Main Page

Sunxi represents the family of ARM SoC (System on Chip) designed for embedded systems, and made by Allwinner Tech. in Zhuhai (Guangdong, China). The most popular sunxi SoC model is the Allwinner A10 and the Allwinner A13. Their predecessor was an ARM9 named Boxchip F20 ( sun3i ) and their successors are A20 and Allwinner A31.

This wiki is dedicated to software and hardware documentation related to hacking sunxi based devices and to the devices themselves and is maintained by the linux-sunxi community.

"F"-Series
Based on ARMv6 ARM926-EJS core targeted for low market devices such as cheap ebook readers, etc.
 * Boxchip C100 (sun3i)
 * Boxchip E200 (sun3i)
 * Boxchip F20 (sun3i)
 * Boxchip F10 (sun3i)
 * Boxchip F13 (sun3i)
 * Boxchip F18 (sun3i)

"A"-Series
Based on ARMv7 Cortex-A cores (Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A8) targeted for hi-end devices like tablet PC, smartphones, netbooks
 * Allwinner A10 (sun4i) (Cortex-A8)
 * Allwinner A13 (sun5i) (Cortex-A8)
 * Allwinner A10s (sun5i) (Cortex-A8)
 * Allwinner A31 (sun6i) 4x(Cortex-A7)
 * Allwinner A31s (sun6i) 4x(Cortex-A7)
 * Allwinner A20 (sun7i) 2x(Cortex-A7)

"A"- Series features:

 * CPU: ARMv7-A Cortex-A7 or Cortex-A8 Central Processor Unit which have NEON, VFP, TrustZone, and Thumb-2 co-processor extensions:
 * Advanced SIMD: NEON (ARM's extended general-purpose advanced SIMD vector processing extension engine)
 * Vector FPU: Vector Floating Point Unit - ARM VFPv3 lite (Cortex-A8) / VFPv4 (Cortex-A7) VFPU (Vector Floating Point Unit)
 * Security Extensions:
 * TrustZone cryptographic engine
 * Security accelerator supporting AES, DES, 3DES, SHA-1, and MD5
 * Hardware random generator
 * Thumb2 intruction set extension for optimized code to reduce memory footprint and improve performance
 * GPU: Mali400 or SGX544 Graphics Procesor Unit, supporting OpenGL ES and Framebuffer
 * VPU: CedarX (Video Processor Unit for audio and video hardware decoding or encoding)
 * HDMI-transmitter with HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control), (with exception of A13 which lacks HDMI-transmitter and SATA-controller )
 * Hardware virtualization capabilities (Cortex-A7 only).
 * Up to 4GB memory (Cortex-A8), Up to 1TB memory with LPAE (Cortex-A7 only).

HOWTOs
This wiki includes some fine tutorials. Feel free to improve them if they turn out to be not so fine or outdated.

The support for sunxi devices is still under development so things may change quite rapidly at times.

Software

 * The first steps: Getting u-boot, a kernel, and a rootfs on an SD card.
 * Bootable OS images: alternatively, you can use a complete ready-to-use SD card image.
 * sunxi-tools (tools to help hacking sunxi devices)

Generic Hardware Hacking of Allwinner SoCs:

 * JTAG on A10 devices through µSD port
 * UART - Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter on devices based on Allwinner SoCs
 * GPIO - General Purpose Input/Output on devices based on Allwinner SoCs
 * SPI - Serial Peripheral Interface Bus on devices based on Allwinner SoCs
 * PIO - Programmed input/output (PIO) on devices based on Allwinner SoCs
 * MicroSD Breakout
 * Audio Codec - Audio Codec on devices based on Allwinner SoCs
 * CSI - Camera Sensor Interface on devices based on Allwinner SoCs
 * Cpufreq - cpufreq support on devices based on Allwinner SoCs
 * Benchmarks
 * Wifi - 8192cu dropping connection workaround

Open Source Hardware:
These boards are fully Open Source and you are allowed to reuse their designs in your own boards


 * A13-OLinuXino
 * Open Hardware SBC with an Allwinner A13 CPU inside developed by Olimex with 512MB RAM, 4GB NAND Flash, VGA, Audio In/Out, WIFI, 3x USB Hosts, USB-OTG, LiPo, SD-card, 72 GPIOs, 6-16VDC power input


 * A10-OLinuXino
 * Open Hardware SBC with an Allwinner A10 CPU inside developed by Olimex with 1GB RAM, 4GB NAND Flash, VGA, HDMI, RS232, JTAG, SATA, 100MBit Ethernet, SD and micro-SD cards, 2x USB hosts, USB-OTG, LiPo, 132 GPIOs, 6-16VDC power input


 * A10S-OLinuXino
 * Open Hardware SBC with an Allwinner A10S CPU inside developed by Olimex with 512MB RAM, 4GB NAND Flash, HDMI, JTAG, 100MBit Ethernet, micro-SD cards, USB host, USB-OTG, 50 GPIOs, 5VDC power input


 * A20-OLinuXino
 * Open Hardware SBC with an Allwinner A20 CPU inside developed by Olimex with 1GB RAM, 4GB NAND Flash, VGA, HDMI, SATA, 100MBit Ethernet, SD and micro-SD cards, 2x USB hosts, USB-OTG, LiPo, 160 GPIOs, 6-16VDC power input

Featured Community Hardware:
These boards are made in cooperation with the community and well supported even if not open source hardware


 * EOMA68-A20
 * RhombusTech aims to create an Open Hardware EOMA68 compliant CoM with an Allwinner A20 CPU inside to be the user replaceable heart of different devices.


 * A10-Cubieboard
 * A mini (10x6cm), hacker friendly, extendable and very low-cost while powerful ARM board with A10.


 * A20-Cubieboard
 * A mini (10x6cm), hacker friendly, extendable and very low-cost while powerfull ARM board with A20.


 * A20-Cubietruck
 * A mini, hacker friendly, extendable while powerfull ARM board with A20, 1000Mbps NIC, 4GB NAND Flash, VGA, HDMI, on board Wifi/Bt, S/PDIF, LiPo, RTC, 2x USB hosts, USB-OTG, ..

Devices:
Other known devices using Allwinner SoCs