Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2023) features a 2 GHz MediaTek MT8696T CPU, support WiFi 6E

Amazon Fire TV 4K Max 2023

Amazon has recently introduced its second-generation Fire TV Stick 4K and Fire TV Stick 4K Max 2023 powered by MediaTek MT8696D and MT8696T Arm Cortex-A55 processors respectively and going for $49.99 and $59.99 on Amazon. The new Fire TV Stick 4K Max model is an incremental update compared to the Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2021) with basically the same processor but clocked slightly higher, twice the storage capacity, and WiFi 6E support instead of just WiFi 6. The Fire TV Stick 4K (2023) is a more notable update compared to the very first Fire TV Stick 4K launched in 2018. Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K / 4K Max (codenames: AFTKM and AFTKRT) specifications: SoC Fire TV Stick 4K (2023) – MediaTek MT8696D with quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ 1.7 GHz, Imagination GE9215 GPU @ 650MHz Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2023) – MediaTek MT8696T with quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor […]

Silicon Labs SG23 and SG28 SoCs are optimized for Amazon Sidewalk

SG23 SG28 SoC Amazon SideWalk

Silicon Labs has launched two new Cortex-M33 SoCs optimized for Amazon Sidewalk with the EFR32SG23 (SG23) Sub-GHz wireless SoC and the EFR32SG28 (SG28) dual-band wireless SoC with Sub-GHz and Bluetooth LE. Both low-power SoCs are designed for “Internet of Things” applications in smart homes, security, lighting, building automation, and metering and come with a Matrix Vector Processor to enable AI/ML implementation for Smart End Nodes. Silicon Labs SG28 (EFR32SG28) specifications: MCU core – Arm Cortex-M33 @ 78 MHz with DSP instructions and FPU On-chip memory – Up to 256 kB RAM data memory On-chip storage – Up to 1024 kB flash program memory AI accelerator – Matrix Vector Processor for AI/ML acceleration Wireless Sub-GHz radio TX power up to +20 dBm Rx sensitivity – -98.6 dBm sensitivity @ 50 kbps 915 MHz 2GFSK 2.4 GHz BLE radio – TX power up to +10 dBm Protocol – Amazon Sidewalk Energy consumption […]

CORE-V MCU Devkit features open-source 32-bit RISC-V core, Amazon AWS IoT connectivity, Mikrobus expansion, VGA camera

CORE-V MCU DevKit

The CORE-V MCU DevKit is an open-source hardware board based on the CORE-V microcontroller featuring the open-source OpenHW CV32E40P0 RISC-V MCU core and a Quicklogic ArticPro 2 eFPGA. The board offers wireless connectivity to Amazon AWS through an ESP32-C3 AWS IoT ExpressLink module, a MikroBus connector for expansion, a VGA camera module, JTAG and serial debugging, as well as a temperature sensor and a few buttons. The development kit can be powered by its USB Type-C port (5V) or a DC jack taking 5V to 18V DC. CORE-V MCU devkit specifications: Microcontroller – CORE-V MCU OpenHW CV32E40P RISC-V processor core (in-order 4-stage RISC-V RV32IMFCXpulp CPU based on RI5CY from PULP-Platform) with 512KB SRAM, boot ROM Quicklogic ArticPro 2 eFPGA Storage – 4MB QSPI flash Wireless – Espressif AWS IoT ExpressLink Module for AWS IoT cloud interconnect Camera – Himax HM01B0 ultra-low-power QVGA (320×240) CMOS image sensor as found in the […]

Amlogic POP1-G octa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor shows up in Amazon Fire TV Cube 2022

Amazon Fire TV Cube 2022

Amazon has just launched the “all new” Fire TV Cube streaming device with an Amlogic POP1-G octa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor that we never heard of, but that appears to be almost the same as the Amlogic A311D2 processor that we reviewed in Khadas VIM4 SBC. The Amlogic POP1-G (aka Amlogic – AML Popcorn) also integrates an Arm Mali-G52 MP8 GPU clocked at 800 MHz, and the third generation Fire TV Cube features 2GB LPDDR4/x memory, 16GB storage, WiFi 6E and Fast Ethernet, as well as an HDMI port. Fire TV Cube 2022 specifications: SoC – Amlogic POP1-G (Amlogic AML Popcorn) octa-core processor with four Cortex A73 cores @ 2.2 GHz, four Cortex-A53 cores @ 2.0 GHz, Arm Mali-G52 MP8 GPU @ 800MHz with OpenGL ES 3.2 support System Memory – 2GB, LPDDR4/x – 4224 MT/s Storage – 16GB eMMC flash Video 1x HDMI output port up to 4Kp60 with HDR (HDR10, […]

ESP32-C3 AWS IoT ExpressLink module & devkit aim to ease connection to AWS IoT services

ESP32-C3 AWS ExpressLink DevKit

Amazon and Espressif have launched another wireless module with the ESP32-C3 AWS IoT ExpressLink module together with a development kit supporting out-of-the-box AWS IoT connectivity, following their earlier collaboration with the launch of the ESP32-PICO-V3-ZERO Alexa Connect Kit Module last summer. Also called the “ESP32-C3-MINI-1-N4-A”, the ESP32-C3 AWS IoT ExpressLink module implements the AWS IoT ExpressLink specification and provides AWS IoT Core connectivity to a host MCU via AT commands over a UART interface. Pre-provisioned and pre-programmed with ease integration the module supports WiFi configuration, messaging, OTA, and device management.   The compact (16.6 x 13.2mm) ESP32-C3 module is currently offered as part of the ESP32-C3-AWS-ExpressLink-DevKit development board following the Arduino Zero board form factor allowing it to be plugged into the Arduino board, or easily connect to other host systems such as the Raspberry Pi. The goal is to simplify the deployment of IoT solutions removing the need for […]

Cortex-M55 based Arm Virtual Hardware is now available in AWS Cloud

Arm Virtual Hardware Components

The Arm DevSummit 2021 is taking place on October 19-21, and the first announcements from Arm are related to IoT with “Arm Total Solutions for IoT delivering a full-stack solution to significantly accelerate IoT product development and improve product ROI”, “Project Centauri” aiming to achieve for an extensive Arm Cortex-M software ecosystem in the way that Project Cassini does for the Cortex-A ecosystem, starting with support for PSA Certified and Open-CMSIS-CDI cloud-to-device specification, and Arm Virtual Hardware based on Corstone-300 IoT platform with a Cortex-M55 MCU core and an Ethos-U55 microNPU accessible from Amazon Web Services. The first two are quite abstract right now, and more information may become available in the future, but the Arm Virtual Hardware is available now from AWS as a public beta, with 100 hours of free AWS EC2 CPU credits for the first 1,000 qualified users. The virtual hardware does not emulate only the […]

$55 Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max supports 4K AV1 videos, Wi-Fi 6

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max

Amazon will release new Fire TV Sticks from time to time, and most are only mildly interesting, but the Amazon Fire TV Stick TV 4K Max brings two new interesting features with 4K AV1 video playback, as well as Wi-Fi 6 connectivity which should prevent buffering for higher bitrate 4K videos. The new device builds upon the MediaTek MT8695 based Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K released in 2018, with a more powerful MediaTek MT8696 processor clocked at 1.8 GHz, more memory (2GB vs 1.5 GB), and the same 8GB of storage for the Android 9 based Amazon Fire 7 OS. Amazon claims the new stick is 40% faster, despite a frequency bump from 1.7 GHz to 1.8 GHz only, and MT8696 relies on Cortex-A73 cores Cortex-A55 cores (See comments), instead of the Cortex-A53 cores found in MediaTek MT8695, so the performance improvement probably refers to the faster GPU. Amazon Fire […]

Edge AI video processing system combines SocioNext SC2000 4K camera SoC with Hailo-8 AI accelerator

EdgeTuring AI processing solution

We’ve previously written about Hailo-8 AI accelerator delivering up to 26 TOPS at low power (3 TOPS per watt), and found in AI edge systems such as Foxconn BOXiedge server powered by a Socionext SynQuacer SC2A11 24x Cortex-A53 cores SoC and capable of analyzing up to 20 streaming camera feeds in real-time for video analytics. Leopard Imaging has now created a much more compact Edge AI processing solution with EdgeTuring based on Hailo-8 M.2 card and Socionext SC2000 4K camera SoC, and designed for low-power video analytics. EdgeTuring features and specifications: Camera SoC / Image Processor – Socionext SC2000 quad-core Cortex-A7 processor @ 650MHz with 4Kp30 H.265/H.264 encoder, up to 1.2 Gigapixel per second processing, LPDDR-3  memory (PoP) AI Module – Hailo-8 M.2 Module for up to 26 TOPS  Camera Dual camera but only one sensor works for AI Sensors – 2x Sony IMX477 CMOS Image Sensor, diagonal 7.857 mm […]