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 toolsZONE Products for the week of August 4, 2008
Digi-Key Says…
USB-powered Beagle Board Unleashes Community Development with Laptop-like Performance and Expansion for $149
Beagle Board based on TI OMAP3530 applications processor featuring the ARM Cortex-A8 core
Passionate open source developers and hobbyists can now realize their creative design ideas without being restricted by expensive hardware development tools, lackluster performance capabilities, high power consumption or stifled design environments. Open platform innovators will now have the expandability of desktop machines without the expense, bulk or noise as Digi-Key Corporation announces today it is shipping the $149 Beagle Board, which is a powerful, low-cost and fanless embedded development board smaller than a drink coaster.
"We are very excited about offering the Beagle Board to our customers," said Mark Larson, Digi-Key president and COO. "Not only do I believe that this innovative, yet economical, development board will be of consequential interest to the thousands of design engineers Digi-Key does business with every day, but it will appeal to the growing base of university students who recognize Digi-Key's commitment to serving them as well."
The pocket-size, USB-powered Beagle Board is based on Texas Instruments' (TI) low power OMAP3530 applications processor, which features an ARM Cortex-A8, 2D/3D graphics engine and high-performance TMS320C64x+ digital signal processor (DSP) core.
A small group of enthusiastic engineers interested in creating powerful, open and embedded devices worked together on the concept and realization of the Beagle Board. The resulting 3 inch by 3 inch board bridges desktop and embedded development by allowing developers to use the same peripherals and usage mode for flexible USB and standard PC expansion. With a full computer in their hands, developers are able to design to their specification and collaborate with the open source community on creative new applications.
"Having access to a Beagle Board enabled me to implement support for the Cortex-A8 in the OpenEmbedded build system and the Angstrom Distribution," said Koen Kooi, student at Universiteit Twente and core developer of OpenEmbedded. "This gives developers easy access to the tools needed to get the most out of the OMAP3530 device and integrated C64x DSP, which makes it a great board for low-power software defined radio projects. I am eager to collaborate even more within the community to come up with some additional great applications with the Beagle Board."
Achieve laptop-like performance with OMAP3530 applications processor
The Beagle Board gives the open source community access to the industry's highest performance ARM-based system-on-chip (SoC) broadly available today, the OMAP3530 device, which integrates a 600 MHz superscalar ARM Cortex-A8 core that utilizes highly accurate branch prediction and multiple instruction pipelines. As the superset device of TI's OMAP35x platform, the OMAP3530 device provides more than 1200 Dhrystone million instructions per second (MIPS) to run a full Linux operating system with desktop windows managers and office applications, and also integrates an OpenGL ES 2.0 compatible graphics engine to achieve photo-realistic, real-time pixel-shaded graphics for gaming and 3D user interface acceleration. A 430 MHz C64x+ DSP core is capable of handling high-definition (HD) video (MPEG-4 decode at 720p) for embedded applications, such as home media centers, robotics, web kiosks and digital signage.
Where technology meets imagination
Now equipped with the technology, designers are challenged to use their imagination on how best to experiment with the size and performance of the Beagle Board by only using standard PC peripherals. Developers can utilize the standard expansion buses to add their own peripherals they already own via standard expansion buses, such as a high-speed USB 2.0, MMC/SD/SDIO and DVI-D. In addition to utilizing the DVI-D port to add a digital monitor, an S-Video port can be used to add a TV or the USB miniAB connector can be used to add a high-speed hub for a keyboard, mouse, Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection and web camera. The MMC/SD connector can be used to add multiple gigabytes of storage or SDIO-based WiFi and Bluetooth functionalities.
The Beagle Board allows developers to take their projects with them on the go, as they no longer need to worry about a large power supply, because there are several ways to power the board through the USB connector. For instance, the board can be connected to a laptop, to a car adaptor to run off the car power, to a battery-based cell phone charger or a solar-powered backpack.
Community driven support and expertise
The Beagle Board aims to engage passionate developers and fuel their innovations in the open development community, whether they are designing projects for work or fun. Developers can quickly maximize their design concepts by tapping into the expertise and support of the some of the industry's top Linux programmers already experimenting with the Beagle Board. With communities hosting the latest software developments, live forums and chats for easy collaboration, developers have easy access to support and exchange of ideas. Users are encouraged to join active, existing communities already participating in the project.
EN-Genius Says…
It's amazing what's packed into the general-purpose Beagle Board's 3 x 3-inch footprint. Even more so when you consider that it is USB-powered up to 500 mA (if you need more current, you can fit a Y-cable for an external supply), and costs less than $150.
 The Beagle Board really is a big-time complex multimedia platform that promises unbelievable end-user experiences. However, even as you read on about this powerhouse of a module, keep in mind that it's not intended as a full Texas Instruments OMAP3 development platform. Many of the hardware features and interfaces of the OMAP3 aren't accessible from the Beagle Board.
Nonetheless, from a business point of view, development platforms like the Beagle Board help move TI's scalable OMAP family away from humdrum cellphone designs, and into a broader range of consumer and commercial products where signal and image processing can differentiate products with things like 3D graphics. Nomadic medical telemetry systems, software defined radios, and GPS applications come to mind. I'm sure there will be scads of developers – in labs, back rooms, and basement shops – writing code for these platforms. Check out these resources.
Not coincidentally, TI itself just announced a CSB740 OMAP3530 SOM (system-on-a-module). Intended for embedded control systems, it will be available from Cogent Computer Systems. TI is also offering a digital video software development kit, based on a codec for the Linux 2.6.22 kernel, with support for Windows Embedded CE 6.0. TI says its dev will eliminate the need to directly manage audio and video codecs, thanks to abundant API (application programming interface) libraries. This dev kit is available now for TI’s new OMAP35x Evaluation Module. The eval module itself also includes an OMAP3503 Linux package based on the 2.6.22 kernel.
Processing Horsepower Galore
Back to the Beagle Board. For starters, the OMAP3530 can crank in excess of 1200 Dhrystone MIPS (million instructions/s), and the superscalar ARM Cortex-A8 core ensures accurate branch prediction. To make that happen the core packs 256 kbyte of L2 cache. The result? At 600 MHz, the Cortex-A8 dishes up four times the performance of a 300 MHz ARM9.
 The board's DSP OpenGL ES 2.0-compatible graphics acceleration is nothing to sneeze at either. The 430-MHz C64x+ DSP is capable of coolly crunching MPEG-4 video, rendering 10 million polygon/s with ease. Complementing all of this is lots of on-board memory. You get 128 Mbyte of low-power DDR RAM and 256 Mbyte of NAND Flash.
Interestingly enough, the Beagle's POP (package-on-package) construction literally packs the system Flash and RAM on top of the OMAP3 processor chip. So, if you look down on a Beagle from an eagle's eye point of view, you won't see a package with an OMAP3 label, TI logo, or part number.
Regardless of the prodigious level of processing horsepower on the Beagle, its silicon dissipates very little power, making it just the ticket for battery powered designs. No heatsinks are needed, and there's no provision, or requirement, for a cooling fan on a Beagle Board.
USB-to-Go
In addition to powering the Beagle Board, its USB 2.0 OTG (on-the-go) port lends itself to expansion possibilities galore. Remember, USB OTG lets USB peripherals communicate directly with each other even if a PC isn't in the equation. Essentially, OTG USB peripherals have host capability to communicate with other USB peripherals, or hubs, using a small USB connector that's in step with portable form-factors.
In use, standard PC peripherals can be connected to a Beagle Board system using a mini-A to standard-A cable adapter. On the module, a DVI-D (digital video interface) connects to a high-res monitor, so the Beagle can drive an LCD panel with 24-bit color. For that purpose, the Beagle DVI-D connector uses a small HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) connector. But, it doesn't support the HDMI interface; it's used to provide the DVI-D interface only. You must use an HDMI-to-DVI-D cable or adapter to connect to your LCD. As an alternative, an S-video port on the Beagle can drive a TV S-Video port.
There’s lots more I/O. For audio, the board uses a stereo audio codec feeding mini audio connectors. For use with your emulator, the board packs a JTAG debugger port.
There's also MMC/SD/SDIO memory card and I/O connectors on the Beagle Board. The 6-in-1 SD/MMC connector can support devices such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi cards, cameras, or GPS modules. For memory expansion, you can plug in SD or MMC cards and the like.
Significantly, the system supports the MMC4.0 (MMC+) standard, so the OMAP3 can boot from a memory card by holding a button to force a re-set. The re-set button can also be manipulated to re-program Flash-held software. That's done through either USB or a serial port.
Support Tools
A board like this isn't too useful without lots of support, and as I mentioned earlier, that's in place and growing. The Beagle Board ships with U-Boot and X-Loader in Flash. Development tools include GCC programming http://gcc.gnu.org for the Cortex-A8, and a freebie C64x+ compiler. Utilities include serial and USB boot-loader tools, and a reference Linux kernel for testing hardware. Linux is supported in a variety of popular flavors, including Ubuntu, Angstrom (Open Embedded), Debian, and Gentoo.
The open source community already has word processors, drawing tools, spreadsheets, and the like running on Beagle Boards, and the base of users is large and growing. Developers can get lots of visibility, too, riding TI's coattails. TI engineers participate a lot in the open source community's reflectors, work with third-party vendors, and provide lots of documentation.
As an example of top-drawer third-party support, check out Lauterbach's tools. As a member of the ARM Connected Community, Lauterbach offers its TRACE32 Powertools for Beagle Board developers. The software includes a debugger for C and C++, program flow trace tools, and a run-time statistics utility. The package also includes a Flash programming tool.
As for Digi-Key, it's poised to ride high with its Beagle Board. Remember when Digi-Key was basically a hobbyist supplier? Not any more. In the past decade or so it's grown to be one of the fastest growing and largest distributors. The Beagle Board is bound to keep that reputation in good stead.
The Beagle Board (Digi-Key part number 296-23428-ND) is now available for $149.
Community Information
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