"As we all know, Kirin 960 SOC is still the strongest mobile SoC platform released by Huawei. Huawei's flagship smartphones are basically equipped with this platform, and it is almost impossible for other manufacturers to use this platform. However, to people's surprise, Chengmai technology has launched the 96boards development board hikey960 equipped with Kirin 960 SOC, This is really a shocking thing.
Original address: https://www.eeboard.com/evaluation/hikey960eva/
Aiban.com got the hikey960 development board based on Kirin 960 SOC for the first time. In addition to being surprised, it shared it with the majority of netizens for the first time.
Hikey960 development board hardware
The packaging of hikey960 is very simple. Only the development board itself and an instruction document. The development board is protected by a very thick electrostatic bag and is relatively reliable. Unfortunately, the development board is not equipped with a corresponding adapter. This is a pity. After all, it also meets the DC jack interface specification and 8 ~ 18V power supply adapter. Not every engineer has idle adapters available, Of course, if you don't need money, you can buy it directly in Chengmai's official store.
The size of the hikey960 development board is 85mm * 55mm, which is about the size of a credit card. Of course, it is designed according to the specifications of 96boards. There is nothing to discuss, but what the author wants to say is that the workmanship of the hikey960 development board is extremely exquisite!!! Both PCB board and device materials have been biased to the extreme.
However, this is not all. The most powerful thing about hikey960 is that the hardware configuration can be comparable to the current mainstream flagship smartphone. Huawei Qilin 960 SOC + 3gb lpddr4 SDRAM + 32GB ufs2.0 simply does not regard itself as a development board. The specific resource distribution is shown in the figure below.
The hardware block diagram of the development board is shown below.
Hikey960 supports online purchase. Please click > >
Let's look at the details of the hikey960 development board.
In terms of peripheral interfaces, mcirosd card supports sd3.0 standard, HDMI supports HDMI version 1.4, FHD 1080p output, USB 2.0 type C OTG and two USB3.0 host interfaces (extended through mcirochip's USB3.0 hub IC)
The power supply range supported by hikey960 is 8V ~ 18V DC, which is officially recommended 12V@2A Adapter;
The 40pin low-speed signal interface of the development board includes: + 1.8V, + 5V, power signal, GND, UART * 2, I2C * 2, SPI, I2S, GPIO * 12;
The 60pin high-speed interface includes 4l-mipi DSI, I2C * 2, SPI (48m), USB 2.0, 2L + 4lmipi CSI.
The hikey960 development board is equipped with TI's wl1837mod WiFi / BT module and adopts 100pin MOC package. Although the size is very small, only 13.3mm x 13.4mm x 2mm, it has a very high degree of integration. It integrates radio frequency (RF), power amplifier (PA), clock, RF switch, filter, passive components and power management unit, and supports 2x2 MIMO Wi Fi and dual-mode Bluetooth, WiFi supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz dual band, with strong performance. At the same time, it is also very suitable for fast hardware design.
The two largest ICs on the hikey960 development board (see the figure below) are 32GB UFS (left) and 3gb lpddr4 SDRAM + Kirin 960 SOC (right). The operation memory and processor SOC are stacked together, and all we can see is SDRAM.
Hikey960 supports online purchase. Please click > >
There is no doubt about the performance of USF, lpddr4 or Kirin 960 SOC. To be honest, the use of UFS or lpddr4 on the development board is the first time I have seen. Many times, the reason is to the point. After all, the core processor platforms on many development boards do not support these two interfaces, So the final credit goes back to Huawei's Kirin 960 SOC, as shown in the hardware block diagram below.
Kirin 960 SOC not only supports the most advanced storage interface, but also its own strength can not be underestimated: four high-performance arms Cortex-
[email protected] And four arm cortex with high energy efficiency ratio-
[email protected] Combined with the advanced high-performance arm mali-g71 MP8@900MHz GPU, I can only reluctantly express my satisfaction. After all, the current development platform based on ARM processor, especially as a development board, the hikey960 is worthy of the development board with the first performance, and it is expected that this situation will remain for a long time, have no equal.
On the back of the development board, you can see that the board is also equipped with PCIe interface, supports PCIe 1.1 / 2.0 protocol, and can support the expansion of a variety of peripherals in line with this interface protocol. Moreover, the standard interface also makes it very convenient for users to expand. The only worry is whether the driver of Android system needs to be written or ready-made.
Unlike many development boards, which use the method of jumping caps to select the functions such as startup / download of the development board, hikey960 is equipped with a dial switch to realize these basic operations, which is simple and clear.
Hikey960 realizes three working modes of the development board through the dial switch: normal / FastBoot / recovery mode. Generally, the normal mode and recovery mode are commonly used, that is, the normal startup mode and the burning mode that needs to burn the new image system.
Hikey960 development board has high integration, many functions and different power supply voltages, which makes its power supply circuit extremely complex. The power tree of the whole development board can refer to the following simple block diagram.
Hikey960 supports online purchase. Please click > >
The development board realizes a complete set of power output through ti's DC / DC buck, Richtek LDO, Huawei Hisilicon's PMU power management chip and Meixin / Fairchild's voltage monitoring chip to ensure the reliability of circuit power supply.
Before actually experiencing the hikey960 development board, there are only a few words in the overall review of the hardware design of this development board: exquisite workmanship and solid materials!
Power on hikey960 development board
On the official website of Chengmai technology, the official prompt is that the hikey960 development board supports AOSP (Android open source project) and Linux system, but after looking for it, you can only find the source code and image of Android system, but you haven't seen the Linux system film. However, according to the official feedback of Chengmai technology, the Linux system will be completed by linaro and published on the official website forum of 96boards.org, Users interested in Linux system may wish to pay more attention to the official website of 96boards.
Hikey960 factory built-in is AOSP, which is the latest Android o version of Android.
In fact, the author has some concerns about the experience of Android system, mainly because there is no corresponding screen or display with touch screen. If you connect an ordinary display through HDMI, there is no "pain point" to experience Android system. It is difficult for a clever woman to make bricks without straw. Anyway, we still need to do it. In fact, the Android system provided by Chengmai technology is only the most primitive and streamlined Android original ecosystem, and there is no system experience to nag. We can actually understand the performance of the board through the system.
The default setting of hikey960 development board is to automatically start the board when powered on. We just need to connect the corresponding peripherals.
The purest system does not have any third-party software installed.
Hikey960 supports online purchase. Please click > >
As a development board, hikey960 can be connected to 5GHz WiFi, which is a proud thing. By default, the browser is based on the display of the mobile terminal.
However, after a brief look at the system, it is found that there is a problem with the display in the storage column, indicating that -22.98gb has been used
The software with CPU-Z installed checks the hardware parameters of the board and the actual dominant frequency of the CPU, or more accurately, the dominant frequency is arm Cortex-
[email protected] And arm cortex-
[email protected]
The available space is 22.99gb (obviously, the -22.98gb display of the system is wrong), and the available storage is about 3gb.
In addition, some commonly used test software on the market are installed, such as geekbench4, androbench and anrabbit entertainment.
However, when running these test software, it is found that the small core of Kirin 960 SOC seems to be frequency locked, and the maximum is only 999mhz, which is far from the nominal 1.84ghz. Therefore, the maximum load of the whole CPU is about 71%, and it does not play 100% performance. In other words, it is also possible, because the board has a great heating capacity during the test, The author does not carry the corresponding heat dissipation module for the board, which may be caused by too much heat.
As for the running score results, I can only refer to them. After all, the system not only did not optimize the running score, but also did not give full play to the full performance of Kirin 960 SOC. To be honest, the results were almost half of the real performance.
According to the androbench test results, the continuous reading speed is 495mb / s, the continuous writing speed is 77MB / s, the random reading speed is 89mb / s, and the random writing speed is 15MB / s. This test also has a certain relationship with the file system of its own system. Of course, from this reading and writing speed, it can be seen that the development board is equipped with UFS flash memory, and at least emmc5.1 does not have such a high continuous reading speed.
Ann rabbit test results
On the hikey960 development board, running points is completely entertainment. Users who are interested in buying the hikey960 development board undoubtedly use this set of hardware design scheme as the underlying driver of the Android system, or develop app applications based on the latest Android system. Therefore, the use of hikey960 development board is imminent. It is not only suitable for engineers to develop the bottom driver of advanced applications such as robot, autopilot and AR \ VR, but also suitable for users who need app application development based on Android system.
For hikey960 development platform, AOSP source code can be downloaded. Of course, Chengmai technology also provides ready-made images and tools. The access address is as follows:
https://github.com/96boards-hikey/tools-images-hikey960
After downloading, users can re burn the system. Of course, competent engineers can also download the source code directly, and customize their own system according to the actual needs. The official wiki of Chengmai technology also provides the basic system burning and the basic process of Android application development. If you are interested, you can refer to the official documents and tutorials.
Construction of development environment
Android App demo creation
Summary
The hikey960 development board launched by Chengmai technology is undoubtedly the most powerful 96boards development platform at present. Huawei Kirin 960 SOC + 3gb lpddr4 + 32GB UFS has pushed it to monster level hardware configuration. Hikey960 development board is adapted to AOSP open source hardware system, which can develop advanced products such as autopilot, AR / VR and intelligent robot. It can also develop app applications based on Android system. The target applications are very practical. Of course, the only regret may be that the relevant applications and the system based on the development board provided by the official are relatively single. If you want to use hikey960 for development, you must have basic Android development capabilities. Otherwise, everything is meaningless.
reference material
Alphastar official website: https://www.alpha-star.org/
Chengmai official website: https://www.archermind.com/
Hikey960 supports online purchase. Please click > >
Original statement: This article is original by Aiban. Reprint is declined“
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