vic7767 wrote:I don't see any other marked S0Cs on the board. I remove shield plate from the WiFi & camera board looking for clues but the devices are not labeled. Got a different angle on the processor and can make out most of the part number.
Thanks Vic! That confirms it: the i7 uses an STM32F303VE. Again, the 900 series uses the STM32F103ZE. Both have a maximum clock speed of 72MHz, 512kb flash memory, and 64kb RAM. The 303VE uses an ARM Cortex-M4 core and the 103ZE uses an ARM Cortex-M3 core.
Both chips have roughly the same communications interfaces (UART, USART, I2C, SPI, CAN, and USB). The 303VE has one more 12-bit ADC than the 103ZE, for four total, but the 103ZE has more GPIO given its bigger package. The 303VE has three "advanced control" timers, whereas the 103ZE has two, and six general purpose timers, compared to the 103ZE's four; both have two basic timers. Again, the 303VE is optimized for DSP and floating point math.
Like jdong said, this is hardly the huge leap in processing power iRobot advertised. I don't know how they figure it has "50x" as much processing power as the 980. Also, I don't know what specifically enables the i7 to "continuously [update] over the life of the product." Both microcontrollers have a DMA module, so maybe the i7 takes advantage of it and has external RAM, or maybe even an FPGA or something.
I think that other chip in the corner is a second STM32 from the STM32F030 family of low cost ARM Cortex-M0 microcontrollers. The 980 also had a second microcontroller, but it was an 8-bit micro from the STM8S family. It's common to have secondary microcontrollers in complex designs like this to handle auxiliary functions (power management, booting, etc.). As the the price of 32-bit cores keeps dropping, manufacturers are encouraging customers to adopt 32-bit chips with less powerful cores, like the ARM Cortex-M0, in lieu of 8-bit microcontrollers. In other words, this secondary microcontroller in the i7 also doesn't account for the "50x more power" claim.
jdong wrote:Hmm is the WiFi board different from how it looked on the 980?
Yeah, the wi-fi board on the 980 was maybe 1x2". It was much smaller.
Take a look here.
jdong wrote:I definitely wouldn't advise attempting to remove any of the shielding. That would probably ruin your wifi performance permanently. But if we can find the FCC filing for whoever provided this module, we might be able to get internal photos from there.
I agree, don't remove any shielding, but it'd be interesting to see what we can find by searching for part numbers.
vic7767 wrote:I agree Mike. There are a lot more wires than needed for a WiFi module & video camera. That wire harness plugs into the main board. Can't trace all the copper traces.
I don't know... that seems about right to me. There's no way that camera module is outputting an analog signal; I'd bet whatever image processing they're doing takes place on the daughter board, which communicates with the main board controller through some kind of digital low-speed parallel protocol.