Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft), Author at CNX Software

May 29, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

NXP MCX W72x Cortex-M33 wireless SoC supports Bluetooth 6.0 with Channel Sounding, Zigbee, Thread and Matter

NXP MCX W72x series Cortex-M33 wireless SoCs support for Bluetooth 6.0 and an 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee, Thread, and Matter. The MCX W72x family also implements Bluetooth Channel Sounding for accurate distance measurements with the help of a Localization Compute Engine (LCE) to reduce latency. It’s the second MCU part of the MCX W wireless family following the MCX W71x MCU, and the new MCX W72x wireless microcontroller is offered with up to 264 KB SRAM, 2MB flash, features a dedicated Cortex-M33 core to handle Bluetooth and 802.15.4 radios, implements an EdgeLock Secure Enclave for security, and integrates plenty a range of I/Os in a 48-pin package. NXP MCX W72x key features and specifications: MCU cores and memory/storage Application core – Arm Cortex-M33 core up to 96 MHz with 2 MB program Flash with ECC, 264 kB SRAM with ECC and parity Networking core – Arm Cortex-M33 core with dedicated […]

May 28, 2025May 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Radxa ROCK 4D SBC – A Raspberry Pi lookalike powered by Rockchip RK3576 SoC with 6 TOPS AI accelerator

Radxa ROCK 4D is yet another Rockchip RK3576 SBC, but offered in a credit card form factor similar to the Raspberry Pi 3 model with the usual 40-pin GPIO header, Gigabit Ethernet ports, and four USB ports. We first noticed it when we covered the Radxa Dual 2.5G Router HAT, and I’ve just seen it added to the Linux 6.15 release, so I thought it might be a good time to cover it, especially since it’s already for sale on Allnet and AliExpress starting at $31 plus shipping. Radxa ROCK 4D specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3576 or RK3576J (industrial-grade version) CPU – Octa-core CPU with 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2 GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores at 2.0 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, and Vulkan 1.2 NPU – 6 TOPS (INT8) AI accelerator with support for INT4, INT8, INT16, […]

May 28, 2025May 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

UP Squared TWL / Squared Pro TWL boards are powered by Intel Core 3 Processor N355, N250, or N150 Twin Lake CPU

AAEON has just introduced upgrades to its Alder Lake-N-powered UP Squared 7100 and UP Squared Pro 7000 SBCs with the UP Squared TWL and UP Squared Pro TWL development boards equipped with Twin Lake CPUs, either Intel Core 3 Processor N355, Intel Processor N250, or Intel Processor N150. Both SBCs can operate in the -20°C to 70°C temperature range, support up to three independent displays, and offer M.2 expansion sockets for storage and wireless, a 40-pin GPIO header, RS232/RS485 interfaces, and three USB ports. However, the UP Squared TWL is a smaller 90×85.6mm SBC with dual gigabit Ethernet, and the UP Squared Pro TWL has a slightly larger design (101.6×101.6mm) with dual 2.5GbE, a SATA port, MIPI CSI camera support, and optional cellular connectivity. UP Squared TWL Specifications: Twin Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Processor N150 quad-core processor @ up to 3.6 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU […]

May 27, 2025May 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Chipsee PPC-CM5-156 Review – Part 2: A Raspberry Pi CM5 fanless Panel PC tested with Raspberry Pi OS

We’ve already had a look at the hardware of Chipsee’s 15.6-inch industrial touch panel PC in the first part of the review, before booting it to Raspberry Pi OS. I’ve now had time to test most features of the PPC-CM5-156 panel PC running Raspberry Pi OS, so I’ll report my experience testing performance and most ports of the Raspberry Pi CM5-based system in the second part of the review.

PPC-CM5-156 panel PC system info and sbc-bench.sh benchmark

Let’s check the features of the PPC-CM5-156 panel PC using the inxi utility:

May 27, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Sipeed Tang Console – A GOWIN GW5AST/GW5AT board with 60K or 138K LUT for FPGA development and retro gaming

Sipeed Tang Console is an FPGA development based on GOWIN GW5AST SoC FPGA with 138K LUTs and a hard RISC-V core or GW5AT FPGA with 60K LUTs, designed as a generic FPGA development and retro gaming platform. The Tange Console offers HDMI and RGB LCD display connectors, two USB ports for joystick or other peripherals, and plenty of expansion options with two 40-pin headers for SDRAM, GBA, and custom expansion, two PMOD connectors for joysticks or custom modules, and a 16-pin Raspberry Pi PCIe FFC connector. The “Tang Console” is also integrated into the “Tang Retro Console” as a complete gaming console kit with enclosure, joysticks, and accessories. Sipeed Tang Console specifications: SoM(one or the other) Sipeed Tang Mega 138K SoC FPGA – GOWIN GW5AST-LV138FPG484A with 138,240 LUT4 1,080 Kb Shadow SRAM (SSRAM) 6,120 Kb Block SRAM (BSRAM) Number of BSRAM – 340 298x DSP slices 12x PLLs 16x global […]

May 27, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Rockchip RK3588 embedded computer features 3x M.2 sockets, 4x RS232, 2x RS485, 2x DI, 2x DO, and more

Forlinx FCU3501 RK3588 fanless industrial PC

Forlinx FCU3501 is a fanless embedded computer powered by the Rockchip RK3588 SoC, or the RK3588J industrial-grade variant, and offered with up to 16GB LPDDR4x, 128GB eMMC flash, and plenty of features. Those include HDMI output and input ports, three M.2 sockets for NVMe SSD, Hailo-8 AI accelerator for a combined 26+6 TOPS of AI performance, and 4G/5G cellular module, two gigabit Ethernet ports, a built-in WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.2 module, four RS232 and two RS485 isolated serial interfaces, two digital inputs (DI), two digital outputs (DO), and more. Forlinx FCU3501 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588(J) octa-core processor with CPU – 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4GHz (RK3588) / 1.6 GHz (RK3588J), 4x Cortex-A55 core @ 1.8GHz (RK3588) / 1.3 GHz (RK3588J) CPU Arm Mali-G610 MP4 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0, 3.2, OpenCL 2.2, Vulkan 1.2 VPU Video decoder – 8Kp60 H.265, VP9, AVS2, 8Kp30 […]

May 26, 2025May 27, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

NanoPi M5 – A Rockchip RK3576 SBC with HDMI, dual GbE, M.2 NVMe and SDIO WiFi sockets, UFS 2.0 storage support

It feels like everybody is now launching hardware based on the Rockchip RK3576 SoC, the little brother of the RK3588 with Cortex-A72/A53 cores instead of Cortex-A76/A55 cores, 4K video output, and a mid-range Mali-G52 GPU, while keeping most of the same interfaces. FriendlyELEC has now joined the fray with the NanoPi M5 SBC equipped with up to 4GB LPDDR4x or 16GB LPDDR5, sockets for a UFS module and an M.2 NVMe SSD, HDMI 2.0 and MIPI DSI display interfaces, two MIPI CSI camera connectors, two gigabit Ethernet ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, two USB 3.0 ports, a 30-pin GPIO header, and more. NanoPi M5 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3576 CPU – Octa-core CPU with 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2 GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores at 2.0 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, and Vulkan 1.2 NPU – 6 TOPS […]

May 26, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linux 6.15 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.15: So this was delayed by a couple of hours because of a last-minute bug report resulting in one new feature being disabled at the eleventh hour, but 6.15 is out there now. Apart from that final scramble, things looked pretty normal last week. Various random small fixes all over, with drivers as usual accounting for most of it. But we’ve got some bcachefs fixes, some core networking, and some mm fixes in there too. Nothing looks particularly scary. And this obviously means that the merge window opens tomorrow as usual, and I see the usual people being proactive and having sent me their pull requests. It’s memorial day tomorrow here in the US, but like the USPS, “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” – nor memorial day – stops the merge window. [ Actually, thinking back […]