'd bet it would see a lot of use!