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

January 10, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

XIAO ePaper DIY Kit – EE02 – An ESP32-S3 board designed for 13.3-inch Spectra 6 color E-Ink display

XIAO ESP32-S3 13.3-inch E-ink Spectra 6 color display kit

Seeed Studio’s XIAO ePaper DIY Kit EE02 is an ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth board designed specifically for the 13.3-inch Spectra 6 color E-Ink display provided by the company. It’s based on a similar design as the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit-EE04 (ESP32-S3) and XIAO ePaper DIY Kit-EN04 (nRF52480) introduced last December, which are suitable for smaller 1.54 to 7.15-inch ePaper displays. Like the previous models, the new EE02 model also includes a battery connector with a power switch, a built-in charging IC, and comes with one reset and three user buttons. With support for a larger 13.3-inch color ePaper display, it’s especially well-suited for digital frames and information boards. XIAO ePart DIY kit – EE02 specifications: Wireless board – XIAO ESP32S3 Plus SoC – Espressif ESP32-S3R8 CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration Memory – 8MB PSRAM Wireless – WiFi 4 and Bluetooth […]

January 9, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

6-core Intel Wildcat Lake Core Series 3 CPUs to succeed Alder Lake-N and Twin Lake families

When I wrote the Year 2025 in review post, I expected an announcement for the Wildcat Lake CPUs at CES 2026, but instead, Intel initially introduced the high-end Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” family. I assumed the Wildcat Lake announcement was postponed, but some users’ reports on X indicate the company did demonstrate the new Core Series 3 (no “Ultra” there) “Wildcat Lake” processors as lower-end Core Series 3 “Panther Lake” SKUs. Intel has yet to disclose part names, and there’s nothing about the Wildcat Lake on Intel Ark at the time of writing. However, some information was shared through slides and X users. Intel Core Series 3 “Wildcat Lake” key features and specifications: CPU – Hexa-core processor with 2x Cougar Cover P-cores (Performance cores), 4x Darkmont LPE-cores (Low-Power Efficient cores) GPU – 2x Xe-core Intel Xe3 graphics (no ray tracing, not designed for gaming) AI accelerator – Intel […]

January 8, 2026January 9, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

MUSE Book laptop review – Testing an octa-core RISC-V Linux laptop in 2026

SpacemiT sent me a sample of the MUSE Book RISC-V Linux laptop for review. It’s based on the SpacemiT K1/M1 octa-core 64-bit RISC-V SoC, ships with up to 16 GB of RAM, eMMC flash and/or NVMe SSD, and features a 14.1-inch IPS display with 1920×1080 resolution, WiFi 6 connectivity, a few USB ports, and more. I won’t go through all the hardware specifications since Leo already did that when he wrote about the MUSE Book Laptop in April 2024, along with a teardown, and additional details about the SpacemiT K1/M1 SoC. I’ll still do an unboxing and quickly check the hardware, but I’ll focus on the software part to show the progress with Bianbu OS 2.3 (Ubuntu 24.04-based) on RISC-V hardware, as I just did for the low-end StarFive JH7110S-based VisionFive 2 Lite SBC. It’s quite a long review, so if you are short on time, you can jump directly […]

January 7, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

AMD launches Ryzen AI Embedded P100 and X100 processors with up to 50 TOPS of AI performance

AMD has introduced the Ryzen AI Embedded P100 and X100 x86 processors designed to power AI-driven applications at the edge, such as automotive digital cockpits, smart healthcare equipment, and humanoid robotics. AMD had previously launched several Ryzen Embedded families, starting with the Ryzen Embedded V1000 in 2018, and more recently, the Ryzen Embedded 8000 family with a 16 TOPS NPU, yet without “AI” in the name. The new AMD Ryzen AI Embedded family is based on high-performance “Zen 5” core architecture, an RDNA 3.5 GPU for real-time visualization and graphics, and an XDNA 2 NPU for low-latency, low-power AI acceleration. The P100 Series processors target in-vehicle infotainment and industrial automation, while the X100 Series processors feature higher CPU core counts and AI TOPS performance for more demanding physical AI and autonomous systems. Six models are currently available in the Ryzen AI Embedded P100 family: AMD Ryzen AI P121, P123, P121i, […]

January 7, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Nordic Semi nRF54LM20B wireless SoC integrates 128 MHz Axon NPU for Edge AI workloads

Nordic Semi nRF54ML20B Arm Cortex-M33 wireless SoC is the first nRF54L microcontroller to integrate the ultra-efficient Axon Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for edge AI workloads. The NPU is said to deliver up to 7 times faster performance and up to 8 times higher energy efficiency versus (unnamed) competing wireless solutions for tasks such as sound classification, keyword spotting, and image-based detection. The Axon NPU is also about 15x faster compared to using the Cortex-M33 CPU for the same task. Other than the NPU, the nRF54LM20B offers exactly the same features as the earlier nRF54LM20A wireless microcontroller, including up to 2 MB NVM, 512 KB RAM, a 128 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 plus RISC-V coprocessor, high-speed USB, up to 66 GPIOs, and an ultra-low-power 2.4 GHz radio supporting Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth Channel Sounding, Matter over Thread, and more as shown in the nRF54L comparison table below. Like other nRF54L wireless SoCs, the […]

January 7, 2026January 7, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

STM32MP21 Arm Cortex-A35/M33 MPU targets cost-effective applications in smart factories, homes, and cities

STMicroelectronics’ STM32MP21 microprocessor family combines a 1.5 GHz 64-bit Arm Cortex-A35 application core with a 300 MHz 32-bit Arm Cortex-M33 core for real-time processing. It is designed for “cost-aware” edge applications in smart factories, smart homes, and smart cities. The new STM32MP21 is a cost-optimized version of the earlier STM32MP23 and STM32MP25 that does without an AI accelerator (yes, those still exist!), GPU, H.264 decoder and encoder, or PCIe Gen2 / USB 3.0 interfaces. It still offers a MIPI CSI-2 camera interface, two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces with Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), and strong security targeting SESIP Level 3 and PCI pre-certification. STM32MP21 specifications: CPU – Arm Cortex-A35 core running at up to 1.2 or 1.5 GHz with 128KB L2 cache Real-time MCU – Arm Cortex-M33 core with FPU/MPU running at up to 300 MHz GPU – None VPU – None AI accelerator – None Memory 456 KB SRAM 256KB AXI SYSRAM […]

January 7, 2026January 10, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Espressif Systems showcases ESP32-E22 Wi-Fi 6E SoC and ESP32-H21 BLE MCU for battery-powered devices

Espressif Systems is showcasing its products at CES 2026, including two interesting upcoming parts: the ESP32-E22 Wi-Fi 6E tri-band SoC and the ultra-low-power ESP32-H21 Bluetooth LE MCU for battery-powered devices. Espressif Systems has been teasing an upcoming Wi-Fi 6E SoC for several months, but so far, there have been very few details. Once tipped that the ESP32-E22 tri-band Wi-Fi 6E SoC was demonstrated at CES 2026, I headed over to X and noticed tks posted a few interesting photos from the exhibition. Here’s what we know about the ESP32-E22 so far: CPU – Dual-core RISC-V processor at up to 500 MHz Memory – 1 MB (no optional PSRAM) Wireless Tri-band 2.4/5/6GHz Wi-Fi 6E, 160 MHz channel bandwidth, 2×2 MIMO; tested with iperf; up to 2.1 Gbps physical thoughput Dual-mode Bluetooth 5.4/6.0 (LE + BR/EDR) I/Os – 41x GPIO Host interfaces – PCIe 2.0, USB FS OTG, SDIO 3.0 (when used […]

January 6, 2026January 7, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Broadcom updates its Wi-Fi 8 access point chips portfolio with BCM4918 APU, BCM6714 and BCM6719 dual-band radios

Broadcom Wi-Fi 8 chips BCM4918 BCM6719 BCM6714

Broadcom has just announced the launch of its next-generation chips for Wi-Fi 8 access points at CES 2026 with the BCM4918 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU), and two new dual-band Wi-Fi 8 radios: BCM6714 and BCM6719. The last two build upon the Broadcom BCM6718 WiFi 8 tri-band SoC with different antenna configurations, namely 4×4 2.4GHz and 4×4 5 GHz for the BCM6719, and 3×3 2.4GHz and 4×4 5 GHz for the BCM6714, and integrated 2.4 GHz PAs. The AP4918 builds upon the AP4916, but I was unable to obtain information about the improvements from a company representing Broadcom. Broadcom BCM4918 Wi-Fi 8 APU BCM4918 key features: High-performance Quad-core Armv8 CPU complex for general-purpose software workloads Integrated Broadcom Neural Engine (BNE) for on-device AI/ML inference and acceleration Advanced networking engines to offload both wired and wireless data paths, enabling complete CPU bypass of all networking traffic Integrated cryptographic protocol acceleration end-to-end data […]