[sdiy] $53 Intel Edison dual 500MHz Atom 1GB RAM SOC board has I2S

[Terry Shultz]

I looked at it briefly and ascertained it was no worse than an ARM solution in many respects.

However, The ARM family of devices give me a much larger feeding ground on features and portability.

I can agree on one point, if it uses the same tools as available on the PC x86, then migrating the code I have for 2D/3D audio from pc based to Edison might be possible.

Biggest problem I have is I need 4 I2S for connection to my HDMI ADI chips for audio extraction from HDMI on Xbox/Playstation platforms.

Gaming Audio toys are what I build along with a few synth projects on occasion.

I also need I2S for Audio out to go to my headphone application.

I render up to 8 channels of Audio to 2 channels out in my 2D/3D headphone application.

At present I use a Sharc for audio I/O and Rendering and a simple PIC for control purposes for user interface etc.

I have a PC implementation and I am looking at platforms that are more SOC centric and not too costly. Main problem is audio is still an after thought on certain suppliers devices.

perhaps Edison is a path to look at a bit closer, tools are not too pricey I think.




> On Dec 3, 2014, at 6:01 AM, Robin Whittle <rw at firstpr.com.au> wrote:
> 
> Hi Terry,
> 
> I was using the term "DSP" rather loosely.  A quick look at this board
> made me think it would be possible to have two or more channels of audio
> going in and out of the board, with all the audio processing software
> written in C++ (GCC - g++), using ordinary 64 bit x86 floating point
> instructions.  It has 1GB of RAM and 4GB of Flash.
> 
> There would probably be lower power and more compact ways to do intense
> DSP work with suitable chips, which would be BGA etc.
> 
> I was just thinking of writing from the ivory tower comforts of C++ in a
> familiar Linux environment and having the whole thing run on its own
> from Flash memory, using a watt or so (I guess, maybe more for the two
> cores working hard), all in a space about the size of a matchbox or so,
> without requiring heroics with BGA chips or even much surface mount.
> 
> This link should provide the latest forum messages of interest:
> 
>  https://communities.intel.com/search.jspa?q=I2S+Edison
> 
> I haven't looked at them in detail.
> 
> In principle it would also be possible to connect a USB audio interface,
> but I think there is only one USB connection and the directness and
> compactness of an actual CODEC chip, or separate ADC and DAC chips,
> going straight into a dual-core Linux SOC costing $53 . . . The 1.8 volt
> signal levels will require some level translation, since I think CODECs
> normally use 3.3V.
> 
>  - Robin
> 
> 
> On 2014/12/04 12:24 AM, Terry Shultz wrote:
>> Hi Robin,
>> 
>> Are there any DSP Libs available for the INTEL ATOM?
>> 
>> We rejected it a few years back at GM due to the lack of any DSP Libs and the ARM platform Could use the iEEE 758 ? libs as a starting point.
>> 
>> My Memory on this is somewhat dated but it was a point of contention and Intel had already sold off their ARM business to Marvell I believe by that point.
>> 
>> Perhaps you have more current info and could illuminate this a bit further.
>> 
>> I presently use Sharc and Ti DSP and several TI device I am using have ARM 9 + DSP. 
>> 
>> DSP functions are not clear on this device but I2S is always welcome if they are not MUXed with other functions necessary.
>> 
>> This is yet another thing to look out for on some of the ARM devices as it seems Audio I/O is not as forefront as Video needs and other I/O ports used for Memory, Network etc.
>> 
>> Just my 2 cents.
>> 
>> best regards,
>> 
>> Terry