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The Mediatek X20 Development Board: A Combo Of 10-core Chip And Android Marshmallow

As the tech world is getting innovative and developed each new day, the developer boards like Raspberry Pi are getting more horsepower helio-x20to run faster application and 4K graphics, quite similar to PCs. And with the recent launch of the Mediatek X20 Development Board, you have the latest mobile chip that gives the developer board PC-like computing power.

At present, the mobile companies like LeEco and Meizu are primarily using the 10-core Mediatek X20 chips in their new devices. The board is available with Android 6.0 Marshmallow and expected to be soon upgraded to Android 7.0 Nougat. Though, the use of 10-core in tablets or smartphones is not that much needed, but the use of the developer board to the chip can give the certain mediatekbetter results. Similarly, Quad-core chips are known as high power support to the handsets.

Samsung’s latest Galaxy S7 smartphone has the inbuilt board using the Mali-T880 graphics processor. The mobile is capable enough of 4K video playback and recording in the HEVC and VP9 formats, this is the reason that Galaxy S7 can be used to run mobile virtual reality apps.

Let’s discuss the other potential uses of the board.
• It can efficiently work as an Android PC that can be hard to find. It also can work as a media server or even a file.
• It can be used as a test bed for designing and developing mobile applications.
• It can be very helpful for engineers in developing the robots, drones and smart home devices.

In a press conference, Stephan Le provost said, “MediaTek wants to put the 10-core X20 chip in more products beyond mobile devices, and the development board will help.”

Inspired by Raspberry Pi, Mediatek has set its targets towards vertical markets like point of sale systems, industrial equipments and medical devices. As there is a vast area of possibility is open for the Internet of Things and billions of devices are being produced and shipped each year, developer boards are drawing interest as a way to create and prototype devices.

At present Mediatek is shipping its X20 Development Board at $199 which is surely much more expensive than the Raspberry Pi, available for $ 35 and having core ARM 64-bit chip and also can be used as a PC replacement. But if there is the requirement of latest and greatest technology, the Mediatek board can worth the higher price for its smart features.

The Mediatek board includes 8GB of internal storage, 2GB of DDR3 memory, and two USB 2.0 ports. Wireless features include GPS and Wi-Fi a/b/g/n. The board has an HDMI display outlet and an interface to attach a 25-megapixel camera

The board’s CPU has two of ARM’s latest Cortex-A72 CPU cores running at speeds up to 2.3GHz, four Cortex-A53 cores running at 1.85GHz, and four more Cortex-A53 cores running at 1.4GHz.

Le Provost further says that “The goal isn’t to use all 10 CPU cores at the same time, but to use the cores at the right time. The Cortex-A53 cores can be used for mundane tasks like music playback, or media serving, while the powerful Cortex-A72 cores can be used to crunch more demanding applications”.