Systems-on-Module Market Update – An Interview with Toradex CMO

Daniel Lang Toradex CMO

I’ve been interviewing Daniel Lang, Toradex Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), over email just before Embedded World 2019, to learn a bit more about the system-on-module market, and what’s ahead. CNXSoft: We’ve already covered several Toradex systems-on-module and development kits on CNX Software, but for readers who may not know Toradex yet, could you provide a short description of what the company does in the embedded systems space? Daniel Lang: Thanks for having me. Toradex builds high reliable Arm-based System on Modules. Our focus is to make the life of developers easier and to reduce the complexity and time-to-market. We sell hardware, but most of our engineering resources focus on Software and Support. Our products are used in areas such as Industrial Automation, Medical, Transportation, Test and Measurement, Building Automation and many more. CNXSoft: Could you explain why / what type of customers go the SoM route instead of designing for […]

Arm Neoverse E1 & N1 Processors Target Edge and Cloud Infrastructure

Neoverse E1

Arm has just announced two new processors for compute workloads with a power efficient Neoverse E1 platform targeting edge devices like 5G base stations, as well as the more powerful Neoverse N1 platform designed for the cloud, and aiming at challenging Intel Xeon processors. Arm Neoverse E1 Key specifications and features of Arm Neoverse E1: Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) supporting two threads concurrently Up to 8 cores (16 threads) per cluster Superscalar, out-of-order pipeline Configurable private L2 cache Configurable L3 cache Low-latency Accelerator Coherency Port (ACP) for closely coupled accelerator integration Support cache stashing into L2/L3 cache Arm Neoverse E1 is the first Arm processor to support SMT and is best suited for data plane compute workloads such as 4G/5G transport, software-defined networking, software-defined storage, and SD-WAN. The platform features a scalable architecture suitable for 10Gb wireless/wireline devices to high-performance 100G+ Dataplane Processing Unit (DPU). Arm developed a 5G small cell […]

Arm Helium Delivers up to 15x Performance Uplift for Machine Learning on Cortex-M MCUs

Arm Helium

Arm has just unveiled Armv8.1-M architecture that adds Arm Helium technology, the M-Profile Vector Extension (MVE) for the Arm Cortex-M cores that will improve the compute performance of Cortex-M based microcontrollers. Helium will deliver up to 15 times more machine learning (ML) performance and up to 5 times uplift to signal processing allowing local decision-making on low-power embedded devices. Helium instructions will enable new applications for Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers in audio devices, sensor hubs, keyword spotting, voice command control, power electronics, communications and still image processing. Helium and Neon (the Advanced SIMD technology for Arm Cortex-A processors) are similarities but Helium has been designed for efficient signal processing performance in small processors. One different illustrated below is that while NEON loads 128-bit instructions (e.g. VLDR, VLMA), Helium will split up 128‑bit wide instruction into four equally sized chunks, called “beats” (labelled A to D) due to difference between Cortex-M and […]

Ubuntu 18.04 Now Boots on Some Snapdragon 835 Arm Laptops

Snapdragon 835 Ubuntu Arm Laptop

The first “proper” Windows 10 Arm laptops were unveiled at the end of 2017 and beginning of 2018, all based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor with always-on LTE connectivity, 20+ hour battery life, a fairly expensive price tag, and somewhat underwhelming performance. Qualcomm was not interested in supporting Linux, but there was interest from the community, and now it seems Ubuntu 18.04 images are available for Lenovo Miix 630, HP Envy x2, and ASUS Novago TP370 thanks to Aarch64-laptop project currently hosted on Github. Now the prebuilt images are not really ready for end users since UFS storage and WiFi are not working on any laptop yet, the touchpad is not working on the ASUS laptop, and accelerated graphics needs to be implemented. Interestingly WiFi is related to UFS on those laptops, and Marc Gonzalez is said to be being actively worked on UFS upstream support, which should enable for […]

Autoware is an “All-in-One” Open-source Software for Autonomous Driving

Autoware.AI Software Architecture

All major automotive companies, and some technology companies are all working on autonomous driving with the ultimate goal of achieving level 5 autonomous driving meaning no human intervention is needed at any stage. Development will take some more time, and companies are now competing with closed source software and hardware. But as I browsed through Linaro Connect Bangkok 2019 schedule, I found out there’s an open source autonomous driving software called Autoware.AI. Several “Autoware” projects are managed by the newly founded Autoware Foundation, a non-profit organization created to develop a synergy between corporate development and academic research in order to provide access to autonomous driving technology for everyone: Autoware.AI is the first version built on ROS 1, and Linux, and has been developed as a research and development platform Autoware.auto is the second version built on ROS 2, and Linux, with a complete redesign. Autoware.IO is an interface project for Autoware […]

OpenISA VEGAboard Combines RISC-V and ARM Cortex-M Cores

VEGAboard

OpenISA has launched an Arduino compatible RISC-V development called VEGAboard that features RV32M1 wireless microcontroller with a RISC-V RI5CY core, a RISC-V ZERO-RISCY core as well as Arm Cortex-M4F and Cortex-M0 cores, and a radio operating in the 2.36 GHz to 2.48 GHz range. An external NXP Kinetis K26 Arm Cortex-M4 MCU is added to the board for OpenSDA (Open-Standard Serial and Debug Adapter) debugging over a single USB cable. The board was offered for free, I’m just not sure when, but they are already out of stock. Hopefully, they’ll start selling the board soon enough. VEGAboard (RM32M1-VEGA) board key features and specifications: Ultra-low-power RV32M1 Wireless MCU supporting BLE, Generic FSK, and IEEE Std 802.15.4 (Thread) platforms IEEE Std. 802.15.4-2006 compliant transceiver supporting 250 kbps O-QPSK data in 5.0 MHz channels, and full spread-spectrum encoding and decoding Fully compliant Bluetooth v4.2 Low Energy (BLE) Reference design area with small-footprint, low-cost […]

MXCHIP EMW3060 WiFi IoT module sells for less than $2

MXCHIP EMW3060

Over the last few years, we’ve seen several Arm based WiFi IoT modules trying to compete with Tensilica based ESP8266 including Pine64 PADI IoT Stamp and Air602 WiFi IoT modules with similar functionalities and price (around $2) as the Espressif modules. I have not seen many projects with any of those Arm based wireless modules, likely because Espressif Systems software ecosystem is mature, and it’s hard to compete for new entrants. Nevertheless there’s a new Arm WiFi IoT module, not based on Cortex-M core, but instead, MXCHIP EMW3060 is equipped with an older ARM9 core, 256KB RAM, and 2MB flash, and sells for just $1.79 on Seeed Studio in single quantity. The price further drops to $1.55 per unit if you order 50 pieces or more. MXCHIP EMW3060 WiFi IoT module specifications: SoC ARM9 core clocked at 120 MHz System Memory – 256KB SRAM Storage – 2MB flash Connectivity – […]

Huaxintong StarDragon 4800 Server SoC is Based on Qualcomm Centriq 2400 Processor

Qualcomm started shipping samples of their Arm based Centriq 2400 server processors in 2016, before launching mass production the next year with three parts including Qualcomm Centriq 2460 48-core processor. Development seemed to go along nicely until Qualcomm allegedly decided to exit the server market in the middle of last year. The story got confusing when GIGABYTE still decided to launch their H221-Q20 server powered by Qualcomm Centriq 2400 processor last November, which would not make sense if Qualcomm is really existing the server market, and parts would not become unavailable after a short. But today, as I read the slides of GIGABYTE presentation at the HPC Asia workshop that took place on January 14-16, I realized Centriq 2460 is still alive but just changed owners… So the GIGABYTE H221-Q20 server is compatible with StarDragon 4800… What is that? StarDragon sounds familiar, a bit like Qualcomm Snapdragon. It turns out […]