One of my friends gives me a uCRobotics Bubblegum-96 EVM board today. Bubblegum-96 is based on Actions Semi S900 processor and positioned as "smart open platform" for maker market.
I never use products from Actions. But I am pretty curious about the integrated Cortex-A53 CPU. ARM claims A53 as the smallest 64-bits CPU in the world. Personally I don't think 64-bits is required in the embedded world. But all the desktop and mobile applications are moving from 32-bits to 64-bits. This is the trend and irreversible.
Features
- Integrate Quad-Core 64-bit Cortex-A53 processor running at 1.8GHz with advanced SIMD co-processor and VFPv4 instruction set.
- Integrated 600MHz Imagination PowerVR G6230 GPU.
- Integrated Video Processing Unit provides up to 4K video effects.
- Integrated ISP supports camera sensors up to 13MP resolutions.
- Provides rich interfaces such as HDMI, eDP, MIPI CSI, DSI, LVDS and USB 3.0.
- 2GB LPDDR3
- 8GB eMMC flash memory.
- Wi-Fi 802.11g/b/n and Bluetooth 4.0
- 28nm process with low power consumption.
Video Subsystem
The Video Subsystem is interesting since it can support 4K real-time video decoding of H.265, H.264 and MPEG-4. The ability to encode H.264 baseline profile up to 1080p@60fps is also great. There are two video input channels (MIPI-CSI or DVP). This makes it possible to implement 3D vision applications.
I think S900 is also suitable for two channels driver recorder. The only question is power consumption of quad-core A53 and pricing. The benefit is the possibility to integrate advanced vision analysis by A53 and GPU.
