Graphics Category - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 23, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

CrowPanel Advanced 7inch Review – Part 1: ESP32-P4 HMI AI display hands-on with LVGL factory firmware

Elecrow has sent us a sample of the “CrowPanel Advanced 7inch” ESP32-P4 HMI display for review. It is designed for high-performance AI and IoT (AIoT) applications with a 2MP camera module, an ESP32-C6-MINI-1 module for Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, and 802.15.4 (Zigbee, Thread, Matter) connectivity. Our kit also shipped with three wireless modules, namely an ESP32-H2 wireless module for an additional Thread, Zigbee, and Matter radio, an SX1262 module for LoRa low-power long-range connectivity, and an nRF2401 2.4 GHz wireless module. In the first part of the review, we will take you through an unboxing of the CrowPanel Advanced 7-inch, checking out the ESP32-P4 HMI AI Display’s hardware before testing it with the preinstalled firmware using LVGL and AI features. You can check the detailed specifications in our previous article: CrowPanel Advance 7-inch ESP32-P4 HMI display supports Zigbee, LoRa, and 2.4GHz radio modules. Note that the company calls it “Advance” […]

December 3, 2025December 3, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Tyr – A Rust GPU driver for Arm Mali GPUs

One interesting addition to the just-released Linux 6.18 kernel is the Tyr Rust GPU driver for CSF-based Arm Mali GPUs, which is a port of the mature Panthor C GPU driver merged into Linux 6.10. It was developed by Collabora in collaboration with Arm and Google. Tyr aims to implement the same userspace API offered by Panthor, so that it can eventually be used as a drop-in replacement in the company’s PanVK Vulkan driver. After several years, the Tyr Rust driver might replace the Panthor C driver, but in the meantime, Panthor will keep being used since it is more mature and conformant with OpenGL ES 3.1 since July 2024. The work on Tyr is fairly advanced, and Collabora provided an update at the end of November. The key takeaway is that the Tyr (prototype) driver works with GNOME, Weston, and even full-screen 3D games like SuperTuxKart while matching the […]

November 3, 2025November 5, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 269 Comments

Giveaway Week 2025 – M5Stack Tab5 ESP32-P4 IoT devkit

It’s that time of the year when we organize CNX Software Giveaway Week, a global contest where we give away review samples or get companies to send units to readers. For the 12th edition of the contest, we have seven items to give away this time around: five review samples I will send myself, and two prizes from companies offering a router board and an industrial development kit. As usual, the contest is open worldwide, and CNX Software Thailand has a separate contest with four additional items for people with an address in Thailand. The first prize will be the M5Stack Tab5 ESP32-P4 IoT development kit featuring a 5-inch touchscreen display, a 2MP front-facing camera, a speaker, a dual-microphone array, a microSD card slot, an ESP32-C6 for wireless connectivity, sensors, and more. I had some fun reviewing the M5Stack Tab5 devkit by building the default firmware with the ESP-IDF framework, […]

October 27, 2025October 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Review of Nextion 4.3-inch Edge Series HMI touch display

Review 4.3-inch NEXTION HMI Edge touch display

Today, we’ll review the Nextion 4.3-inch Edge Series HMI touch display. The company has recently launched the new Edge Series HMI touch displays for IoT applications that require better user interaction. It also supports video and audio playback, and everything can be configured relatively easily by the user using Nextion Editor software, version 1.68.1 or higher. The Edge Series HMI touch displays offer a wide range of screen sizes and formats to choose from, including a 2.1-inch round model (NX4848E021-011C) and a 2.8-inch round model (NX4848E028-011C), both with 480×480 resolution, as well as a 4.3-inch rectangular model (NX4880E043-011C) with 800×480 resolution. We received the NEXTION NX4880E043-011C Edge Series HMI touch display for review, along with accessories, namely an IO board and a speaker, so we can get hands-on and dive deep into the review. It’s versatile for all sorts of applications, from AIoT devices and vehicle control systems to medical […]

September 10, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Arm introduces Lumex platform with SME2-enabled C1 CPU for Edge AI, Mali-G1 GPU

Arm Lumex CSS (Compute SubSystem) platform for mobile devices combines high-performance Arm C1 CPUs with Scalable Matrix Extension version 2 (SME2) and Mali-G1 GPUs to enable real-time on-device AI use cases like assistants, voice translation, and personalization. Lumex is part of Arm’s new product naming architecture announced last May, and targets specifically mobile devices. Arm says SME2-enabled Arm CPUs can deliver up to 5x faster AI performance, 4.7x lower latency for speech-based workloads, and 2.8x faster audio generation. Lumex components: Next-generation SME2-enabled Armv9.3 CPU cluster: C1-Ultra for flagship peak performance with +25% single-thread performance vs Cortex-X925; suitable for large-model inference, computational photography, content creation, generative AI C1-Premium with C1-Ultra performance, but greater area efficiency (35% smaller area than C1-Ultra); suitable for sub-flagship mobile segments, voice assistants, multitasking C1-Pro for sustained efficiency; +16% sustained performance vs Cortex-A725; ideal for video playback, streaming inference C1-Nano for maximum efficiency, smaller area for wearables, […]

August 13, 2025August 13, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Arm neural technology to add AI acceleration to Arm GPUs, enable “Neural Super Sampling” for lower bandwidth/higher FPS

Arm neural technology will add dedicated neural/AI accelerators to Arm GPUs launched in 2026 and beyond to deliver up to 50% GPU workload reduction for mobile games and other graphics-intensive apps. The first application is called Arm Neural Super Sampling (NSS). It’s a kind of AI Super Resolution implementation for games, where rather than upscaling videos, the AI accelerator upscales graphics to lower the required bandwidth and increase the frame rate (or lower the power consumption) with no impact on the rendering quality. Watch the video below to see a demo rendered at 540p resolution by the GPU and upscaled to 1080p resolution by Arm neural technology with no obvious defects. The upscaler will introduce some lag, but only about 4ms per frame in sustained performance conditions, as explained in a technical blog about the Arm Neural and NSS announcement: We assume a target of 10 TOP/s per-watt of neural acceleration […]

June 1, 2025June 1, 2025 by Debashis Das - No Comments

ESP32-P4 development board features 3.4-inch or 4-inch round IPS touchscreen display

Waveshare ESP32-P4-WIFI6-Touch-LCD-3.4C and ESP32-P4-WIFI6-Touch-LCD-4C ESP32-P4-based development boards feature a 3.4-inch and a 4-inch round IPS display, respectively, a 10-point capacitive touchscreen, and a wide 170° viewing angle. They also integrate two microphones with echo cancellation for voice AI applications and offer Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 (LE) connectivity via an ESP32-C6 module. Designed for AIoT and HMI projects, the boards also include USB ports, a camera connector, a speaker connector, and a microSD card slot. Target applications include Smart Home control panels, voice-controlled interfaces, digital dashboards, indoor environmental monitoring, PC performance monitoring, and other secure IoT and edge computing applications. Waveshare ESP32-P4-WIFI6-Touch-LCD-3.4C/4C specifications Main module – ESP32-P4-Core Module Microcontroller – ESP32-P4NRW32 MCU Dual-core RISC-V microcontroller @ 400 MHz with AI instructions extension and single-precision FPU Single-RISC-V LP (Low-power) MCU core @ up to 40 MHz GPU – 2D Pixel Processing Accelerator (PPA) VPU – H.264 and JPEG codecs support Memory – […]

March 30, 2025March 31, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

Radxa Orion O6 Preview – Part 2: Debian 12 – What works, what doesn’t

I went through an unboxing and Debian 12 installation on the Radxa Orion O6 at the end of January, but decided to work on other reviews since software support still needed to be worked on. Since then, there’s been some work done, but no new image released. After waiting for almost two months, I’ve decided to carry on with the review by testing the Debian 12 image in a way similar to the Rock 5B SBC preview I did with Debian 11 in 2022 to check what works and what doesn’t on the Orion O6 at the time of the review. That will involve testing all ports, including 5GbE networking and the PCIe slot with an (old) NVIDIA graphics card, running some benchmarks, and also trying the Debian 12 image with a self-built Linux 6.13 kernel using ACPI instead of UEFI for the default image. Orion O6 SBC benchmarks on […]