Operating Systems Category - Page 761 of 962 - CNX Software

March 3, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

$60 MarsBoard RK3066 (Partially) Open Source Hardware Development Board Supports Android & PicUntu

Until now if you wanted a low cost Rockchip development board you’d have to go with Radxa Rock (Quad core RK3188) or WaxBerry Pi2 (Dual core RK3066). Thanks to Haoyu Electronics , the company who made MarsBoard A10, there’s now another option with MarsBoard RK3066 powered by Rockchip RK3066 dual core Cortex A9 SoC with 1 to 2 GB RAM, 4 to 8 GB Flash and lots of ports and expansion connectors. MarsBoard RK3066 is composed of a baseboard (SOM-RK3066) and a computer on module (CM-RK3066) with the following specifications: CM-RK3066 Computer-on-Module: SoC – Rockchip RK3066 dual core ARM Cortex A9 @ 1.6Ghz + Mali-400MP4 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 SDRAM up to 2GB Storage – 4GB Nand Flash & eMMC FLASH Power Management Unit – TPS659102 Misc – TX indicator LED use for debug, Power Indicator LED 10/100M Ethernet PHY – LAN8720A SOM-RK3066 Baseboard: Storage – micro SD […]

March 3, 2014March 3, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

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 […]

March 3, 2014March 3, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

ARM Interview about Cortex A17 Processor [Video]

When ARM announced their new Cortex A17 core, I could not quite understand why they would release another core with performance and features somewhat similar to Cortex A12 and Cortex A15. Charbax interviewed Nandan Nayampally, ARM VP of Processor Marketing, at Mobile World Congress 2014 and everything is much more clear now. Cortex A17 is based on A12, but adds support for big.LITTLE processing support with Cortex A7, and further improves performance. In some work loads Cortex A17 can currently match Cortex A15 performance, and by 2015, Cortex A17 will have performance similar to A15, and replace it in mid range devices as it has a lower footprint and lower cost. High-end products will switch to 64-Bit with Cortex A53 or A57 next year. The interviewee did not say this explicitly but it could be many companies will simply skip Cortex A12, and directly use Cortex A17, just like Rockchip […]

March 2, 2014March 2, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Yeelight Blue and Yeelight Sunflower Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee Smart Light Bulbs for iOS and Android

When it comes Smart light bulbs, which can be dimmed and made to change color, the most popular product must be Philips Hue, using the Zigbee protocol, which you can control via iOS and Android devices though a Zigbee gateway, and costs about $60 on Amazon. Alternative have started to show up such as iLumi Bulbs, with Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (BLE) technology, that you can control with recent iOS and Android 4.3+ device without the need for a gateway, but with a price starting at $89. If you’re looking for cheaper alternatives, you’d have to turn to Chinese companies such as Yeelight which provides both Bluetooth LE and Zigbee light bulbs, respectively called Yeelight Blue and Yeelight Sunflower. Yeelight Blue does not require a gateway, but you’ll need a smartphone or tablet that supports Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy. Recent iOS 5.0+ devices should support it. If your Android device […]

March 1, 2014March 1, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Raspberry Pi Gets Open Source 3D Graphics Drivers and Documentation

The Raspberry Pi was launched 2 years ago, and for its birthday, Broadcom decided to release documentation and open source OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 driver for the Videocore IV GPU. You may remember the Raspberry Pi Foundation already release an open source GPU driver in 2012, but this was only for the part running on the ARM11 core for Broadcom BCM2835 SoC, which is just a few hundred lines of code long, and communicates with a binary blob which does all the work in the GPU itself. This new release however goes much further with a 111 page document entitled “VideoCore IV 3D Architecture Reference Guide“, and open source driver for the 3D System of the GPU. Strangely the release is however not for BCM2835, but instead BCM21553. Broadcom clearly has the source for BCM2835 too, so this must have been made for legal reasons. VideoCoreIV packs a lot […]

February 28, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Mediatek Smartphone SoC Roadmap Until 2015

Mediatek already has over a dozen of dual, quad and octa processors for smartphone and tablets based on ARM Cortex A7, A9 and A15 cores, and they’ve already announced a 64-Bit ARM SoC (MT6732) as well as MT6595 with four Cortex A17 cores. A leaked product roadmap show the timeline for Mediatek smartphone SoCs, as well as showing some new application processors such as MT6591 Hexa-core SoC, MT6571 dual core Cortex A7 and MT6752 octa core Cortex A53 with LTE. So let’s recapitulate the new and upcoming SoCs from Mediatek: MT6572/M – Dual core Cortex A7 @ 1.3 GHz / 1.0 GHz with qHD/HVGA screen support. Available since Q3 2013, and found in phones such as Cubot GT72. MT6582/M – Quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.3 GHz with HA720/qHD screen support. Available since Q4 2013, found in phones such as W450. MT6588 – Quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.7 GHz […]

February 28, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

$11 Ewell Cubietruck Case Supports 2.5″ SATA Hard Drive and Battery

We’ve already seen a way to make your own HDD enclosure with the Cubieboard, but if you’ve got the latest CubieTruck (aka Cubieboard 3) board with the dual core Cortex A7 AllWinner A20 and 2GB RAM, there’s an easier, and cheaper, way to achieve the same thing with Ewell case that supports 2.5″ SATA Hard drives and SSD, as well as a 5300 mAh lithium battery if you want your system to be portable. The setup is quite interesting as there are few full ARM Linux systems supporting an hard drive on the market, especially at this price point: $11 for the case, and $95 for the Cubieboard. You can either add a 2.5″ Hard drive (320GB / 500GB), or if you are more after performance than storage capacity, a SATA SDD (60 GB) for about $60. Alternatives to this setup would be Compulab Utilite Standard for $159 (Freescale i.MX6 […]

February 28, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linaro 14.02 Release with Linux Kernel 3.14 and Android 4.4.2

Linaro 14.02 has just been released with Linux Kernel 3.14-rc3 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.30 (LSK), and Android 4.4.2 r2. There are been a lot of patches for Linaro members boards, and including the latest GTS big.LITTLE processing patch, as well as speeds up to Android 4.4 performance. There’s also a Linux image (password protected) for Huawei D01 board with a 16-core ARM Cortex A15 @ 1.5 GHz SoC with up to 64 GB memory, that must be an unannounced SoC for base stations or other network equipment. This month Linaro also made two important announcements: Qualcomm is now a Linaro member, and the Linaro Security Working Group (SWG) has been setup to develop open source secure software for the ARM architecture. The first projects will be reference implementations of the W3C Embedded Media Extension (EME), and secure boot for the 64-bit ARM Cortex-A series processors. They’ll also work on security […]