Introduction
1. What is Inforce 6720?
The Inforce 6720 is a high performance production-ready turnkey product designed for AI/ML centric 4K video distribution use-cases. It is based on Qualcomm’s custom Octa-core 64-bit Kryo(385) CPU (Snapdragon 845) processor for embedded applications. The plug-and-play Inforce 6720 comes in a low-profile aluminum anodized extruded enclosure of size 175mm x 160mm x 25mm with in-built thermal dissipation and EMI shielding.
2. Does Inforce 6720 platform come with an enclosure?
Yes. The product comes with a low-profile aluminum anodized extruded enclosure of size 175mm x 160mm x 25mm with in-built thermal dissipation and EMI shielding for better RF noise protection and improved performance.
3. Does Inforce offer other form factors based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor?
Yes. Inforce offers a Micro SoM and a development kit based on that SoM. All native interfaces of the Snapdragon 845 processor are available on the development kit. Please refer to the product page at this link for more details.
4. Does Penguin Edge provide any custom design solutions?
Yes, while we offer standard products off-the-shelf (OTS) on our website and through our multiple distributors, we also have a strong background in customized hardware and software solutions. We offer pre-validated build-to-order (BTO) configurations, as well as configure-to-order (CTO) options for existing products. In addition, SMART Wireless also offers full custom hardware design and associated software/device driver development, for those projects where a unique hardware design is required to meet sophisticated technical challenges.
5. Where can I find more information about the Inforce 6720 product? What do I get when I buy an Inforce 6720? Is the device available internationally?
The system SKU comes with a fanless metal enclosure with in-built thermal dissipation techniques, external antennae for WiFi & BT and a brick power supply.
Please check on the exact product SKU for the presence of specific interfaces, pre-loaded software and if an enclosure is included. Once you register the product with us, you would get dedicated support from Penguin Edge.
Penguin Edge website has a lot of useful information about our Application Ready Products at https://www.penguinsolutions.com/edge/products/application-ready-platforms.
The board ships to most places worldwide and relevant shipping and local tax/customs duty charges may apply. Please contact PenguinEdgeSales@penguinsolutions.com for pricing details or any additional questions that you may have before buying an Inforce 6720.
6. Does Penguin Edge have a blog/newsletter?
Yes! You can find our periodic blogs at https://www.penguinsolutions.com/edge/resources/blog. Here you can keep up with all of the latest information about our products, conference/trade show appearances, and innovative customer case-studies and applications.
General
7. What are the accessories available?
Our website https://www.penguinsolutions.com/edge/products/accessories lists all the available accessories. Please note that User Guides and product datasheets are available for all accessories.
8. Does the product support a cellular or GSM connection?
The Inforce 6720 does not include support for a wireless modem. Third party cellular modem dongles can be connected to the Inforce 6720 via USB ports and may require special drivers from the respective manufacturers. We can also help you design in a 3rd party cellular modem module that is mated to this product.
9. What is the storage capacity of the Inforce 6720 platform? Is it expandable?
The on board storage (UFS) capacity is 64GB. Storage can be expanded through multiple options like a M.2-2280 SSD card or a Micro-SD card or USB storage on the Inforce 6720.
10. What are the performance details of the Inforce 6720? What is the speed of the RAM?
The Inforce 6720 product is based on the Snapdragon 845 processor, which includes custom Qualcomm® Kryo™ Quad-core 64-bit ARM V-8 compliant CPUs organized as two clusters viz. Performance@2.8GHz each and Efficiency@1.8GHz each with 2MB shared L3 cache and 3MB system cache.
The onboard 4GB LPDDR4X RAM operates at 1866 MHz
All our Android releases are benchmarked with Antutu and validated with the Qualcomm Trepn™ Profiler to ensure that all cores are capable of operating at their maximum frequency.
11. What types of displays are supported and at what resolutions?
The Snapdragon 845 natively supports dual-link MIPI-DSI and USB-C with DP Alternate Mode
The Inforce 6720 product supports an HDMI Output port and DisplayPort over USB-C port. Both these ports are capable of rendering4K60 resolution content concurrently.
12. What are the capabilities of the video Decoder/Encoder on the Inforce 6720?
Please refer to https://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html for supported codecs from Android. Hardware accelerated capabilities of the SDA845 SoC are:
|
Supported Codec |
Profile(s) |
Resolution/Bitrate/Framerate |
| Video Decode |
H.265 (HEVC) |
Main profile(8-bit/10-bit) up to level 6 |
720p/120Mbps/480fps 1080P/120Mbps/240fps 3840×2160/120Mbps/60fps 4096×2160/120Mbps/60fps 4096×2304/120Mbps/30fps |
| H.264 (AVC) |
(Constrained) Baseline, main, (Constrained) high profiles; up to level 5.2 |
720p/120Mbps/480fps 1080P/120Mbps/240fps 3840×2160/120Mbps/60fps 4096×2160/120Mbps/60fps 4096×2304/120Mbps/30fps |
| H.263 |
Profile 0; up to Level 70 |
720×576/16Mbps/30fps 864×480/16Mbps/30fps |
| MPEG-4 |
Simple, Advanced simple profiles; up to levels 6 and 5, respectively |
1080P/40Mbps/30fps |
| MPEG-2 |
Main profile |
1080P/40Mbps/30fps |
| VC-1 |
Adv Main, Simple and High profile |
1080P/20Mbps/30fps |
| DivX |
DivX 4/5/6 |
1080P/10Mbps/30fps |
| VP8 |
Profile 0, Version 0/1/2/3 |
720p/100Mbps/240fps 1080P/100Mbps/240fps 3840×2160/100Mbps/30fps 4096×2160/100Mbps/30fps 4096×2304/100Mbps/24fps |
| VP9 |
Profile 0; 8-bit; Level 5.1 Profile 2; 10-bit; Level 5.1 |
720p/120Mbps/480fps 1080P/120Mbps/240fps 3840×2160/120Mbps/60fps 4096×2160/120Mbps/60fps 4096×2304/120Mbps/30fps |
| Video Encode |
H.265 (HEVC) |
Main profile 8-bit, up to level 6; Main profile 10-bit, up to level 6 (10-bit HDR encoding with HLG standard only) |
720p/120Mbps/480fps 1080P/120Mbps/240fps 3840×2160/120Mbps/60fps 4096×2160/120Mbps/60fps 4096×2304/120Mbps/30fps |
| H.264 (AVC) |
Baseline, main, high profiles; up to level 5.1 |
720p/120Mbps/480fps 1080P/120Mbps/240fps 3840×2160/120Mbps/60fps 4096×2160/120Mbps/60fps 4096×2304/120Mbps/30fps |
| H.263 |
Profile 0; up to Level 70 |
352×288/2Mbps/30fps 864×480/2Mbps/30fps |
| MPEG-4 |
Simple profile; till level 6 |
720P/4Mbps/30fps |
| VP8 |
Profile 0, Version 0/1/2/3 |
720p/100Mbps/240fps 1080P/100Mbps/120fps 3840×2160/100Mbps/30fps 4096×2160/100Mbps/30fps 4096×2304/100Mbps/24fps |
13. What are the camera capabilities of the Inforce 6720?
The Inforce 6720 product does not provision for a MIPI-CSI camera connector. The native MIPI-CSI interfaces are used to derive a HDMI video input that is capable of streaming 4K60 videos.
USB camera (including Android External camera provider) is supported.
14. How much power does the product draw? Is it possible to measure the power?
The Inforce 6720 product is powered by a 12V/3A wall adaptor or an optional PoE+ Injector Input. Our products typically offer support for 7V-16V power input range. The total approximate power drawn by the Inforce 6720 platform ranges between 6W to 17W when different use cases are executed.
There could be test points made available on the board to measure run-time power. Please refer to the product’s User Guide for more details on these test points. The input current through the DC jack can also be measured during different use-cases. Note that we run the Qualcomm Trepn™ profiler as part of our validation process on all of our stock Android releases.
15. What are the audio capabilities?
Audio is available through HDMI, USB, and speaker out. The Inforce 6720 also comes with a combo jack for microphone and speaker out. The HDMI interface has an 8 channel audio with 7.1 channel surround sound, with support to Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master.
16. What documents are provided? Are board design files also provided?
We provide datasheets, user guide and a Hardware Reference Manual. Board design files and schematics are proprietary and are the intellectual property of SMART Wireless, and hence not provided.
All software releases are accompanied with release notes, user guides and application notes that describe the installation procedure.
17. What is the support model from SMART after products are purchased?
Penguin Edge offers a range of standard products off-the-shelf (OTS) on its website and through our distributors. Apart from these, it offers pre-validated build-to-order (BTO) configurations, as well as configure-to-order (CTO) options for existing products. In addition, we also offer full custom hardware design and associated software/device driver development, for those projects where a unique design is required to meet sophisticated technical challenges. All purchases of our products get unlimited access to the online TechWeb support portal, which provides a host of technical documentation and software downloads. Purchasers are also provided free technical support for two support tickets. For a sustained technical support, SMART Wireless offers Design Assistance Support Contracts for shorter periods of time and Annual Support Contracts for its customers who would like unlimited prioritized technical support. Please contact PenguinEdgeSales@penguinsolutions.com to obtain more details of the support contracts.
Networking, IO and Wireless
18. Does the device support networking and wireless communication?
Supported connectivity includes 802.11ac 2X2 MU-MIMO 2.4GHz/5GHz + Bluetooth 5.xLE (available via WCN3990) and GPS (supported via Qualcomm SDR845).
19. How can I change the MAC address for WiFi/BT/Ethernet on my board?
MAC addresses are fixed at the factory. Changing them should not be necessary since the correct addresses are programmed before the board is shipped. If it is still required, please refer to the Release Notes and App notes available on SMART Wireless’s TechWeb support portal.
20. Does the platform support PoE?
Yes, the Inforce 6720 product supports PoE+ and no additional accessories are required. The product provides GbE uplink through a USB to GbE controller that enables Power Over Ethernet (PoE+) supporting IEEE802.3at and IEEE802.3af compliant PD configuration. This allows the user to power the system from PoE enabled switches using a single cable.
PoE is an optional feature and is not present on the default SKUs available from eCommerce. Please contact PenguinEdgeSales@penguinsolutions.com to get this feature on a built-to-order SKU.
21. What are the IO interfaces available?
Standard I/O interfaces including GbE, USB-SS, USB-C, HDMI In, HDMI Out and audio jack are available on the enclosure. Please refer to the product specifications in the Hardware Reference Manual or the datasheet for more information.
Software
22. What operating systems are supported and what is the OS roadmap for the Inforce 6720?
A Board Support Package (BSPs) for Android 10 with support for all interfaces would come pre-loaded on this product and will also be made available as an officially supported package on our TechWeb portal. Periodic releases shall be provided with feature improvements on this package. SMART Wireless also upgrades the BSPs to newer Android releases and upstream Linux kernel to support feature improvements on its platforms. Please stay tuned for announcements on our website for update releases.
23. Is root access possible on Inforce boards? Could you please explain how to get root privileges in Android?
Yes. As Android derives from the Linux kernel, rooting an Android device gives similar access administrative permissions as on Linux. Please give below commands in adb shell to get root privileges #adb root #adb remount
Note that root access to the app space is not provided by default by the BSP.
24. Is fastboot supported? How to enter fastboot on this platform?
Yes. To go to fastboot mode, keep the Vol- button pressed before powering on the board and release it after the board has powered on.
25. I’ve modified the boot partitions on my board and the board is no longer booting. What should I do?
If the UFS (flash memory) partitions have been erased or the partition table has been corrupted, you can recover through a procedure that uses the USB port. Please logon to our Techweb repository to access the necessary document.
26. Is the Hexagon DSP available on the Inforce 6720 platform?
Yes. Qualcomm’s Hexagon DSP architecture is designed to deliver performance with low power over a variety of heterogeneous computing applications. It has features such as hardware assisted multithreading, privilege levels, VLIW, SIMD and instructions geared toward efficient signal processing. The Inforce 6720 comes with the Hexagon™ 685 DSP with dual-Hexagon vector processor for ultra-low-power audio and computer vision processing.
Qualcomm also opens up a comprehensive Hexagon SDK for all its processors that provides for a complete environment to generate dynamic Hexagon DSP code modules. Please check https://developer.qualcomm.com/software/hexagon-dsp-sdk for downloading the SDK.
27. Why isn’t Google Play (previously Android Market) available on my board?
Google Play is part of Google Mobile Services (GMS) and is licensed separately by Google. This is usually available on commercial Android devices. Though our hardware is capable of meeting requirements of the Google Test Suite that would lead to GMS certification, we have not added this to our product. Please contact our sales team if this is a requirement for your product.
Nevertheless, it is possible to side-load any Android application using the following commands:
#adb devices
#adb mount
#adb remount
#adb install apk
Should you have further questions not answered by the above FAQ and would like to have them included here, please contact PenguinEdgeSales@penguinsolutions.com.
