New BeagleBoard-X15 open hardware computer spurs electronics innovation
October 20, 2015
By Stephen Law
Open community of developers utilize powerful, flexible system
BeagleBoard.org has rolled out its BeagleBoard-X15, allowing electronic innovators everywhere to have access to an open community of developers on a powerful open hardware computer development system. The BeagleBoard-X15 provides a very flexible processor-based development system with numerous user programmable cores. All of the design materials are released free to the public immediately and manufacturing is gearing up.
A core for any needÂ
Powered by a Sitara AM572x processor from Texas Instruments (TI), BeagleBoard-X15 is loaded with fast cores tuned to various programming challenges, providing the most flexible processor-based development system from BeagleBoard.org to date. With dual ARM Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.5GHz, the system provides nearly three times the performance per core of a typical ARM Cortex-A9 processor. Accelerated processing of physical world data is made easier than ever with the dual C66x digital signal processors (DSPs) supported by OpenCL.
BeagleBoard-X15’s available ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller core provides the ability to off-load system control tasks. With the quad-core programmable real-time unit (PRU), BeagleBoard-X15 provides the ability to create software-defined peripherals and extreme low-latency response to events such as sensing and responding to wind gusts around a quad-copter. The new board offers designers video decoding/encoding and 2D/3D graphic acceleration cores that enable a complete multimedia experience without taxing responsiveness on the user programmable cores.
Consumer-level connectivity and beyond
The BeagleBoard.org family continues to grow with consumer-level connectivity. Modern interfaces like USB3, PCle, eSATA and dual gigabit Ethernet provide high-bandwidth connectivity to off-the-shelf storage, communications and imaging peripherals. With available simultaneous HDMI and touch-screen LCD displays, the BeagleBoard-X15 provides no compromise user interaction. The BeagleBoard-X15 is ideal for applications such as robotics, media centers, interactive art, machine vision, home security and industrial automation.