Puffin Cloud Learning Renders Web Pages Up to 14 Times Faster on Raspberry Pi

Puffin Cloud Learning Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a great little Arm Linux board designed for STEM education. But with many children now have to learn remotely, the board would be useful as a computer replacement, but users may find web browsing on the Raspberry Pi to be rather sluggish. Puffin Cloud Learning is designed just for that use case and promises to make the Raspberry Pi SBC much faster for web browsing, and they tested several websites, and for instance, CNN website loads almost 14 times faster with the Puffin Internet Terminal compared to using Chromium only. How is that possible? Simple: the Raspberry Pi is simply used as a thin client with complex web rendering performed on the company’s encrypted cloud servers where a JavaScript engine is used to pre-process and compress web pages sent to the Raspberry Pi. The company also claims Puffin Internet Terminal is 1200% faster than Chromium using […]

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 SBC Review with Ubuntu 20.04 – Raspberry Pi & Arduino Headers Tested

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 Ubuntu 20.04 Review Arduino & Raspberry Pi Headers

We’ve already reviewed ODYSSEY-X86J4105 SBC with Windows 10. When combined with Re_Computer enclosure it’s a typical Intel Gemini Lake mini PC but with a twist: Arduino and Raspberry Pi header. The latter works fine in Windows, but at the time, the Raspberry Pi header does not. So Linux is our only option. I’ve now had time to install and test Ubuntu 20.04 on ODYSSEY-X86J4105 single board computer. I did not install Ubuntu on the internal eMMC flash where Windows 10 resides, but instead on a 128GB M.2 SATA SSD. I’ll first run some usual command to check system information, then run benchmarks, and check whether all features are working before focusing the review on the Arduino and Raspberry Pi headers. ODYSSEY-X86J4105 Ubuntu 20.04 System Info We can check some of the information from the system in the terminal:

An Intel Celeron J4105 processor with 8GB RAM and the rootfs […]

Beelink GT-R Review – An AMD Ryzen 5 Mini PC Tested with Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04

Beelink GT-R Review

Whilst Windows mini PCs have traditionally used Intel processors similar small form factor (SFF) devices using AMD based processors have recently been announced and Beelink is amongst the first manufacturers to deliver one with their newly released GT-R mini PC. Available as a barebones device and in various configurations Beelink sent a fully configured model for review. Hardware overview The Beelink GT-R is a slightly larger mini PC physically consisting of a 168 mm x 120 mm x 39 mm (6.61 x 4.72 x 1.54 inches) rectangular metal case with a plastic top. It is an actively cooled mini PC that uses a (previous generation) Zen+ microarchitecture 12 nm Ryzen 5 3550H mobile processor which is a quad-core 8-thread 2.1 GHz processor boosting to 3.7 GHz with Radeon Vega 8 Graphics. The front panel has a power button, two 3.0 USB ports, a headphone jack, and a Type-C USB port […]

Beelink GS-King X Review with Android 9 – Video & Audio Playback, NAS/File Server Function, and Benchmarks

Beelink GS-King X Review Android 9

Last month I received Beelink GS-King X for review and started with an unboxing and teardown to check out the hardware. I’ve now had time to test the device with Android 9 including the file server function, a key selling point since of the device since it supports up to two 3.5″ SATA drives internally. A Tedious and Frustrating Start Eventually, I managed to boot the TV box and access the launcher, but it was no pleasure cruise. The first time, I connected the power, there was nothing at all, with the LED turned off, and no noise from the device. I thought the device was dead. The company asked me to check the power supply, and indeed a quick check with a multimeter confirmed it was dead despite the blue LED (on the power supply) implying the contrary. Nevermind, bad things happen, and the company sent me a new […]

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 Gemini Lake & Arduino SBC Review with Windows 10 Enterprise

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 Review

I’ve recently received ODYSSEY-X86J4105 SBC with Re_Computer case, and we’ve had a look at the SBC hardware, installed some internal components like an M.2 SATA SSD, and play around Re_Computer case using Raspberry Pi 4, Beaglebone Green Wireless and Jetson Nano SBC, before assembling the Intel SBC into the enclosure. I’ve now taken the time to test the combo using the pre-installed Windows 10 Enterprise operating systems. ODYSSEY-X86J4105 is very much like any Intel Gemini Lake mini PC, but with the addition of Arduino and Raspberry Pi headers, so we’ll look at those as well. Connections and First Boot For the first boot, I connect USB mouse and keyboard, a HDMI cable to a 4K TV, an Ethernet cable, a USB 3.0 hard drive, and finally the power supply. I actually had a small problem during boot, but we’ll talk about it later as it’s really specific to my setup, […]

DFI Ryzen Embedded R1606G SBC Review – Part 2: Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC

DFI Ryzen Embedded Review

DFI GHF51 is an AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606G SBC for industrial application that’s about the size of the Raspberry Pi Model B board, and after checking out the hardware in the first of part of the review “DFI GHF51 AMD Ryzen Embedded SBC Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Assembly“, I’ve now had time to play with the board running the pre-installed Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC operating system. DFI GHF51 Hardware Connections Since there aren’t any full-sized USB ports, you’ll need a USB-C hub to get started as you’ll probably want to connect a USB keyboard and mouse for development and testing, as well as a Micro HDMI cable to connect to a TV or display. I tried both MINIX NEO C Plus and Dodocool DC30S USB Type-C hubs, and the former did not work at all, while the latter mostly worked. I also connected an HDMI cable to the […]

$50 ODROID-C4 Raspberry Pi 4 Competitor Combines Amlogic S905X3 SoC with 4GB RAM

ODROID-C4

Hardkernel has just launched an update to its ODROID-C2 board, with ODROID-C4 SBC equipped with a 2.0 GHz Amlogic S905X3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor combined with up to 4GB RAM, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.0 video output, and the usual 40-pin I/O header. That makes it a worthy competitor to Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM, especially since it supports Ubuntu 20.04, CoreELEC, Android 9, and LineageOS operating systems, and comes with a proper heatsink for cooling for just $50 plus shipping. ODROID-C4 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ 2.0GHz with Arm Mali-G31MP2 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.0 and OpenCL 2.0 System Memory – 4GB DDR4 Storage 1x eMMC connector (8/16/32/64GB modules available) 1x Micro SD slot with support for DS/HS mode up to UHS-I SDR104 Video & Output – HDMI 2.0 port up to 4K@60Hz with HDR, CEC, EDID Audio – Digital […]

MediaTek Caught Cheating but Says Benchmarks Just Represent Peak Performance

MediaTek Cheating

Silicon vendors have been cheating in benchmarks for years, mostly by detecting when popular benchmarks run and boost the performance of their processors without regard to battery life during the duration of the test in order to deliver the best possible score. There was a lot of naming and shaming a few years back, and we did not hear much about benchmarks cheating in the last couple of years, but Anandtech discovered MediaTek was at it again while comparing results between Oppo Reno3 Europe (MediaTek Helio P95) and China (MediaTek Dimensity 1000L) with the older P95 model delivering much higher performance contrary to expectations. Cheating was suspected, so they contact UL to provide an anonymized version of PCMark so that the firmware could not detect the benchmark was run. Here are the before and after results. As noted by Anandtech, the differences are really stunning: a 30% difference in the […]