Release Notes v1.1.0

Introduction

Astra™ is the new Synaptics’ compute platform designed for the IoT market. It features a series of high-performance, AI-native, multi-modal SoCs optimized for consumer, enterprise, and industrial IoT workloads. These SoCs come equipped with hardware accelerators for edge inferencing, security, graphics, vision, and audio, and offer out-of-box functionality with Synaptics connectivity.

Astra (v1.1.0) GA Release is a unified software development kit supporting the SL-Series of MPUs.

The high-level components included in this SDK are described below:

  • Upstream Linux Kernel and device tree.

  • Low-level Linux device drivers (U-BOOT) for peripheral devices.

  • Open source code for Multimedia pipelines.

  • Synaptics proprietary security approach.

  • Related SDK Documents

All of these items can be found through Synaptics’ and third parties open source Git repositories on GitHub.

Yocto SDK

The Yocto Project is an open-source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods for custom Linux-based systems for embedded and IoT products. By leveraging the power of the open-source development community, Synaptics hopes to provide its customers with a wider array of compatible software packages to build their products faster, with more features, while at the same time having the stability and support of a large open-source development project. Additionally, the SDK enables customers who already use a Yocto-based development environment to migrate to Synaptics class-leading silicon solutions for improved performance and additional functionality. The Yocto Project offers a vast number of software packages that provide many options.

Reference Board Supported Scope

Below table lists the supported ASTRA reference board (Machina) and supported scope.

SOC / Reference Board

Test Validation and Support Scope

SL1680 Core board + IO board

GA

SL1640 Core board + IO board

GA

SL1620 Core board + IO board

GA

License

Using the Astra Software Developer Kit and BSP requires complying with the ASTRA EMBEDDED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KIT LICENSE AGREEMENT –.

Synaptics Proprietary TAs

The following Trusted Applications (TAs) are Synaptics proprietary TAs which run in the OP-TEE Trusted Execution Environment. They are provided in binary format. Synaptics will migrate them into REE and open source the code to the public in a near future releases.

Package

Notes

MIPI-DSI

TA

SL1620

Fastlogo

TA

SL1680 / SL1640

SyNAP

TA

SL1680 / SL1640 / SL1620

DHUB

TA

SL1680 / SL1640

Vmeta

TA

SL1680 / SL1640 / SL1620

Where to get the SDK from GitHub

Images and Toolchains

https://github.com/synaptics-astra/sdk/releases/

SDK

https://github.com/synaptics-astra/sdk/tree/v1.1.0

Documentation

Getting Started

Astra Machina Eval Platform

Astra Yocto Linux Developer Guide

Astra Yocto Linux User Guide

For other collaterals please refer to the Synaptics Customer Portal.

New Features

Feature

SoC

Description

KMS Sink with IOMMU

SL1640, and SL1680

Support Kernel Mode Setting with IOMMU.

RTSP with V4L2 Playback

SL1620, SL1640, and SL1680

Add Gstreamer support for RTSP Cameras.

Multiview RTSP Playback

SL1680

Support for decoding and displaying 4 HD RTSP streams.

Mouse Capture with Wayland

SL1620, SL1640, and SL1680

Support for moving GST Wayland sink windows with the mouse.

NNStreamer support for GPU

SL1620

Support GPU acceleration of TFlite models using NNStreamer.

Multistream AI with RTSP

SL1680

Support AI operations on 4 HD RTSP streams.

AI support for ISP Camera

SL1680

Support AI operations using the ISP camera.

GST AI Support for GPU models

SL1620

Add Gstreamer AI support for GPU models.

IMX415 Reference Sensor

SL1680

Add support for the the IMX415 image sensor reference module.

U-Boot Updates

SL1620, SL1640, and SL1680

Update U-Boot to v1.0.1.

VCPU DVFS Support

SL1620, SL1640, and SL1680

Add support for dynamic voltage and frequency scaling.

EMMC HS400 Support for SL1620

SL1620

Add support for the HS400 mode on eMMC devices.

SoC Core Feature Summary

This section summarizes the hardware features of Astra Machina SoCs.

Feature

SoC

2D and 3D Graphics with GPU

SL1620, SL1640, and SL1680

DRM-KMS

SL1620, SL1640, and SL1680

Multi-standard Video Encoding/Decoding

SL1640 and SL1680

Cortex-M core boot

SL1620, SL1640, and SL1680

HIFI4 DSP

SL1640

NPU

SL1640 and SL1680

Security for CPU, BOOT, and DRM engine

SL1620, SL1640, and SL1680

MIPI CSI & ISP

SL1680

Specific Modules and Features

Feature Modules

Feature Items

SL1620

SL1640

SL1680

Comment

GST Audio Pipeline

GST Audio Pipeline

Y

Y

Y

BT A2DP Audio

Y

Y

Y

PDM MIC Support

Y

N/A

N/A

SW Decoding Capability

Y

Y

Y

  • Supported formats: AAC, MP2, MP3, Vobis, AC3, OPUS

File Playback

Y

Y

Y

  • Supported formats: TS, MP3, MP4, Webm

GST Sample Rate Conversion & Mixing

Y

Y

Y

  • Limitation on SL1620 audio mixing. Sample Rate conversion is fine.

GST Video Pipeline

KMS SINK with IOMMU

N/A

Y

Y

  • MultiView: Camera + Video OR multi Video

  • Dual display means the output simultaneously

  • Dual display for SL1680 means HDMI-TX + MIPI-DSI

  • Dual display for SL1620 means MIPI-DSI + RGB

HDMI Rx Video Path to Display Sink

N/A

N/A

N/A

RTSP stream with V4L2 playback

N/A

Y

Y

Multiview RTSP Playback

N/A

N/A

Y

AI support for ISP Camera

N/A

N/A

Y

Multi View

N/A

N/A

Y

Video Decode with 2K Wayland Sink

Y

Y

Y

FFMPEG Decode

Y

Y

Y

V4L2 Decode

N/A

Y

Y

Dual Display

Y

N/A

Y

Video Decode with QT Applications

Y

Y

Y

GST AI

NNStreamer - GPU (TFLite)

Y

N/A

N/A

Multistream AI with RTSP

N/A

N/A

Y

AI support for ISP Camera

N/A

N/A

Y

GST AI Support for GPU models

Y

N/A

N/A

Pose Estimation

Y

Y

Y

Single View AI use case

Y

Y

Y

Multi View AI user case

N/A

N/A

Y

  • SL680 supports multi-view AI case

  • SL1640/1620 only supports single view AI case

SyNAP

Y

Y

Y

  • supports SyNAP pre-process and sink

DRM-KMS

Fastlogo with OP-TEE

N/A

Y

Y

Fastlogo for SL1680/SL1640

EDID parsing

N/A

Y

Y

MIPI, HDMI on Astra Machina boards

Y

Y

Y

  • No HDMI for SL1620

  • SL1640 supports either HDMI or MIPI output.

    Default is HDMI, can be changes to MIPI via DTS

V4L2 ISP

Single Sensor V4L2 ISP Driver

N/A

N/A

Y

  • ISP feature is only for SL1680

  • Known limitation of Downscaling of inputs: YUV420

    SP 10bit and RGB 888

Support for 4K input and output

N/A

N/A

Y

Support for downscaling of the inputs

N/A

N/A

Y

Add support for IMX415 reference sensor

N/A

N/A

Y

U-Boot

SL1620 EMMC HS400 support

Y

N/A

N/A

VCPU DVFS Support

Y

Y

Y

U-BOOT v1.0.1

Y

Y

Y

General peripherals support

Y

Y

Y

  • Supports USB2.0 devices

  • Supports USB3.0 host

  • Supports Ethernet

  • Supports SPI Flash

Boot mode: from eMMC

Y

Y

Y

Boot mode: from SD-CARD

Y

Y

Y

Image Upgrade

Y

Y

Y

  • Supports eMMC image upgrade with USB U-Boot,

    SPI U-Boot and SU-Boot

  • Supports SD card image upgrade with SPI U-Boot and

    SU-Boot

  • USB U-Boot: image via TFTP and USB target

    (connected to PC)

  • SPI U-Boot: image via TFTP and USB Host

    (connected to USB Disk)

  • SU-Boot: image via TFTP and USB Host

    (connected to USB Disk)

  • Supports sparse image slices (Yocto will generate

    sparse image automatically).

OP-TEE Support

Y

Y

Y

OP-TEE

OP-TEE enabled

Y

Y

Y

WIFI

WIFI 6 & WIFI 6E

Y

Y

Y

wpa_supplicant 2.10

Bluetooth

Supported

Y

Y

Y

General Modules, Peripherals, and Interfaces Supported

General

Kernel

Kernel Version 5.15.140

Yocto

Kirkstone: 4.0.17

U-Boot

SPI U-Boot version: v1.0.1

USB Tool

version: 1.0.1

OP-TEE

OP-TEE version: 4.0.0

Gstreamer (GST)

GST version: 1.22.8

Memory

Memory - DDR

SL1620: (16bit or 32bit 2133 Mbps) DDR3 / DDR4 → 1G/2G

SL1640: (32bit 3200 Mbps) DDR4 → 2G/4G

SL1680: (64bit or 32bit 3733 Mbps) LPDDR4 → 2G/4G

Memory - eMMC

General Peripherals

Interrupt

GIC

Clock

Controls the system frequency and clock tree distribution

Timer

GPIO

GPIO is initialized in earlier phase according to hardware design

SDMA

Conforms to the DMA engine framework

UART

USB 2.0 (OTG)

USB 3.0 (Host)

I2C

SPI

Network

Ethernet

SL1620: 10 / 100 / 1000 Mbps

SL1640: 10 / 100 Mbps

SL1680: 10 /100 / 1000 Mbps

Wireless Connectivity

Supports WIFI & BT

GPU and Display

GPU

  • DDK 1.23.1@6404501

  • OpenGL ES 3.2

  • Mesa 22.3.5

  • libdrm 2.4.110

  • Weston 10.0.2

Direct Rendering Manager (DRM)

Display

RGB Parallel Output

Supported on SL1620

HDMI-TX

Supported on SL1640/SL1680

MIPI-DSI

SL1680/SL1640/SL1620. On SL1640 it needs to be enabled via DTS

Camera

MIPI-CSI

SL1680

ISP

SL1680

Audio Interfaces

PDM

SL1620

SPDIF

None

I2S

SL1680, SL1640, SL1620

Known Issues and Limitations

Note

Versions of U-Boot included in the Astra SDK v0.9.0 release are not compatible with Astra SDK releases v1.0 or later. Please ensure that you are using USB Tool v1.0 or later when flashing using USB. Or U-Boot v1.0.0 or later when updating with internal SPI flash. See Updating Internal SPI Flash Firmware for instructions on updating the internal SPI flash.

SoC

Module

ID

Summary

SL1640,SL1680

U-Boot

30036

SPI U-Boot fails for flash image to SD card.

SL1640,SL1680

Performance

29473

Some cases failed during run Synap NNAPI offline_test with latest models.

SL1640,SL1680

Gstreamer Pipeline

30385

Last frame is retained after playback stopped when using KMS sink.

SL1640,SL1680

Linux Kernel

28970

Test pattern didn’t appear when running “GFX video test”.

SL1640,SL1680

BT

28984

BT Remote control doesn’t work normally after being paired.

SL1640,SL1680

Display

30858

fastlogo.ta prevents suspend to RAM from working.

SL1640,SL1680

Gstreamer Pipeline

30691

A green flash appears when starting a stream when using KMS sink.

SL1640,SL1680

Display

30299

Warning are displayed by the kernel when stopping the weston service.

SL1640,SL1680

Gstreamer Pipeline

30438

Video flicker and horizontal line displayed during playback with KMS sink

SL1640,SL1680

Gstreamer Pipeline

30421

Video stutters randomly when decoding some H.264/H.265 streams.

SL1680

Video Player Demo

30437

Video flickers when playing 4 streams using V4L2 decoding.

SL1680

ISP Camera

30092

Video flashes and goes black in low light environment with ISP camera.

SL1640,SL1680

Gstreamer Pipeline

30429

Video freezes when displaying some streams when using KMS sink.

SL1640

AI Player Demo

30700

Object detection bounding boxes remain after stream finishes playing.

SL1640

Linux Kernel

30687

Ethernet is not enabled after multiple power on or resets.

SL1620

Gstreamer Pipeline

30587

Sluggish output when displaying some VP9 streams.

SL1620

Audio

29228

arecord prints “Sample format is non-available” when recording DMIC input set to 16 and 24 signed bits.

SL1620

Gstreamer Pipeline

30759

Green screen displayed when starting playback of an RTSP stream.

SL1620

Linux Kernel

29893

Observed Horizontal Stride, whenever there is an object movement

during USB Camera Test

SL1620

Gstreamer Pipeline

30741

Display window does not scale when moved from MIPI to TFT panel.

ALL

Gstreamer Pipeline

30877

Video output stutters when playing RTSP stream

SL1620

Fastboot

30596

Corrupted UI displayed in TFT panel in fastboot mode.

SL1620

Gstreamer Pipeline

29478

Streams requiring deinterlace plugin fail to play.

SL1620

Display

29430

No fast logo during boot up stage.

SL1620

Linux Kernel

30857

Wifi driver fails to suspend to RAM.