linux-chenxing

Intro

This is intended to be a repository for info on the MStar/SigmaStar SoCs. The name is a parody of linux-sunxi for Allwinner SoCs. MStar in Chinese is chenxing and the newer SigmaStar name is xingchen.

This will probably never get as big as linux-sunxi so github pages should be more than enough.

Before MStar was bought out by MediaTek the company offered a wide range of SoCs focused at STB and camera applications. Since the company was bought by MediaTek the camera SoC part of the company has been spun out into the fully owned subsidiary called Sigmastar. The camera SoCs that are now marketed by Sigmastar will be the main focus here.

It’s worth noting that the MStar/Sigmastar camera SoCs seem to be derived from the SoCs made by Alpha Imaging Technology which was merged into MStar at some point.

Porting Progress Matrix

u-boot

	load u-boot SPL from vendor IPL	load u-boot from SPI NOR
infinity	yes	yes
infinity3	yes	yes
infinity6	wip	wip
mercury5	yes	yes

linux

	boots to shell from initramfs	boots to shell from local storage	full system from local storage with network etc
infinity	yes	yes	yes
infinity3	yes	yes	yes
infinity6	wip	wip	wip
mercury5	yes	wip	wip

Reverse Engineering Progress

family	part	date codes	sample device acquired	boot rom dumped	firmware dumped	SDK acquired	product brief acquired	datasheet acquired
cedric
	mst786							yes
infinity1						yes[0]
	msc313	1647B	yes	yes
	msc313d	1638B
infinity2
	msr620
infinity3						yes[0]
	msc313e	1744B	yes	yes	yes		yes
	msc316dc	1929S	yes	same as msc313e	yes		yes
	msc316q						yes
	msc318						yes
infinity6
	ssc323	1928S
		1936J
	ssc325	1937S	yes	yes	yes
mercury2			yes
	msc8328	1744			yes
mercury5
	ssc8336	1915S	yes		yes
	ssc8336n	1918S	yes	yes	yes
	ssc8339d						yes

[0] SDK seems to actually be for the infinity1 but the infinity3 is very similar

SoCs

MIPS based

MStar used to make a lot of MIPS based SoCs for STBs. These aren’t that interesting in themselves but the IP blocks used in the MIPS SoCs were carried forward to the later ARM chips so any datasheets that can be found for the MIPS SoCs might help with reverse engineering the current ARM based ones.

STB

MSD7818
MSD7828

ARM based

Cedric Family

MST786 - Dual core Cortex A9 automotive (head unit) SoC

Infinity IP camera family

Infinity 1

MSC313 - Cortex A7 + 64MB DDR2 in a QFN80
MSC313D - Probably a Cortex A7 + 128MB DDR3 in a BGA

Infinity 2

part numbers not known, references to infinity2m in SDK. seems to be a multi-core part.
MSR620?
MSR630? TL-NVR6104C-4PX

Infinity 3

MSC313E - Cortex A7 + 64MB DDR2 in a QFN80
MSC316DC - Cortex A7 + 128MB DDR3 in a QFN88
MSC316Q - Cortex A7 + 128MB DDR3 in a 256 ball BGA
MSC318 - Cortex A7 + 128MB DDR3 in a 324 ball BGA

Infinity 5

SSC328Q - Cortex A7 + 256MB DDR3 (this might be i6)
SSC329Q - Cortex A7 + 256MB DDR3 + NPU (this might be i6)

Infinity 6

SSC323 - probably Cortex A7 + 64MB DDR2 in a QFN88
SSC325 - Cortex A7 + 64MB DDR2 in a QFN88
SSC325DE - Cortex A7 + 128MB DDR3 in a QFN88
SSC326D - Cortex A7 + 128MB DDR3 + NPU
SSC327DE - Cortex A7 + 128MB DDR3

Mercury family

Mercury 2

AIT8328/MSC8328 - Probably ARM9
AIT8428 - Probably ARM9

Mercury 5

SSC8336 - Probably Cortex A7 + 64MB DDR2 in a QFP128
SSC8336N - Cortex A7 + 64MB DDR2 in a 128 pin QFN
SSC8339D - Probably in this family, Cortex A7 + 128MB(?) DDR3(?) in a 268 ball BGA

Misc

MSB2521 - ARM9 based SatNav on a chip
MSB2531 - Cortex A7 SatNav on a chip

IP blocks

See IP.

ISP/Debug Tool

See ISP.

Blobs, headers, layouts

BootROM - Baked in BootROM
IPL - First/Second stage bootloaders
MXPT - Partition table used for SPI NOR

Vendor uboot, kernels..

Sources of firmwares for reverse engineering

Anjvision firmwares

To get the device tree out of the kernel you can use binwalk + extract-dtb and dtc.

binwalk -e <firmware.bin>
extract-dtb.py <extracted firmware dir><uncompressed kernel blob>
dtc -I dtb -O dts -o out.dts <extracted dtb that looks right>