Allwinner documentation (hardware datasheet, user manual) for A10, A10s, A13, A20, A31, A31s

[Simos Xenitellis]

Hi All,

I just received from Sugar the documentation files (hardware datasheet and user manuals)

for the A10, A10s, A13, A20, A31 and A31s.

This is part of the release of documents of documents that was announced a few weeks ago.

There should be a subsequent release of the remaining SoCs at a later date. 

I offered to "curate" the documents, so here we go: 

In each document there is a revision history that shows what changed between versions.

The revision history is consistently followed, thus I did not add any dates in the filenames.

The filenames have two decimal digits (instead of one) for the version because some old versions did use the second decimal digit.

Here are the version numbers of the new documents compared to what was previously available at http://dl.linux-sunxi.org/

Hardware datasheets

A10: version 1.70 (previously known version 1.21)

A10s: version 1.40 (previously known version 1.20)

A13: version 1.30 (previously known version 1.12)

A20: version  1.40 (none) 

A31: version 1.40 (previously known version 1.00)

A31s: version 1.40 (previously known version 1.30)

User manual

A10: version 1.50 (previously known version 1.20)

A10s: version 1.30 (none)

A13: version 1.30 (previously known version 1.20)

A20: version 1.20 (previously known version 1.00)

A31: version 1.20 (previously known version 1.10)

A31s: version 1.10 (previously known version 1.00)

Here are the SHA1 checksums,

b0507d4f96ceafe08eddb3182c5f328614deb606  AllwinnerDocs/A10s/A10s User Manual V1.30.pdf

3cb77cde50d6e720af8ee9de1bc167253670741d  AllwinnerDocs/A10s/A10s Datasheet V1.40.pdf

6984efaeb7fbb046df2145d3b988cf7fda1e822a  AllwinnerDocs/A31s/A31s User Manual V1.10.pdf

0d2bf1356906c47ccca977449a17bc2aa15008e9  AllwinnerDocs/A31s/A31s Datasheet v1.40.pdf

b341bed4e7b2d653265cb2abe088a32aac563222  AllwinnerDocs/A13/A13 Datasheet V1.30.pdf

9c555300f673c2334c821823f83c7af2115a3b81  AllwinnerDocs/A13/A13 User Manual V1.30.pdf

ca6c4ae69db8df28b0bf99326f41a87cd6659a24  AllwinnerDocs/A20/A20 Datasheet V1.40.pdf

83526d6f80bdcf22011bbd1ba2b811e91dfac21f  AllwinnerDocs/A20/A20 User Manual V1.20.pdf

eaa07db283c609b36d19d8b0d014debc42a0d85c  AllwinnerDocs/A10/A10 User manual V1.50.pdf

978d45b865c426dbfbfe3f08666f47265fbd2c00  AllwinnerDocs/A10/A10 Datasheet V1.70.pdf

423e8564bc1e190af67262b32b840ae37b2d3a51  AllwinnerDocs/A31/A31 User Manual V1.20.pdf

e9c2226d0d16bff66d2d53dd2c08ac3185dc6905  AllwinnerDocs/A31/A31 Datasheet V1.40.pdf

You can find the docs at http://dl.linux-sunxi.org/ in their respective directories with the filenames shown above. 

If you would like to download these files as a set, see

http://dl.linux-sunxi.org/users/simos/

Simos

[jons...@gmail.com]

Is there a specific contact point for documentation issues?  For example it looks like the A20 manual is still missing the chapter for the S/PDIF hardware. 

It is kind of documented here by looking at the source for the S/PDIF drivers in the SDK.

http://linux-sunxi.org/SPDIF

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Jon Smirl
jons...@gmail.com

[John S]

On Sat, 27/9/14, Simos Xenitellis <simos...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I just received from Sugar the documentation

Hooray well done to all concerned (AW included).

Er, not the A80?

John

[Henrik Nordström]

lör 2014-09-27 klockan 09:35 -0400 skrev jons...@gmail.com:
> Is there a specific contact point for documentation issues? For
> example it looks like the A20 manual is still missing the chapter for
> the S/PDIF hardware.

The current proposal is that we track errata and shortcomings in our
wiki giving us a central point where we record what information is
missing.

But there also need to be a notification to allwinner somehow. But
should be sufficient to send a notice to the mailinglist I hope, with
Allwinner being somewhat present here.

Regards
Henrik

[Luc Verhaegen]

Why didn't someone from Allwinner send these documents in him/herself?

Luc Verhaegen.

[Simos Xenitellis]

This was the scheduled first batch of documentation. 

Indeed the A80 is quite important and I hope it is included in the next batch.

Simos

[Enrico]

for the record TV Decoder information is still missing too.

Enrico

[Henrik Nordström]

sön 2014-09-28 klockan 02:18 +0200 skrev Luc Verhaegen:

> Why didn't someone from Allwinner send these documents in him/herself?

The current person discussion the matter with Allwiner was Simos, who is
part of the linux-sunxi community. Allwinner sent current versions of
the documents to Simos for distribution in the community. What is wrong?

Mailing the full set of documents as attachments directly to the
mailinglist is not appropriate. And for some strange and unknown reason
Allwinner do not appear to have a public document archive for this kind
of documents themselves, and seems to only distribute them via email to
their customers when requested.

The real question is why AW do not make the documents available in
public themselves, and likewise why they do not have a public git
repository for SDK sources etc (github or elsewhere).

Regards
Henrik

[ke...@allwinnertech.com]

Hi All,

I have put the documents on github, and the url is https://github.com/allwinner-zh/documents.git 

Thanks Simos, Henrik and Luc's suggestion. And other documents will be upated to here when released.

---

Best Regards,

kevin.z.m

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[Luc Verhaegen]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 05:46:35PM +0800, ke...@allwinnertech.com wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have put the documents on github, and the url is
> https://github.com/allwinner-zh/documents.git
> Thanks Simos, Henrik and Luc's suggestion. And other documents will be
> upated to here when released.

Thanks!

Everyone who is interested who has a github account can set himself to
watching and not miss a thing :)

Luc Verhaegen.

[jons...@gmail.com]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 5:46 AM, ke...@allwinnertech.com <ke...@allwinnertech.com> wrote:

Hi All,

I have put the documents on github, and the url is https://github.com/allwinner-zh/documents.git 

Thanks Simos, Henrik and Luc's suggestion. And other documents will be upated to here when released.

This also gives us a place to track documentation issues. 

I just created two - S/PDIF and TV decoder.

https://github.com/allwinner-zh/documents/issues

I believe there are a bunch more smaller issues - like bits in the codec and gmac controllers that are missing doc. Everyone can add issues for these as we find them.

Allwinner should watch the issue list, I believe you will get mail when on is created. Then as the various items get documented, upload a new manual revision and close the issue. This lets the community help find documentation problems instead of Allwinner having to do everything.

This git hub account is also an excellent place to put copies of the various SDKs. It is better if you don't put them up as giant 6GB tarballs. Push them up as trees of files. Doing it that way lets people look at individual files without having to download 6GB. 

 

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Jon Smirl
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[Simos Xenitellis]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 3:35 PM, jons...@gmail.com <jons...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 5:46 AM, ke...@allwinnertech.com <ke...@allwinnertech.com> wrote:

Hi All,

I have put the documents on github, and the url is https://github.com/allwinner-zh/documents.git 

Thanks Simos, Henrik and Luc's suggestion. And other documents will be upated to here when released.

This also gives us a place to track documentation issues. 

I just created two - S/PDIF and TV decoder.

https://github.com/allwinner-zh/documents/issues

I believe there are a bunch more smaller issues - like bits in the codec and gmac controllers that are missing doc. Everyone can add issues for these as we find them.

Allwinner should watch the issue list, I believe you will get mail when on is created. Then as the various items get documented, upload a new manual revision and close the issue. This lets the community help find documentation problems instead of Allwinner having to do everything.

This git hub account is also an excellent place to put copies of the various SDKs. It is better if you don't put them up as giant 6GB tarballs. Push them up as trees of files. Doing it that way lets people look at individual files without having to download 6GB. 

There is a soft limit for 1GB per repository at github. That refers to the size of the .git/ directory in a repository 

and not the "checked out" files. The Linux kernel is about 100MB of such space. So there is enough space.

A single file on github can be up to 100MB, thus no big tarballs/zips can fit there. 

More at https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-my-disk-quota

As Jon mentioned, please check the Issues page on github for the documentation, and once an issue is dealt with, you can click to close them. 

More at https://guides.github.com/features/issues/ 

Thanks for adding the files on github and we are looking forward to seeing the rest of the repositories at https://github.com/allwinner-zh being populated.

Simos

[RFat]

Hi Kevin,

Publishing the user manuals will certainly increase Allwinner's chips popularity. 

I was wondering if there is a rough estimate as to when the A80's manual will be made available?

Thanks!

Raanan

[ke...@allwinnertech.com]

Hi, Raanan,

About the A80's manual, there is no a clear time now.

We are trying to make it available as soon as possible.

[jons...@gmail.com]

On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 8:39 PM, ke...@allwinnertech.com
<ke...@allwinnertech.com> wrote:
> Hi, Raanan,
>
> About the A80's manual, there is no a clear time now.
> We are trying to make it available as soon as possible.

Are there Chinese versions of the manuals (like A10,A20, etc) that are
better than the English ones? We can always stick the Chinese text
into Google translate and figure things out.

[jacky lau]

The Chinese developer get English version only. In my experience, most China semiconductor companies write SoC technical documentation in English only.

在 2014年10月8日星期三UTC+8上午8时46分17秒，Jon Smirl写道：

[jacky lau]

A big client will buy thousands of chips once. Are there any relation between big client and user manual publishing? No. So they don't think it's necessary to open their private property. When you are a big client, you are VIP, all document and source code is open to you. And if publish all technical documentation, competitors will know some technical secret (e.g. bug;) they don't want them to know.
Open world is beautiful, but they will not actively participate if there is no return. Why some China soc company publish some documents and source code now? I think this is mainly for marketing. But no matter how, VIP priority.

在 2014年10月6日星期一UTC+8下午8时55分30秒，RFat写道：

[jons...@gmail.com]

On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 10:31 AM, jacky lau <i90...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A big client will buy thousands of chips once. Are there any relation
> between big client and user manual publishing? No. So they don't think it's
> necessary to open their private property. When you are a big client, you are
> VIP, all document and source code is open to you. And if publish all
> technical documentation, competitors will know some technical secret (e.g.
> bug;) they don't want them to know.
> Open world is beautiful, but they will not actively participate if there is
> no return. Why some China soc company publish some documents and source code
> now? I think this is mainly for marketing. But no matter how, VIP priority.

Right now Allwinner is only good for tablets and STBs because
Allwinner supplies turnkey solutions. If documentation were more open
other applications could be developed. If customer can't get software
working for these other applications, they won't buy thousands of
chips. So if Allwinner wants to survive past the end of the tablet fad
they have to start developing these other markets. Otherwise when the
tablet fad is over it will be the end of Allwinner.

You also over estimate the value of "technical secrets". What is the
point of putting a secret h.264 encode/decode unit on the chip if half
of your customers can't get it working? Obviously Rockchip knows how
to make h.264 encode/decode since they have a similar unit on their
chip. And so does Freescale, TI, ST, etc. -- there is no big secret in
making h.264 hardware for people familiar with how to do it (hint, it
is an ISO standard). So by keeping the documentation secret you hide
nothing significant from your competitors and much, much worse -- you
keep your own customers from using the hardware they bought. Think
about it --- which is more important - hiding something form a
competitor that they probably already know, or getting your customers
to ship and buy more chips?

Bottom line - which one brings cash in the door - secret documentation
or getting as many customers as possible to ship?

[Jhon Yi]

Keeping so called 'secrets' is really insane. Allwinner overestimated
the value of some little tricks in their chips, or is too lazy to help
their small or potential customers. If they keep act this way, they
will pay the price sometime later. Intel had ever do the same stupid
thing, and now tastes the bitter of losing mobile markets. Allwinner
could be the next, if they don't learn the lesson.

[Simon Kenyon]

On 10/11/14 15:31, jacky lau wrote:
> A big client will buy thousands of chips once. Are there any relation
> between big client and user manual publishing? No. So they don't think
> it's necessary to open their private property. When you are a big
> client, you are VIP, all document and source code is open to you. And
> if publish all technical documentation, competitors will know some
> technical secret (e.g. bug;) they don't want them to know.
> Open world is beautiful, but they will not actively participateif
> there is no return. Why some China soc company publish some documents
> and source code now? I think this is mainly for marketing. But no
> matter how, VIP priority.

so the reason why chip manuals are not published is because there are
bugs in the silicon. gee! who would have thought it.
at least if we knew what they were we could maybe work around them.

i'm sorry but i don't buy this argument. fear of law suits because of
patent violations is a more plausible reason.

[jacky lau]

I agree with you and Jhon Yi. Developing a soc is not too hard now, getting customers is harder and more important. I hope the market will force all China Soc company more open. But before that happen, I don't think they will become more open.
They don't have experience in working with the open source community, if you want them to be more open, you need to do more communicate with them. And remember, to them, neither the law nor the spirit of free software, but making money is paramount. Tell them they will get more customers, make more money and prove it, then they will follow.

在 2014年10月11日星期六UTC+8下午10时53分48秒，Jon Smirl写道：

[jacky lau]

Cover up the bug is just a personal opinion. The more acceptable reason may be
* They signed a NDA with the IP vendor and can't publish some documents.
* They develop some control unit on the chip, this is private property of them, so they don't want to open it. Many companies do so, right?
* Open the document will lead to some engineers and marketing guys lost their job, as the open source community do some work.
I am not a staff of allwinner, so I don't know how they think exactly.

在 2014年10月11日星期六UTC+8下午11时15分46秒，Simon Kenyon写道：

[RFat]

Hi Jacky,

I am not sure how these speculations help establishing the open relations all of us are hoping to achieve with Allwinner.

Opening sources or giving various pieces of information is often counter-intuitive for various vendors including non-Chineese. Allwinner is making major progress in this respect. Giving us the user manual of the fairly-recent A31/A31s chips is a good example, indeed one that refutes some of your speculations.

That said, I believe all of us agree that it is Allwinner's best interest to make its chips popular among developers so that it'll reach, as you say, additional applications beyond tablets. The A80 is a strong chip that can power up a energy-conserving laptop, and the availably of a stable linux is a critical step in making this happen. The Sunxi community is the best way of making this happen. I, for example, am trying to implement various real-time video processing application on Allwinner's SoCs which is a another venue that can take-off both in the academia and the industry. 

The first vendor who will win the hearts of the open-source community will be the winner in this competition (See for example Atmel in the Arduino versus PIC micro-controllers).

I take Kevin's words seriously and expect to see of the manuals of the A80 soon so that all of us will be able to take things forward.

All the best,

Raanan

[Quink]

You are right. China have suffer too much from idealism. Now they come to
the other way. Don't say something too beautiful to them, they don't
believe that and think you are a cheater.

> > > email to linux-sunxi...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>.

> > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Jon Smirl

> > jons...@gmail.com <javascript:>

[RFat]

Alright, the manual of the A80 is OUT! 

(https://github.com/allwinner-zh/documents)

Thanks a lot Kevin!

-R

[Henrik Nordström]

sön 2014-11-23 klockan 22:13 -0800 skrev RFat:
> Alright, the manual of the A80 is OUT!

And looking good.

Still several components without documentation, but a long way since
A10.

Regards
Henrik

[javqui]

Thanks Kevin. Feeling more comfortable with AllWinner SoC, particularly the A80.

2015 will be an excellent year for Allwinner, I will include AW on my products and Engineer recommendations.

Javqui

[Jhon Yi]

Good.

[Andreas Baierl]

Hi Kevin,

I need some infos about the deinterlacer in sunxi display engine. Bob deinterlacing is working basically.
Is there a possibility to get some info's about these two parameters and how to use/ get them:

flag_addr: https://github.com/linux-sunxi/linux-sunxi/blob/sunxi-3.4/include/video/sunxi_disp_ioctl.h#L390
flag_stride: https://github.com/linux-sunxi/linux-sunxi/blob/sunxi-3.4/include/video/sunxi_disp_ioctl.h#L391

There is no (helpful) information in Allwinner Docs or sample code.

Thanks
Andreas

--

[Simos Xenitellis]

Hi All,

Sugar (shuge) posted a few updated documents on
https://github.com/allwinner-zh/documents
so in case you are not watching that repository, here is the summary.

You can use "diffpdf" (sudo apt-get install diffpdf) to compare
between the versions.
"diffpdf" gives a lot of false positives as it does a page to page comparison.

Another tool to compare PDFs is
https://www.inetsoftware.de/products/pdf-content-comparer
which comes with a 30-day trial (no restrictions). Written in Java.

On Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Simos Xenitellis
<simos...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
...
>
> Hardware datasheets
> A10: version 1.70 (previously known version 1.21)
> A10s: version 1.40 (previously known version 1.20)
> A13: version 1.30 (previously known version 1.12)
> A20: version 1.40 (none)

Updated version 1.41.

The changes are
1. page 20, at the table

Port PB3 / Multi4: changed from - to OWA-MCLK
Port PB12 / Multi4: changed from - to OWA-DI
Port PB13 / Multi4: changed from - to OWA-DO

> A31: version 1.40 (previously known version 1.00)
> A31s: version 1.40 (previously known version 1.30)
>
> User manual
> A10: version 1.50 (previously known version 1.20)
> A10s: version 1.30 (none)
> A13: version 1.30 (previously known version 1.20)
> A20: version 1.20 (previously known version 1.00)

Updated to version 1.3.

The changelog says: "Add SD/MMC and OWA register description".

OWA is One-Wire Audio.

> A31: version 1.20 (previously known version 1.10)
> A31s: version 1.10 (previously known version 1.00)
>

ADDITIONS:
A33: datasheet and user guide, both at version 1.1. (released 5 days ago)
A80: datasheet and user guide, both at version 1.1. (released 2 months ago).

Finally, at the https://github.com/allwinner-zh/bootloader repository,
code for u-boot has been released by Sugar (two days ago).

Simos

[Luc Verhaegen]

The reason for this release new is this:

http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/4895/allwinner-accused-of-breaking-linux-license-rules
http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/4899/allwinner-to-address-linux-open-source-issues

Triggered from a linkedin discussion in the arm based group on linkedin.

Luc Verhaegen.

[Ian Campbell]

On Sun, 2015-01-18 at 11:46 +0100, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
> > ADDITIONS:
> > A33: datasheet and user guide, both at version 1.1. (released 5 days ago)
> > A80: datasheet and user guide, both at version 1.1. (released 2 months ago).
> >
> > Finally, at the https://github.com/allwinner-zh/bootloader repository,
> > code for u-boot has been released by Sugar (two days ago).
>

> The reason for this release new is this:

Or, more likely, because someone emailed Sugar privately (I was on CC)
late last week and asked for a bunch of this stuff to be made available,
so it was.

Thanks Sugar!

Ian.

[Luc Verhaegen]

Ah, just like with the kernel tree:

https://github.com/allwinner-zh/bootloader/blob/master/u-boot-2011.09/arch/arm/cpu/armv7/sun9iw1/dram/Makefile

Luc Verhaegen.