How big is the ARM SoC inside the Apple Lightning to HDMI adapter? For those who don’t know: Lightning isn’t fast enough for uncompressed HDMI, so instead the iPhone or iPad uses its built in h264 encoder to compress the outgoing video, which is sent over Lightning to the SoC in the adapter, which actually runs a tiny stripped-down version of the iOS kernel. The SoC then decodes the h264 stream and outputs it to HDMI. Anyhow, IIRC from teardowns that is a tiny chip, too.
I can't say for sure, but that seems to be extra works than necessary. There are off the shelf chips which can do USB2.0 to HDMI with built-in H264/H265/VP8/VP9 decoding and the decoder is a hardened IP, not a software. There will still be a MCU, but only for handshaking. An 8051 will do just fine for this.
I know it’s petty, but it’s like nails on a chalkboard hearing Keil pronounced like “keel”. It’s actually pronounced like “Kyle”. (Keil was a German company before Arm acquired them, and in German, “ei” is pronounced like “eye”.)
the ADC and the I2C bus makes me think probably useful for sensors with some basic logic either as triggers (relay control via gpio) or data logging/transmission via a supplementary wireless module, you could no doubt connect a tiny OLED display to it, or a more traditional character LCD
I guess it depends on the application? Since I2C is so much slower than SPI, it seems to me that for the most part, peripherals that use SPI do so because they need the speed.
@@tookitogo some components will actually support both protocols, however this particular peripheral does not. This design is to retrofit an ASIC that only supports I2C in place of an existing FPGA. Speed is not an issue for this peripheral. There are some similar peripherals that have I2C that could be used. Lots of design options, but I'll likely go with a very small FPGA to provide this bridge functionality along with some other real time glue logic that needs to be implemented.
@@Cracked1ce I haven’t seen too many components (aside from small dot matrix displays) that support both I2C and SPI in one part number, though I’ve seen many that are available in both types (as separate part numbers). Can you give me an example, just to satisfy my curiosity? I don’t doubt you, I’m just curious.
Not much use for us hobbyists - where BGA is just troublesome, and the IC physical size is not such a concern, but look at STM32G031F8P6, which is far more useable. I have a prototype board in the D1 mini form factor in the works with this chip. This board can be programmed with STM32CubeIDE. Cheers.
I think battery powered HID would benefit from this chip. I think it would be interesting to set up some looping code and measure the power usage over say an hour to see what this chip would be like in portable devices.... Thanks for the video!
Looks nice for doing very small embedded things, but it'd be fine to have a portable development environment, like vscode/platformio or even the arduino IDE. Do you know if the software you linked to above is available for linux/mac? All I could see there, was windows things.
Bloody dust particle of a micro! At least it has an internal oscillator so i wager a guess, a usable application circuit is nearly zero size. Don't have anything in mind though. It has no wireless connectivity, it has no USB, and other things i can think of can do with an easier to handle package.
I've always wondered about multi chip interleaved ADC sampling e.g. to use as front end for a basic scope for debugging, experimentation or just an educational exercise. Provided I can get the interleaved timings right, 4 of these could equate to a theoretical 12bit 4M samples/s ADC, and/or make it reconfigurable to 4ch x 12bit @1MS, or 8ch @ .5MS logic analyzer 🤔. Oscilloscopes are just to damn expensive for me - I dont need absolute time and/or voltage measurement accuracy, just relative measurements. E.g. if for a change in x, how does that affect y & z. Disclaimer: Just a self thought hobbiest here
Depending on the sample rate you require you can use stm32f303cc very cheap, has 4 adc each can sample at up to 5Msps. Interleaved can sample at 20msps if you can solve the interleaving. Has much more ram for buffering, supports usb, etc.
hi, thank you for your very interesting video, I have installed the evaluation version of keil uVision5 with the compiler version 5 it is possible to compile the illustrated project. Greetings
Can't download the legacy compiler from that link you provided. Looks like I was not able to download. you mentioned that we need legacy compiler 5.06 - I can NOT download it.
Is there a way to one time compile and flash the code on this one so it can be soldered to a board say as a led controller etc. Basically wondering is there a pogo pin board which can be used for programming the flash.
I'm not aware of one but I am sure that one could be made for this chip. The only thing that might be a challenge is the small pitch between the BGA pins
Hi, nice review. Do you know if this actually an ARM core licensed from ARM? I thought China was blocked from getting IP from ARM... they were developing their own custom SoCs.. this was a few years ago though. Cheers,
No. The only confirmed thing happened is ARM China was making a bitter split with ARM Holdings, everything else is based on speculation. Also, RockChip just got A77 core license.
Getting this tiny seems a bit of exaggerated. I mean even the capacitors take more space. It’s cool and all but as far as I know there’s no voltage regulator IC and schematic that will suit for this type of size. Of course you can build anything you want but as far as size concern, there’s no advantage to using this thing. Simply because you need to power it somehow.
PCBWay can do 0.15mm/0.3mm through vias and 0.1mm/0.25mm laser micro vias, and they can fill the vias so you can place them directly below pads. You are just going to spend a whole lot more for that, but it is doable. Also those ridiculously small packages are not for DIY. They are for phones and gadgets where space is at premium and PCB substrate cost it not being counted down to pennies.
Not all ARM-chips are alike or comparable, this one is probably designed to power an electric toothbrush. Nothing new to see here! Also note that the ATmega328 chip that powers the generic Arduino is becoming hard to get as not many FAB's create it anymore, and its becoming obsolete.There are "Chinese work alike" that claim to be replacements, but these don't really are fully compatible and refuse to run some software. The real update to the Arduino is the RP2040 powered raspberry Pico board. And RP2040 are plentifully available.
@@surajbhawal2474 rp2040 official price $4 W600-PICO V1.0.0 - wifi board based W600 1MB FLASH MicroPython prize: $ 2.88 Just for a start. Many more boards to pick from in the same price range.
@@robina.jensen6114 maybe true for boards. But remember you're comparing a made in uk board vs a Chinese board. The Chinese ones will always be cheaper. But I was talking about ics. Rp2040 is even cheaper than an esp8285.
@@surajbhawal2474 I don't care where is made. RPi's are built in China and Europe. Rp2040 it self is from Japan. Is all about needs and perfomce vs. cost. You just stick to yout Pico and i'll use any kind of board ESP-32 / ESP8266 / STM32. They are all so cheap.
Amazingly small. But... A bit of a hassle making the tool chain and the chip is from China, which nation IS going to war soon AND losing in a very messy way. I can't see many civilian needs for this device, impressive though it is. Having to check if the PCB fan can cope implies problems. What if it is a weird pitch which most PCB fans can't be bothered with. I can see the part having MILITARY APPLICATIONS in Chinese warheads. I wonder what the makers are going to do after CHINA IS DESTROYED?
We are going to destroy Western democracy if it keeps creeping towards China. Just like your pesty voluntary soldiers sent to Ukraine to die, anyone creeping at us will either be sent home in devastation or be mailed home in boxes.
