Cambridge, UK, 16 August 2016 - Linaro Ltd, the collaborative engineering organization developing open source software for the ARM® architecture, today announced that ArcherMind Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd has joined the 96Boards initiative as a Steering Committee Member and Manufacturing Partner and they are preparing the launch of their first 96Boards product.

ArcherMind’s board will put one of the most advanced ARM-based SOCs into the hands of all types of developers – from individual hobbyists building one-off projects to commercial engineering teams developing the next generation of mass market mobile and IoT products. The Mediatek X20 (MT6797) deca-core ARMv8 SoC offers four ARM Cortex-A53 cores for basic processing, four ARM Cortex-A53 cores for mid- to heavy-use cases, and two ARM Cortex-A72 for bursts of maximum performance along with an advanced ARM Mali-T880 MP4 graphics chip clocked to 800MHz. This enables the board to deliver unprecedented performance for a whole host of different applications. The board is available for pre-order  here.

“Our collaboration with MediaTek and 96Boards is designed to empower our customers,” said Bin Du, CTO of ArcherMind. “This is a unique opportunity for us to combine MediaTek’s high performance hardware technology with Linaro’s open source expertise and our own specialized software services to make a product for all types of developers. We are committed to supporting this community and look forward to seeing the innovative solutions that they develop.”

Founded in 2006, ArcherMind is a global, professional software service supplier specializing in software product design, code development, quality assurance, technology support, etc. The company is devoted to providing specialized world-wide software R&D services and focusing on R&D and consulting service in the field of mobile devices and wireless internet software. Headquartered in Nanjing, China, it also has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen ,Wuhan, Xi’an and Guangzhou and is active in North America, Europe, Japan and Korea.

“ArcherMind has a track record of providing platform software solutions to many leading companies and I’m excited to see them joining the 96Boards initiative,” said Yang Zhang, Director of 96Boards. “What makes this partnership particularly interesting is that it involves collaboration with another one of our members – MediaTek. This is a perfect example of what makes Linaro and 96Boards so unique – we offer a common platform upon which members can collaborate and thereby accelerate innovation.”

ArcherMind MediaTek X20 Board Specifications

Processor
Helio X20 64-bit deca-core with:
Two Cortex-A72 cores (2.1-2.3GHz)
Four Cortex A53 cores (1.85GHz)
Four Cortex-A53 cores (1.4GHz)

Graphics processor
ARM Mali-T880 MP4 800MHz
Multimedia Support
32MP @ 24fps / 25MP @ 30 fps
WQXGA 2560×1600 60fps FHD 1920×1080 120fps
4Kx2K 30fps H.265 w/HDR

Memory and Storage
2GB LPDDR3 2CH,933MHz
8GB EMMC5.1

Extended storage interface
Support Micro SD card (SD3.0)

Display interface
HDMI Full-size Type-A, support 1080P@ 30 fps

Wireless
MT6631 chip
WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n 2.4GHz and 5GHz(On-board BT and WLAN antenna)
Bluetooth 4.1 +HS compliant
GPS (with antenna connector)

USB interface
One USB2.0 high speed micro B (Device mode)
Two USB2.0 high speed Type A (Host mode)

IO extended interface
One 40-pin Low Speed (LS) expansion connector: UART, SPI, I2S, I2C x2, GPIO x12, DC power
One 60-pin High Speed (HS) expansion connector: 4L-MIPI DSI, USB, I2C x2, 2L+4L-MIPI CSI
One optional 16-pin analog expansion connector for stereo headset/line-out, speaker and analog line-in

Manual Controls
4 Mechanical Buttons: Power/Reset/Volume Up/down
6 LED Lights:4 user controllable, 2 -or radios (BT and WLAN activity)

Power supply
DC input +8V ~ +18V

Operating System
Android Marshmallow 6.0

Size
85mm × 54mm

About 96Boards

96Boards is the first open specification to define a platform for the delivery of compatible low-cost, small footprint 32-bit and 64-bit Cortex-A boards from the range of ARM SoC vendors. There are currently two 96Boards specifications for low-cost ARMv7-A and ARMv8-A development boards: The Consumer Edition (CE), which targets the mobile, embedded and digital home segments, and the Enterprise Edition (EE), which targets the networking and server segments. To find out more, please visit  http://www.96Boards.org.

About Linaro

Linaro is leading collaboration on open source development in the ARM ecosystem. The company has over 250 engineers working on consolidating and optimizing open source software for the ARM architecture, including developer tools, the Linux kernel, ARM power management, and other software infrastructure. Linaro is distribution neutral: it wants to provide the best software foundations to everyone by working upstream, and to reduce non-differentiating and costly low level fragmentation. The effectiveness of the Linaro approach has been demonstrated by Linaro’s growing membership, and by Linaro consistently being listed as one of the top five company contributors, worldwide, to Linux kernels since 3.10.

To ensure commercial quality software, Linaro’s work includes comprehensive test and validation on member hardware platforms. The full scope of Linaro engineering work is open to all online. To find out more, please visit  http://www.linaro.org.