SAUCS is a Search Engine for Security Vulnerabilities (CVE Database)

SAUCS MDM9206 CVE

Every so often we hear about critical security vulnerabilities in the news, but new ones are actually discovered daily, so it would be nice to have some sort of search engine to find out which known security vulnerabilities a given product or processor may have before purchasing it, or even more importantly starting a project. SAUCS does just that by having robots checking out the CVE update list, parsing the XML feed and formatting it. You can search for products or process, or subscribe to the vendors and products you want, and receive an email as soon as new changes as detected. I found out about SAUCS thanks to a comment from Thomas who pointed out the Qualcomm MDM9607 processor found in Quectel EC25 LTE module had a fairly long list of CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) entries while using the default? firmware as shown in the screenshot above. Each […]

Embedded Linux Conference & Open Source Summit 2019 Schedule

Embedded Linux Conference 2019 Schedule

In the last few years, I covered the Embedded Linux Conference and IoT Summit schedules since both were happening at the same time and in the same location. But the Linux Foundation have recently announced the Embedded Linux Conference will combine with the Open Source Summit, so the IoT Summit appears to have been phased out. The full schedule for the events taking place on August 21 – 23, 2019 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, USA, has also been released, so I’ll create a virtual schedule with some of the sessions most relevant to this blog. Wednesday August 21, 2019 11:30 – 12:05 – What’s New with U-Boot? by Simon Glass, Google LLC U-Boot is a widely used bootloader in embedded systems. Many users are unaware of the wide feature-set of U-Boot, particularly features added in the last few years. This talk aims to bring users (and prospective users) […]

Linux 5.1 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linux 5.1 Changelog

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.1: So it’s a bit later in the day than I usually do this, just because I was waffling about the release. Partly because I got some small pull requests today, but mostly just because I wasn’t looking forward to the timing of this upcoming 5.2 merge window. But the last-minute pull requests really weren’t big enough to justify delaying things over, and hopefully the merge window timing won’t be all that painful either. I just happen to have the college graduation of my oldest happen right smack dab in the middle of the upcoming merge window, so I might be effectively offline for a few days there. If worst comes to worst, I’ll extend it to make it all work, but I don’t think it will be needed. Anyway, on to 5.1 itself. The past week has been pretty calm, […]

Pinebook Pro Arm Laptop Video Demo

Pinebook Pro Laptop Demo

Pine64 first revealed working on Pinebook Pro Arm Linux laptop at FOSDEM 2019 back at the end of January. The first Pinebook laptop had limited hardware resources, and as such was meant for simple tasks, but Pinebook Pro equipped with Rockchip RK3399 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB to 128GB flash, and a 14″ Full HD display is designed to be used as your main laptop. That means everything needs to work from 3D graphics acceleration, to hardware video decoding, and USB-C video output. Lukasz Erecinski very recently shot a demo of the laptop in action, and everything looks very good, meaning the laptop should be come available soon. You can watch the demo further below, but if you are in a rush here’s what has been tested and works: Ubuntu & Debian with MATE desktop 4K video playback 3D graphics acceleration for games (Quake demo) 3D graphics acceleration in Chromium web […]

Qualcomm Centriq ArmServer SoCs Are Truly Dead with the Closure of HuaXinTong

HuaXinTong

We already knew Qualcomm had given up on their Centriq processor since mid June 2018, but earlier this year, it seemed the solution had found a new life with HuaXinTong StarDragon 4800 Server SoC born out of a joint venture between Qualcomm and Guizhou provincial government. The processor was allegedly a customized version of the original Centriq 2460 48-core Arm SoC. But recent reports point out that 10 employees from HuaXinTong Semiconductor (aka HXT) have claimed the joint venture is closing down with executives at the company said the venture would shut down by April 30 in an internal meeting. HXT representatives declined to comment on the rumor. The Arm server market is really brutal. Qualcomm and Guizhou government had invested a combined $570 million in HXT as of August 2018 according to company’s fillings. Broadcom and AMD gave up one Arm server chips a little while ago. AFAIK, this […]

Eclipse IoT Survey Report Reveals Arm & Linux Dominate, Security Concerns

Constrained devices Arm IoT

The Eclipse IoT Working Group has just released a report asking the global IoT developer community to share their perceptions, requirements, and priorities. And with over 1,700 individuals taking the survey between February and March 2019, the key findings are interesting: IoT drives real-world, commercial outcomes today. 65% of respondents are currently working on IoT projects professionally or will be in the next 18 months. IoT developers mostly use C, C++, Java, JavaScript, and Python AWS, Azure, and GCP are the leading IoT cloud platforms Top three industry focus areas remain the same as last year: IoT Platforms, Home Automation, and Industrial Automation / IIoT. MQTT remains the dominant IoT communication protocol leveraged by developers The Eclipse Desktop IDE is the leading IDE for building IoT applications The last point may be slightly biased because the survey was done by the Eclipse IoT Working Group, so most respondents were already […]

Panfrost is an Open Source Driver for Arm Mali Midgard GPUs

Panfrost open source arm gpu driver

Getting GPU drivers to work on Linux with Arm SoCs was really a struggle a few years ago due to close-sources binary blobs that required all bugs to be fixed by a single team. But in recent years we’ve seen good progress with open source mobile GPU drivers including Freedreno for Adreno GPUs, and Etnaviv for Vivante GPUs. Arm Mali also got its own open source Lima driver worked on for many years but only for older Utgard GPUs (Mali 400, Mali 450). However, during the Opensource GPU Drivers BoF at Linaro Connect Bangkok 2019, Rob Herring, Technical Architect at Linaro and Tomeu Vizoso, Principal Software Engineer at Collabora, discuss the status of drivers, and I learned about an open source driver for Mali Midgard (Mali-T6xx, Mali-T7xx) GPU called Panfrost. As we’ll see below, the driver is already capable of running basic demos, has been upstreamed to Mesa, and tested […]

ClearFog ITX Workstation May be the Ultimate Arm Developer Platform

ClearFog ITX Workstation

Most people are still doing Arm development work on x86 platforms, because there aren’t really any viable equivalent in the Arm world. Current options include Edge Server SynQuacer E-Series (aka Linaro Developer Box), a $1,250 Arm PC shipping with a 24-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor, 4GB RAM (by default), a 1TB hard drive, and Geforce GT710 graphics cards, as well as the much more powerful GIGABYTE ThunderXStation workstation with up to two Cavium ThunderX 32-core Armv8 processors,  32GB to 128GB RAM configuration, NVMe storage, and more. The former was a good place to get started, but the Arm Cortex-A53 cores clicked at 1GHz provided limited performance, and the GIGAGYTE workstation costs over $12,000, so it’s only suitable for projects with specific needs and/or a high expected return on investment. That’s why there will be a discussion about Designing a next generation ARM Developer Platform at Linaro Connect 2019 next week in […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case