$35 Orange Pi 3 LTS SBC comes with 2GB RAM, 8GB flash, AW859A WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 module

Orange Pi 3 LTS

Orange Pi 3 LTS is a cost-down, more compact version of Orange Pi 3 SBC launched in 2019 with Allwinner H6 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 3.0 ports, and mPCIe socket with a PCIe x1 Gen2 lane. AFAICR, the latter never really worked well due to a botched implementation in the SoC. The new slimmed-down Orange Pi 3 LTS is sized like a business card, loses the mostly useless mPCIe socket from the original board, comes with 2GB LPDDR3 RAM (no more 1GB RAM option),  a lower number of USB ports, USB Type-C power input, and an Allwinner AW859A WiFi and Bluetooth module replaces the Ampak AP6256 module from the original board. Orange Pi 3 LTS specifications: SoC – Allwinner H6 quad-core Cortex A53 processor clocked at up to 1.8 GHz with Arm Mali-T720MP2 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.1/3.0/2.0/1.1, DirectX 11 System Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 (before 1GB […]

UP Xtreme i11 Edge Compute Enabling Kit Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Teardown

Review UP Xtreme i11 Edge Compute Enabling Kit

AAEON’s UP Xtreme i11 Edge Compute Enabling Kit is an industrial mini PC based on the UP Xtreme i11 Edge single board computer powered by a choice of Tiger Lake processors and designed for edge applications for the industry. I recently got contacted by AAEON who sent me a version of the Edge Compute Enabling Kit with an Intel Core i7-1185GRE SoC, 16GB RAM, and a 128GB SSD pre-loaded with Ubuntu. I’ll start the review by checking out package content and interfaces, and teardown the hardware, before testing is with Ubuntu next month. UP Xtreme i11 Edge Compute Enabling Kit unboxing Customs took a keen interest in the package, opened it to check it out, and resealed it. But I eventually got the package, and customs their money… The package includes a 12V/6A power supply together with a power cord, EU type in my case, but the company will ask […]

UP Squared 6000 – AAEON introduces Elkhart Lake SBC and Edge computer

UP Squared 6000

AAEON has unveiled a new single board computer and edge system from the “UP bridge the gap” family with UP Squared 6000 equipped with Intel Atom x6000, Celeron, or Pentium Elkhart Lake processor, up to 8GB DDR4, 64GB eMMC flash, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 2.0b, eDP video interfaces, SATA and M.2 storage, and more. The UP Squared 6000 is available in four different SKUs with notably an industrial SKU powered by the Intel Atom x6425RE optimized for automation, robotics, and industrial applications with support for Intel Time Coordinated Computing (TCC), Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) via its 2.5GbE port. UP Squared 6000 specifications: Elkhart Lake SoC  (one of the other) Intel Celeron N6210 dual-core processor @  1.2 GHz / 2.6 GHz with 16EU Intel UHD graphics; 6.5W TDP Intel Pentium J6426 quad-core processor @ 1.8GHz / 3GHz with 32EU Intel UHD Graphics; 10W TDP Intel Atom x6413E quad-core processor […]

Raspberry Pi 4 gets Armbian test images, DietPi 7.9 released

Raspberry Pi 4 Armbian DietPi 7.9

Ubuntu and Debian images built by Armbian got popular because of the sad state of affairs of most single board computers. But since Raspberry Pi boards are rather well-supported by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and community, plus part of it is closed-source, there’s been little motivation by the Armbian community to work on it, and that means there’s no official support for Raspberry Pi. But some Armbian test images have just been released for Raspberry Pi 4, specifically Ubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish” images with a CLI (headless) version, and two desktop variants with Cinnamon and XFCE desktop environments which you can download on their server(s). Separately, DietPi 7.9 lightweight Linux distribution based on Debian has also been released with various improvements. The good news about Armbian images for Raspberry Pi is that they exist, but the less good news is that those are still “test images”, and the popular board […]

Tribulations with Linux on Zidoo M6 Rockchip RK3566 mini PC

Rockchip Short eMMC D0 pin

After our review of the Zidoo M6 mini PC with Android 11, we’ve installed Linux on the Rockchip device, and we did boot to a Linux Qt user interface built with buildroot. Let’s try to see what we can do with the image, and then try Ubuntu from a competing mini PC to check out if that can work. Since there’s no package manager to install a screenshooting program, I tried to use the usual method to take a framebuffer screenshot.

It generated an 8MB file which looked good, but the content was just comprised of zeros.

I asked Zidoo for a method to take screenshots in their Linux image, but I was told there weren’t any at this time… No worries, let’s try some of the applications in the Qt interface starting with the Multivideoplayer: It starts well with 9 videos of Big Buck Bunny playing simultaneously, […]

Phytium D2000 ARMv8 Mini PC runs Linux, supports gaming with Box64 emulator

Phytium D2000 Armv8 mini PC

Dragonbox is now taking pre-orders for a “Phytium D2000 ARMv8 Mini PC” with an octa-core 64-bit Arm processor, 16GB RAM, a 512GB NVMe, and an AMD Radeon RX550 GPU that makes it powerful enough to play older PC gaming like Crysis through Box64 x86_64 emulator, the 64-bit version of Box86 x86 emulator compatible with Raspberry Pi and other 32-bit Arm platforms. If the Dragonbox name sounds familiar, it’s because that’s the community that developed the Pyra handheld Linux game console/PC, except now they are offering a mini PC based on Phytium D2000 processor based on the same FTC663 Armv8 cores as found in the earlier Phytium FT2000/4 processor, with both Pythium SoC specifically designed for desktop PCs, contrary to most other Arm SoCs on the market. Phytium D2000 mini PC specifications: SoC –  Phytium D2000 ARMv8 octa-core custom Armv8 (FTC663) desktop processor @ 2.3 – 2.6 GHz with 8MB L2 […]

Portwell COM Express Tiger Lake-H module supports 2.5GbE, PCIe Gen 4, 8K, up to 64GB DDR4

Portwell PCOM-B657VGL COM Express TIger Lake-H

Portwell PCOM-B657VGL joins other COM Express and COM HPC modules based on Intel Tiger Lake-H Xeon, Core, and Celeron embeddded processors such as ADLINK Express-TL and Congatec conga-HPC/cTLH. Just like its competitors, the Portwell COM Express Type 6 Basic module offers 8K video output, PCIe x16 Gen 4, up to 64GB DDR4, USB 3.2 Gen 2, and 2.5GbE networking for a wide range of higher-end embedded applications such as industrial automation, medical equipment, graphics-intensive applications, and artificial intelligence. Portwell PCOM-B657VGL specifications: SoC (one or the other) General Embedded Intel Celeron 6600HE dual-core processor @ 2.6GHz with 8MB L3 Cache, 16EU Intel UHD graphics, 35W TDP Intel Core i3-11100HE processor with 4 cores / 8 threads @ 2.4GHz (up to 4.4GHz in Turbo Boost) with 8MB L3 Cache, 16EU Intel UHD graphics, 45/35W cTDP Intel Core i5-11500HE processor with 6 cores / 12 threads @ 2.6GHz (up to 4.1GHz in Turbo […]

NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin 12-core Cortex-A78E module delivers up to 200 TOPS

Jetson AGX Orin

The upcoming NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin module packs some serious processing power with a 12-core Cortex-A78AE processor, 2048 CUDA cores, and 64 Tensor cores delivering up to 200 TOPS of AI performance, or 6 times more than its predecessor, the Jetson AGX Xavier module. Designed for robotics, autonomous machines, medical devices, the Jetson AGX Orin delivers the same performance as a GPU-enabled server, but in a much more compact 100 x 87mm form factor. The module can be operated in three power modes, namely 15W, 30W, or 50W depending on performance and power requirements, and a compact developer kit will also be made available. Jetson AGX Orin specifications: CPU – 12-core Arm Cortex-A78AE v8.2 64-bit processor with 3MB L2 + 6MB L3 cache GPU / AI accelerators NVIDIA Ampere architecture with 2048 NVIDIA CUDA cores and 64 Tensor Cores @ 1 GHz DL Accelerator – 2x NVDLA v2.0 Vision Accelerator […]