FOSDEM 2024 schedule – Open-source embedded, mobile, IoT, robotics, RISC-V, etc..

FOSDEM 2024

FOSDEM – which stands for Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting – is a free-to-participate event where thousands of developers meet in Brussels on the first week-end of February to discuss open-source software & hardware projects. FOSDEM 2024 will take place on February 3-4 with 880 speakers, 818 events, and 66 tracks. Although I won’t attend, I’ve created a virtual schedule like every year with sessions most relevant to the topics covered on CNX Software from the “Embedded, Mobile and Automotive” and “Open Hardware and CAD/CAM” devrooms, but also other devrooms including “FOSS Mobile Devices”, “ Energy: Reimagining this Ecosystem through Open Source”, “RISC-V”, and others. FOSDEM Day 1 – Saturday, February 3, 2024 10:30 – 10:55 – Screen Sharing on Raspberry Pi 5 Using VNC in Weston and Wayland with the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded by Leon Anavi In 2023, embedded Linux developers received eagerly awaited news: […]

2023 Year in review – Top 10 posts, statistics, and what to expect in 2024

CNX Software Happy New Year 2024

It’s the last day and last article of the year, so we will look at some highlights of 2023, some traffic statistics on the CNX Software website, and speculate what interesting developments may happen in 2024. Looking back at 2023 The semiconductor shortage that had happened since 2020 started to fade away in early 2023, and supplies for most electronics components and devices seem to be adequate at this time, so that was a bright spot this year, and hopefully, it will stay that way in 2024 despite geopolitical tensions. We did not have any super exciting new Arm application processors from Rockchip, Amlogic, or Allwinner announced this year, although the Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 CPU started to show up in some 8K TV boxes. The launch of the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC with a Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor was probably the main highlight for Arm on this side […]

Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-3 release adds support for PinePhone and PineTab devices

Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA 3 PinePhone Pro

UBPorts has just released Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-3 based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS with the latest security updates and beta support for PinePhone, PinePhone Pro, PineTab, and PineTab 2, adding to the smartphones already supported by Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-2. As a reminder, Ubuntu Touch was initially handled by Canonical for desktop/mobile convergence, but it was dropped when the company decided to refocus its efforts on cloud and IoT, and the UBPorts community took over and eventually outed the first stable Ubuntu Touch release in June 2017. The developers kept on improving the OS since then with new releases from time to time, but note that it should still be considered experimental only for most devices, and will not be suitable as a daily driver for the majority of people. The PinePhone and PineTab have been supported by Ubuntu Touch for a few years, but they had their own branch […]

Linux 6.6 LTS release – Highlights, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.6 release

The Linux 6.6 release has just been announced by Linus Torvalds on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): So this last week has been pretty calm, and I have absolutely no excuses to delay the v6.6 release any more, so here it is. There’s a random smattering of fixes all over, and apart from some bigger fixes to the r8152 driver, it’s all fairly small. Below is the shortlog for last week for anybody who really wants to get a flavor of the details. It’s short enough to scroll through. This obviously means that the merge window for 6.7 opens tomorrow, and I appreciate how many early pull requests I have lined up, with 40+ ready to go. That will make it a bit easier for me to deal with it, since I’ll be on the road for the first week of the merge window. Linus About two months ago, […]

Allwinner 2023-2024 roadmap reveals A736/A737 Arm Cortex-A78/A76 processors

Allwinner Roadmap 2023 2024 automotive industrial SoCs

Allwinner should launch new Cortex-A76/A55 and Cortex-A78/A55 processors in 2024 according to the company’s roadmap including the Allwinner A736/A737 for tablets and the T736/T737 designed for automotive and industrial applications. In recent years, we’ve seen Rockchip and Amlogic introduce more powerful processors with the Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor and Amlogic A311D2 octa-core Cortex-A73/A53 or the more recent Amlogic S928X Cortex-A76/A55 for 8K TV boxes. But we’re still seeing some recent boards based on Allwinner Cortex-A7 32-bit processors, although recently we covered the Allwinner A523 octa-core Cortex-A55 processor for tablets. So today, I decided to go on a quest to find out whether Allwinner plans to use 64-bit Arm “big” cores in their future design. I first ended up on the linux-sunxi website where they list the Allwinner T736 octa-core “sun60i” processor with two Cortex-A76 cores and six Cortex-A55 cores, but no other details. This leads me to some “notes” […]

Linux 6.5 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.5 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.5 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): So nothing particularly odd or scary happened this last week, so there is no excuse to delay the 6.5 release. I still have this nagging feeling that a lot of people are on vacation and that things have been quiet partly due to that. But this release has been going smoothly, so that’s probably just me being paranoid. The biggest patches this last week were literally just to our selftests. The shortlog below is obviously not the 6.5 release log, it’s purely just the last week since rc7. Anyway, this obviously means that the merge window for 6.6 starts tomorrow. I already have ~20 pull requests pending and ready to go, but before we start the next merge frenzy, please give this final release one last round of testing, ok? Linus The earlier […]

Banana Pi BPI-6202 industrial SBC features Allwinner A40i SoC, 24V DC input, RS485 interfaces

Banana Pi BPI-6202

Banana Pi BPI-6202 “embedded single board computer” features the industrial-grade Allwinner A40i quad-core Cortex-A7 processor with industrial temperature range and long life cycle, 2GB DDR3, 8GB eMMC flash, M.2 SATA slot, and more. That’s the second Allwinner A40i board from Banana Pi since the company launched the Banana Pi BPI-M2 Ultra SBC last year, but the new embedded SBC looks to be better suited for industrial applications with features such as dual Ethernet, an RS485 + RS232 terminal block, 24V DC input, and a -40 to +60°C operating temperature range. Banana Pi BPI-6202 specifications: SoC – Allwinner A40i quad-core Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ 1.20 GHz with Arm Mali-400MP2 GPU, 1080p60 H.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-1/2 video decoder, H.264 1080p45 video encoder System Memory – 2GB DDR3 SDRAM Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot, M.2 Key-B 2242 socket for SATA SSD Video & audio output – HDMI 1.4 port up to […]

Allwinner A523 octa-core Cortex-A55 processor to show up in tablets, SBCs

Allwinner A523 octa core Cortex A55 processor

Allwinner A523 is an octa-core Cortex-A55 processor clocked at up to 1.4/1.8GHz in big.LITTLE (DynamIQ) configuration and mainly designed for tablets with multiple display interfaces such as two 4-lane MIPI DSPI interfaces, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, a Mali-G57 GPU, and more. But the block diagram below also shows two Gigabit Ethernet (GMAC) interfaces and HDMI 2.0 output among other interfaces meaning it will likely be used in Smart Home products as the Allwinner R828/MR828, and possibly automotive products as the Allwinner T527. I first discovered the Allwinner A523 last March via a tweet by 柚木 鉉 (GLGH_), but there was little information at that time. We now have further details about the processor and upcoming products such as the Teclast P26T, and a potential Allwinner A523 single board computer or module. Allwinner A523 preliminary specifications: CPU Application – Octa-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ in big.LITTLE configuration with four cores @ […]

Memfault IoT and embedded debugging platform