Monday, March 19, 2012

BeagleBoard-xM

BeagleBoard-xM delivers extra MIPS with 1-GHz ARM® Cortex™-A8 performance and extra memory with 512MB of low-power DDR RAM, enabling hobbyists, innovators and engineers to go beyond their current imagination and be inspired by the BeagleBoard.org community. Designed with the community inputs in mind, this open hardware design improves upon the laptop-like performance and expandability, while keeping at hand-held power levels. Direct connectivity is supported by the on-board four-port hub with 10/100 Ethernet, while maintaining a tiny 3.25” × 3.25” footprint.

As with previous BeagleBoard.org offerings, the BeagleBoard-xM is not intended to be a complete development environment, but rather a community-supported platform that can be used as the basis for building more complete development systems and as a target for community software baselines. For a complete development system, please consider the Sitara™ AM37x Evaluation Module from Texas Instruments

Features:
  • Additional expansion headers provided
  • Boots from external media, such as microSD slot, serial port or USB port
  • More than 2,000 Dhrystone MIPS using the superscalar ARM Cortex™-A8
  • HD video capable C64x+™ DSP core
  • Open GL® ES 2.0 capable 2D/3D graphics accelerator
  • On-board Ethernet and four USB 2.0 ports that support low, full and high speeds
  • MMC/SD connector
  • DVI-D port
  • S-Video port
  • USB miniAB connector
  • Compatible with:
  • OMAP35x processor
  • DaVinci™ DM37x processor
  • Sitara AM37x processor


Specifications:

Hardware:
  • 1-GHz super-scalar ARM Cortex™-A8
  • 512-MB LPDDR RAM
  • High-speed USB 2.0 OTG port optionally powers the board
  • On-board four-port high-speed USB 2.0 hub with 10/100 Ethernet
  • DVI-D (digital computer monitors and HDTVs)
  • S-video (TV out)
  • Stereo audio out/in
  • High-capacity microSD slot and 4-GB microSD card
  • JTAG
  • Camera port
  • Software:
  • Validation and demonstration image from the Angstrom Distribution


Benefits:
  • Enables developers to directly add connected small camera modules for on-board image signal processing and external audio converters
  • Developers are easily able to boot new operating systems from external media without any dependencies on fixed non-volatile memory like NAND flash
  • Runs a full Linux operating system with desktop windows managers and office applications
  • Achieves photo-realistic, real-time pixel-shaded graphics for gaming and 3D user interface acceleration
  • Can be used for USB peripherals like keyboard, mouse, WiFi, Bluetooth, web cameras or additional USB hubs
  • Can add a digital computer monitor
  • Allows addition of an NTSC or PAL television
  • Can act as a PC peripheral, such as a virtual USB-to-serial adapter or storage device, even providing power to the Beagle Board-xM, or used to connect additional USB peripherals


Applications:
  • Web services
  • 3-D gaming
  • 3-D UI
  • Linux kernel and driver development
  • Boot loaders and firmware
  • UI framework
  • ARM® NEON codecs
  • Codec plug-ins for GStreamers
  • OpenGL® applications
  • OpenMAX™ IL applications
  • Ubuntu, Android, MeeGo, WinCE, QNX, Angstrom, Symbian, Debian, Gentoo and others
  • Home media centers
  • In-vehicle entertainment
  • Robotics
  • Web kiosks
  • Digital signage