Introduction

1. What is Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM?

The Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM is a high performance tiny System on Module (SoM) solution for embedded systems designers. It is based on Qualcomm’s custom Octa-core 64-bit Kryo(585) CPU (QCS8250) processor for IoT applications. The plug-and-play Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM comes in a small form factor of 35mm x 53mm.

2. Does Inforce offer a reference carrier board for its SoMs or other form factors based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor?

Yes. Inforce offers a reference carrier board for this SoM. Most of the native interfaces of the QCS8250 processor are brought out on this carrier. Please refer to the reference design product page for more details. The reference design comprises of the Inforce 68A1 SoM and the carrier board. We would be glad to help customers design their own carrier boards.

3. Does Inforce provide any custom design solutions since some designs wouldn’t be able to use the standard SoM’s form factor and or features?

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. For customers wanting to design their own unique form-factor carrier board to interface with the OTS Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM, we offer design assistance support packages that include dedicated engineer, reference schematics and design reviews—contact our sales team for more details. In addition, Inforce 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.

4. Where can I find more information about the Inforce 68A1 Dev kit? What do I get when I buy an Inforce 68A1 Dev kit? Is the product available internationally?

Details specific to the 68A1 dev kit are available at https://www.penguinsolutions.com/edge/products/reference-designs/qualcomm-QCS8250-inforce-68A1-reference-design. The Inforce 68A1 Dev kit includes the Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM plugged-in to the carrier board through B2B connectors and a starter kit that includes a 12V power adapter and USB-C cable. Once you register the product with us, you would get dedicated support. 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 68A1.

5. Does Penguin Solutions have a blog?

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 Inforce products, conference/trade show appearances, and innovative customer case-studies and applications.

General

6. What are the accessories available?

Our website https://www.penguinsolutions.com/edge/products/accessories lists all the available accessories. Do have a look at the applicable accessories for each of our products. Please note that User Guides and product datasheets are available for all accessories.

7. Does the 68A1 Dev kit support a cellular or GSM connection?

The Inforce 68A1 does not include support for a wireless modem. Third party cellular modem dongles can be connected to the Inforce 68A1 based development kit 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 in your custom carrier board that is mated with an Inforce Micro SoM.

8. Does the product support extended temperatures?

Yes, we can help customers support extended temperatures on their product based on our Micro SoM. We provide a detailed app note on determining a suitable solution for heat transfer from the SoM. We will be glad to propose a cooling solution for the thermal dissipation of heat for the full system too after we have details of your chassis.

9. What is the storage capacity of the Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM? Is it expandable?

The on board storage (UFS) capacity is 64GB. Storage can be expanded by connecting a Micro-SD card or USB storage on the Inforce 68A1 development kit.

10. What are the performance details of the Inforce 68A1? What is the speed of the RAM?

The Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM is based on the Qualcomm QCS8250 SoC, which includes custom Qualcomm® Kryo™ Octa-core 64-bit CPUs organized as two clusters viz., Performance@2.8GHz each and Efficiency@1.8GHz each with 4MB shared L3 cache.

The onboard 8GB LPDDR5 RAM operates at 2750 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 is the stacked height of the SoM mounted on the carrier board?

The height of the Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM is 7.5mm with the presence of the EMI shield. This is the full height when mounted on mating connectors on the carrier board.

12. What types of displays are supported and at what resolutions?

The QCS8250 natively supports dual-link MIPI-DSI and USB-C with DP Alternate Mode. The Inforce 68A1 Development Kit has a 51-pin FI-R DSI connector with support for dual MIPI-DSI ports. Note that the displays are not provided as peripherals with the Inforce 68A1 development kit. They can be purchased from https://www.penguinsolutions.com/edge/products/accessories.

13. What are the capabilities of the video Decoder/Encoder on the Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM?

Please refer to https://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html for supported codecs from Android. Hardware accelerated capabilities of the QCS8250 SoC are: Video Decode – Supports H.265 Main 10, H.265 Main, H.264 High, VP9 Profile 2, VP8, MPEG-2 codecs up to 4K240 or 8K60 Video Encode – Supports H.265 Main 10, H.265 Main, H.264 High, VP8 codecs up to 4K120 or 8K30

14. What are the camera capabilities of the Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM?

The Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM has five MIPI-CSI camera interfaces that support 4 lanes from CSI0, CSI1, CSI2, CSI4 and CSI5 each and one MIPI-CSI camera interface that supports 2 lanes from CSI3. The 68A1 Dev kit brings out CSI0, CSI1 and CS12 interfaces on its 3 MIPI-CSI connectors.

15. How much power does the SoM draw? Is it possible to measure the power?

The Inforce 68A1 SoM takes 3.8V power input. The development kit is powered by a 12V/3A wall adaptor. Our products typically offer support for 7V-16V power input range. The total power consumed by the Inforce 68A1 Development Kit ranges between 6W to 17W when different use cases are executed. There are a few test points made available to measure run-time power on the board. The input current through the DC jack can be measured during different use-cases. Please note that we run the Qualcomm Trepn™ profiler as part of our validation process on all of our stock Android releases.

16. What are the audio capabilities of the SoM?

The available audio interfaces from the SoM are – Soundwire/LPI_MI2S2/DMIC – 2X DMIC/LPI_MI2S1 – 1x MI2S2 – 1x MI2S0/GPIO Audio is brought out as 1x Earout, 1x AuxOut and 5x Mic-In (3x Analog Mic-In + 2x Analog Mic-In / Digital) from the WCD9385 audio codec on the SoM. On the 68A1 dev kit, audio is brought out on a combo jack as line-outs, and mic-in. Audio is also available from the USB lines.

17. What are the sensor capabilities?

The QCS8250 processor’s Hexagon DSP cluster has a dedicated sensor core to support always-on low-power sensor-aware apps.

18. What documents are provided? Are board design files also provided?

We provide datasheets, user guide and a Hardware Reference Manual. Schematics are not provided for the Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM. Schematics for the dev kit can be made available based on the business case and please contact our sales team for this. Board design files are proprietary and are the intellectual property of Penguin Edge, and hence not provided. All software releases are accompanied with release notes, user guides and application notes that describe the installation procedure.

19. What is the support model after products are purchased?

We offers a range of standard products off-the-shelf (OTS) on its website and through our distributors (Arrow/Mouser/Atlantik). 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, Inforce 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.

20. Is there a way to automatically boot up the reference design, when the system is electrically powered?

Yes, this is possible but will involve a hardware rework. On the carrier board, please mount a 0Ω resistor for R243 (location shown below). Do note that the warranty becomes void once the hardware is modified by you.

Networking, IO and Wireless

21. Does the device support networking and wireless communication?

Supported connectivity includes 802.11ax 2X2 MIMO WiFi 6 + Bluetooth 5.1LE (available via WCN3990).

22. 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 Inforce’s TechWeb support portal.

Software

23. What operating systems are supported and what is the OS roadmap for the Inforce 68A1 Micro SoM?

A Board Support Package (BSPs) for Android 10 is available today as an officially supported package on the Inforce TechWeb. Periodic releases shall be provided with feature improvements on this package. Inforce also upgrades the BSPs to newer Android releases when available from Qualcomm, to support feature improvements on its platforms. Please stay tuned for announcements on our website for update releases.

24. 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

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 68A1 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 68A1 micro SoM comes with the Hexagon™ 690 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.