Raspberry Pi Compute Module is a $30 Raspberry Pi Compatible System-on-Module

Albeit the initial goal of the Raspberry Pi board was to address computer science education, it has become extremely popular with hobbyists, has made its way in many different kinds of hardware, and is now clearly the number 1 low cost ARM Linux development board. The Raspberry Pi foundation has then decided to design and sell a system-on-module called Raspberry Pi Compute that people can use in actual products. Since the module will be mostly software compatible with the original Raspberry Pi board, the specs are similar: SoC – Broadcom BCM2835 ARM 11 processor @ 700 MHz with Videocore IV GPU System Memory – 512MB RAM Storage – 4GB eMMC Flash SoM Connector – DDR2 200-pins SODIMM Dimensions – 67.6x30mm board which fits into a standard DDR2 SODIMM connector The main difference is they’ve replaced the SD card slot found in the board, by an eMMC module which is more […]

Dedicated Hosting Services on ARM Development Boards (Cubieboard2, Raspberry Pi, ODROID…)

At least two companies have recently launched hosting services using dedicated ARM servers based on low cost development boards: NanoXion with its NX-BOX service powered by PiBox (Raspberry Pi) and CubieBox (Cubieboard 2) microservers, and miniNodes with servers based on Cubieboard2 first, then ODROID development boards, and possibly AllWinner OptimusBoard once/if it becomes available. The PiBox will feature a Raspberry Pi Model B with 512 MB RAM, and 16GB Class 10 UHS-1 microSD card by Samsung, and the dual core Cubiebox comes with 1GB RAM and a Crucial M500 SATA III 120GB SSD. Both NX-BOXes run Linux Debian Server NX distribution, support instant remote reboot, with guaranteed 10 Mbps connectivity for IPv4 & IPv6, and unlimited bandwidth. The boards are all hosted in France. The company expects their ARM servers to be used as private cloud servers, backup servers, private chat servers, web servers, mail servers, DNS Servers, monitoring servers, and […]

Linaro Connect Asia 2014 Opening Keynote – Status and Future of ARMv8 Linux & Android [Video]

Linaro Connect Asia 2014 has just started in Macau today and will take place until Friday. You can follow the sessions live and/or their recordings via Linaro OnAir YouTube Channel. I’ve watched the opening keynote, and embedded the video at the bottom of this post. The keynote focuses on ARMv8 for Linux and Android on servers, mobile devices, digital home, and more, and involves two main speakers: George Grey, Linaro CEO , and Jon Masters, Chief ARM Architecture at Red Hat. The speaker beginning of the video provides some practical information and the schedule for Linaro Connect. The keynote itself really starts around 15:50 with George Grey who spends the first 10 minutes introducing the latest Linaro members: Qualcomm, Mediatek, ZTE, AllWinner and Comcast. He then talks about the new Mobile sub-committee (MOBSCOM) that will focus on big.LITTLE, Android optimization and Android on ARMv8, as well as the soon-to-be-announced Linaro […]

Applied Micro X-Gene X-C1 ARMv8 Server Development Board is Now Available for Pre-order

Applied Micro X-Gene is the very first processor to use ARM 64-bit architecture (ARMv8), not Cortex A53 or Cortex A57, but a custom implementation, and last year we’ve seen the company’s ARMv8 development board running 4 Linux virtual machines via KVM. The platform, called X-Gene X-C1, can now be pre-ordered to develop private cloud, public cloud, and enterprise applications. There’s limited public information for now, but I could derive specifications from a few places on the web and available pictures: SoC – Applied Micro X-Gene eight core ARMv8 processor @ 2+GHz System Memory – 2x DDR3 memory slots Storage – 4x SATA 2/3 ports + SD card slot Connectivity – 3x 10 Gb Ethernet ports USB – 2x SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports, 1x mini USB port Expansion – PCIe Gen 3 Monitoring  DB9 Serial port Power – ATX I don’t know what’s the metallic connector with holes between the two […]

AMD Opteron A1100 Server SoCs Feature 4 to 8 ARM Cortex A57 Cores

A few months ago, AMD published a roadmap showing AMD “Seattle” Server CPUs based on ARMv8 64-bit architecture were planned for H2 Q2014. The company has now announced the first series of processors that will be based on ARM Cortex A57: AMD Opteron A1100 Series, as well as the corresponding development platform at the Open Compute Project Summit in San Jose, California. Key features of AMD Opteron A1100 Series processors: 4 or 8 core ARM Corte-A57 processors Up to 4 MB of shared L2 and 8 MB of shared L3 cache Configurable dual DDR3 or DDR4 memory channels with ECC at up to 1866 MT/second Up to 4 SODIMM, UDIMM or RDIMMs 8x lanes of PCI-Express Gen 3 I/O 8x Serial ATA 3 ports 2x 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports ARM TrustZone technology for enhanced security Crypto and data compression co-processors On the software side, the company mentionned it is a […]

Cisco Edge 340 Digital Media Player Targets Digital Signage & Business Applications

Most of the time I feature low cost (Chinese) media players in this blog, but today I’ve had a look at a media player at the other side of the market that targets business users with applications such as webcasting and video sharing, digital signage, and business IPTV. Cisco Edge 340 digital media player (DMP) comes in two flavors “Wireless” and “non-wireless”, and boast features such as PoE or RS-232 which are not often found in consumer devices. Cisco Edge 340 Specifications: SoC – Dual 1.60 GHz processor with integrated GPU @ 400MHz, most probably Intel Atom Z2560. It turns out it could be Intel Atom CE5335 instead. System Memory – 2GB DDR3 @ 800 MHz Storage – 32GB SSD (70MB/s write speed) and SD card slot Connectivity – 1x Ethernet 10/100/1000-Gbps port with PoE and PoE+ support. Wireless version only: Dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth 4.0 Video […]

Fedora 20 “Heisenbug” Release Makes ARM a Primary Architecture

Fedora has been supporting ARM architecture for a while now, but it was only as a secondary architecture without official support. With the recent Fedora 20 release, nicknamed “Heisenbug”, the ARM architecture, more exactly ARMv7 hard float and greater, is promoted to a primary architecture meaning ARMv7 will have the same status as x86 and x86_64 architectures with packages officially build and supported by the Fedora community. What it does not mean however, due to the nature of ARM architecture, is that you can simply download an ISO to install on any ARM platforms, like you would do on an Intel or AMD computer. It’s a little more complicated than that, as it is platform specific, but instructions are available for the Beaglebone Black, Compulab Trimslice, the Wandboard, Calxeda Energycore Midway and Highbank, and Versatile Express in QEMU. You can download images with MATE, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, SOAS desktops, as […]

ARM Based Servers and Servers-on-a-Chip (SoCs) at ARM Techcon 2013

ARM Techcon 2013 took place on October 29 – 31, 2013, in Santa Clara, and several companies announced servers, or chips for server based on ARM technology. None of those are for home used, but for now ARM based servers target enterprise and cloud data. Yet end users may them indirectly when they access social networks such as Facebook, or other online services such as Paypal. Calxeda ECX-2000 SoC After their ECX-1000 quad core Cortex A9 Server-on-chip, Calxeda has announced ECX-2000 SoC featuring four Cortex A15 cores. The new SoC provides about twice the performance, 3 times the memory bandwidth, and 4 times the memory capacity (up to 16GB RAM) of the earlier chip.   One of the key advantage of Cortex A15 over Cortex A9 is hardware virtualization that allows support for KVM and Xen hypervisors. ECX-2000 is supported in Canonical Ubuntu Linux 13.10 and can run Havana Openstack. Other […]