Custom/expensive power supply is an issue for many applications. This makes things simple and straightforward, allowing decent automations easily. All this with fully passive cooling (no bloody blowers!). You see, one can run A20 and especially A10 board from common “USB charger” aka 5V, 1.2 A supply (high-quality 2A supply needed to handle HDD, though).
#ROOTING ALLWINNER TABLET ANDROID#And real Linux instead of android enterntainment crap makes it much easier to craft various (networked or computer-like) automations.Īnd what I’m supposed to compute on 8 cores using such device? Not to mention awful peak power consumption and resulting power supply and heat dissipation requirements. Ti have got some community, but it quite boring and nowhere close to Sunxi. This made them unpopular across people, so no real alive communities around. Ti, i.MX? Okay, they’re just too expensive and too slow to deal with highly-competitive markets. Yet it is nowhere as close to Sunxi Linux. As for communities, Rockchip has got some community, after all. Yet, it’s not something one would want on boards and modules like oLinuxino things. Cores matter if you want to do some games or video playback. So what is the point to have 4 * 64-bit cores if you can’t supply them with decent amount of data to chew on – due to weak set of I/O interfaces? So, in fact, Allwinner A20 still seems to be a decent option for places where you need fast storage and/or decent networking speed. Basically, rockchip and some multicore allwinners, including A64, are rather pointless: they have bunch of CPU cores but … very limited I/O. Somehow, nobody else came close to these results at this price :P. Using real HDD/SSD at real SATA port and gigabt, giving more or less sane speeds, beating cheap NAS boxes. Be it DLNA server, some video security system, or “microserver”, allwinner A20 can deal with it. On side note, only allwinner has managed to offer SATA connector and Gigabit port at same time at adequate price point, making it almost perfect choice for devices with requirement for both decent connectivity and reasonable HDD speed. And while mainline u-boot integration and kernel integration are not Allwinner achievements but Sunxi community achievements, at the end of day it is result and solved task what really counts. So unless Rockchip would have proper opensource boot loaders, I would stay miles away since it mostly kills custom automation tasks. Which is unhappy if you try to send debug output shit into it. And it has been very critical couple of times, because I was able to shut down all debug output and use UART for GPS module. #ROOTING ALLWINNER TABLET FULL#On allwinner I can even build FULL BOOT LOADER from source. But on rockchip it is not possible and it would take a lot of woes to deal with proprietary flashers and flashing to internal memory. And if you need to bring up, say, 20 boards or modules… okay, I would rather write 20 cards with system image I created using “dd” linux command, insert cards to devices and ready to rock-n-roll. #ROOTING ALLWINNER TABLET CODE#Then they have encrypted boot and proprietary code in boot sequence, which is pain. Yet, half of rockchips can’t even boot from SD card (and it makes debugging and investigating wreked system much harder). Recently it started to improve, and some RK3xxx ICs got some mainline kernel support. OTOH, Rockchip isn’t really Linux friendly and hardly counts for anything beyound enterntainment. Yet, in most networked automation tasks allwinner A20 with 1Gb RAM would have enough headroom to do almost anything. #ROOTING ALLWINNER TABLET SOFTWARE#There is one thing to know about allwinner: software support somewhat lagging behind. And Olimex got some fancy A20 boards to mess with, I’ve got used to them due to good documentation. No royalty payments shit, no trademarks, no patenrs, etc – 100% safe choice even for “commercial” deployments. Then you can, say, do debootstrap and build some custom Debian image for custom automation task. While it has been initially annoying due to vendor kernels and proprietary boot loaders, now it is mostly works in mainline kernel and u-boot – thanks to Linux Sunxi community! And it has became my choice on various automation and somesuch. And android would be a major roadblock most of time if your requirements are beyound enterntainment.Īnd I would agree: Linux Sunxi community ROCKS! I had experience using Allwinner A10 and A20 boards in numbers. #ROOTING ALLWINNER TABLET TV#And if one needs yet another fancy android tablet or silly TV dongle – just go to shop and buy one?! There is no point to do things like this yourself, unless you got some really custom requirements. Android suxx really hard when it comes to anythings beyond entarntainment – it is completely crippled system where you can’t use most programs and libs from opensource world.
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