Not long ago, I saw some netizens complained. "At present, the domestic entry-level open source board computer is basically the all-scale A20 chip, which is turned off, and the fire has been eliminated in electronic products and switch to the development board Is the SOC chip is interested? "Although I don't fully agree with his point of view, it also reflects, it is indeed, although the development board is learning, developing as a purpose, it is not wrong, but with the intelligent hardware Development, many engineers will take the current popular open source hardware board DIY project, which is a new requirement, stronger performance, more features for the current open source hardware board.
Recently, I love the board, I got an upgrade product of banana sent BPI-M1 +, BPI-M2, from BPI-M1 to BPI-M1 +, the banana sent a total of A20 application processors with a full wish, but in BPI-M2 On, it has been completely gone, and the more powerful full-scale A31S is used.
BPI-M2 development board hardware resources
Let's take a look at the BPI-M2 development board, concise to packaging that can no longer succinct, in fact, this is also in line with the personality of the engineer, anyway, the author does not catch a cold.
The difference between the BPI-M2 of the BPI-M2 is not large, and the specific on-board resources are shown below.
The specific onboard resources of BPI-M2 are as follows:
Total A31S SOC (ARM Cortex-A7 * 4), PowerVR SGX54MP2
1GB DDR3 (shared with GPU)
MicroSD card holder maximum expansion 64GB
10/100 / 1000M Ethernet interface, 40pin GPIO extension, HDMI, A / V interface
4 USB 2.0 Host interface, a OTG micro-usb interface
Power / Reset button, U-boot button, IR receiver
At a glance, except for the change of the main application processor, it seems that there is no different from the banana papi-m1 +, but it is very much, and the change between the two is quite a lot, let's take a look at them. Differences.
Application processor upgrade
The first is the upgrade of the primary application processor, it can be seen that a new full-time A31S processor is equipped on BPI-M2, as shown in the following figure.
Total A31S processor features:
Quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU architecture, PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU
Maximum support 1GB system memory
Built-in ISP, support HD image processing and fast image capture
Integrated AUDIO codec module, support multiple MIC interfaces, using Crisptalk noise reduction techniques with all the public
The A31S has a very rich communication interface that uses a small amount of peripheral devices to achieve wireless transmission technology such as 3G, 2G, LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth, FM, GPS. There are two main points of the A31S of the full-scale A20 processor equipped with BPI-M1 +.
Upgrade from dual-core Cortex-A7 to quad-core CORTEX-A7 processors
GPU upgrade from Mali400MP2 to SGX544MP2
In addition, we can also see the specific differences between A31S and A31, A20: (next page)
Power supply interface / SATA interface / power, reset button change
BPI-M2 has also made a substantive change on the power interface and the hard disk interface, first of all, the SATA hard disk interface is removed, on the power interface, from the original MicroSB interface to 3.5mm DC Jack power supply interface, this change It is still a little doubtful. Is it to distinguish between USB interface and power?
In addition, BPI-M2 also integrates on the button, integrate the original POWER button and the reset button to a button, and the change is still good, which is not bad, saving the PCB by short pressing and long pressing time. The layout space also makes the product not too complicated.
USB HOST interface increase
On BPI-M2, the USB2.0 Host interface has also increased from the original two. This improvement believes that everyone is still very happy, and we have already experienced it early in the competitor Rober 2. This advantage.
In addition to these main differences, BPI-M2 has many changes, such as indicating an increase in the number of LEDs, changes in Mike, and changes in power chip AXP221S, WiFi modules with MicroSD positions, etc. (as indicated below), These will no longer explain one by one.
Development board
In fact, I have always thought that the biggest weakness of banana panels and Raspberry is not supported onboard EMMC storage. As now, BPI-M2 also requires MicroSD card support system operation, but BPI-M2 is on supported systems Still very rich, as shown below.
However, in general, these systems still concatenate to two categories, Android systems with Linux systems. In the PC is Windows environment, if you want to burn Linux systems, we can burn through the tool of Win32 Diskimager.
And Android mirroring needs another professional burn tool Phoenixcard. This software can be downloaded on the official website of the general public. After all, it is mainly a burning software for the full-scale application processor.
Since I need to download the mirror system file, the author will experience the Ubuntu15.04_v4.0 system under the Ubuntu15.04_v4.0 system, how to say that Ubuntu15.0_v4.0 system actually does not have too smooth, and the BPI-M2 is running normally running A31S The heat is also relatively large.
In addition, this article is not allowed to download the test, and the interesting friend may wish to see if you are interested in seeing the BPI-M2 board.
summary
Introduced the banana party BPI-M2 development board, compared the previous generation of BPI-M1 + development board, M2 change although it is not large, but still there. Performance from dual-core Cortex-A7 full-like A20 application processor to A31S (quad-core CORTEX-A7), function adds the USB interface, remove the hard disk interface, etc. If BPI-M1 + is biased towards network server, BPI -M2 should be more inclined to multimedia entertainment. However, on the object, for board, the fast update iterative significance is not so significant, this is not a consumer product, more engineers use card or learning, development, software, information, etc. The upgrade is to be concerned, this, the Raspberry Party is very good, I hope that domestic manufacturers can accelerate the inner improvement while imitating external.
Reference
Pay tribute to the Raspberry - Open Source Platform Banana Pi
Onboard WiFi module - more powerful Banana Pro review
Entertainment, smart home control two incorrectly - powerful MIXTILE LOFT-Q open source board computer evaluation
Development, entertainment, no mistake - Fireprime board evaluation
Break open source hardware board performance 桎梏 - Cubieboard 4 evaluation hardware
Original declaration: This article is originally created by the panel network, declined!
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