SoC And Dev Kits Targets Android Tablets

July 12, 2011

Freescale adds a number of new, low cost alternatives to its popular i.MX50 SoCs based on Arm's Cortex A8.

i.MX50 architecture

MC34708 architecture

i.MX50 EVK board

SABRE tablet kit

Freescale's ARM Cortex A8-based i.MX50 is popular in the tablet space and finds uses in other areas as well such as medical and infotainment. The earlier i.MX508 integrated support for electronic paper display (EPD) technology. The i.MX503 and i.MX507 share a common architecture (Fig. 1) with the i.MX50 family including an 800 MHz ARM Cortex A8 core, USB OTG and USB host support, plus a 10/100 Ethernet interface. DDR2, LP-DDR2 and mDDR controller support is standard as is off-chip flash and SRAM support. The lower cost i.MX503 foregoes the EPD support but includes the OpenVG GPU found in the i.MX508. The i.MX502 has only the LCD controller that handles displays up to 1400 by 1050 pixels.

Also included in the latest announcement was the relase of the MC34708 companion chip (Fig. 2). The MC34708 incorporates five multi-mode buck switchers to handle the processor core, memory and peripherals. There is a boost switcher used for USB OTG support. It also has eight regulators with internal and external pass devices for thermal budget optimization. The chip uses either an SPI or I²C bus for control. This allows access to the 10-bit ADC that can monitor the battery and other devices. A dual input switching charger handles single cell Li-ion batteries. This enables power-on even with dead or no battery scenario. The USB/UART/audio switching for mini-micro USB connectors provides alternate interface cabling.

The latest i.MX50 EVK (Fig. 3) includes the MC34708. The board also includes 512 Mbytes of DDR2 memory. Sockets are available for a variety of flash devices including a pair of SD/MMC slots.

The SABRE tablet board (Fig. 4) adds an EPD display and a 3-axis accelerometer. The platforms support Freescale's Android and Linux.

Freescale

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

You can send press releases for new products for possible coverage on the website. I am also interested in receiving contributed articles for publishing on our website. Use our template and send to me along with a signed release form.

Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.