Alibaba T-Head Category - CNX Software

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

Linux 6.16 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.16 on LKML: It’s Sunday afternoon, and the release cycle has come to an end. Last week was nice and calm, and there were no big show-stopper surprises to keep us from the regular schedule, so I’ve tagged and pushed out 6.16 as planned. It’s worth noting that the upcoming merge window for 6.17 is going to be slightly chaotic for me: I have multiple family events this August (a wedding and a big birthday), and with said family being spread not only across the US, but in Finland too, I’m spending about half the month traveling. That means that I will try very hard to get most of the merge window done the first week before my travels start, and I already ended upgiving a heads-up on that to the people who tend to send me the most pull requests. […]

March 25, 2025March 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.14 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architecture

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.14 on LKML: So it’s early Monday morning (well – early for me, I’m not really a morning person), and I’d love to have some good excuse for why I didn’t do the 6.14 release yesterday on my regular Sunday afternoon release schedule. I’d like to say that some important last-minute thing came up and delayed things. But no. It’s just pure incompetence. Because absolutely nothing last-minute happened yesterday, and I was just clearing up some unrelated things in order to be ready for the merge window. And in the process just entirely forgot to actually ever cut the release. D’oh. So yes, a little delayed for no good reason at all, and obviously that means that the merge window has opened. No rest for the wicked (or the incompetent). Below is the shortlog for the last week. It’s nice and […]

January 20, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.13 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.13 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: So nothing horrible or unexpected happened last week, so I’ve tagged and pushed out the final 6.13 release. It’s mostly some final driver fixes (gpu and networking dominating – normal), with some doc updates too. And various little stuff all over. The shortlog is appended for people who want to see the details (and, as always, it’s just the shortlog for the last week, the full 6.13 log is obviously much too big). With this, the merge window for 6.14 will obviously open tomorrow. I already have two dozen pull requests pending – thank you, you know who you are. Linus Release about two months ago, Linux 6.12 – the new LTS version – brought us real-time “PREEMPT_RT” support that had always required out-of-tree patchsets until now, the completion of the EEVDF (Earliest Eligible […]

November 20, 2024November 23, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 – International deals and coupons

While Black Friday and Cyber Monday used to be a US-only event, it changed many years ago, and we’ve been writing about international Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and coupon codes since 2014, since a large portion of our audience cannot benefit from promotions on Amazon’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday events that will take place from November 21 until December 2 this year. So I’ve gathered some international Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 deals and discount coupon codes from relevant manufacturers and popular online stores such as Aliexpress, Banggood, and others. Aliexpress Black Friday and Cyber Monday event Aliexpress’ Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 event has already started. There are three periods: Nov 19-21 PST – Warm Up event where users can find and add items to the cart before purchasing during the main event. Nov 22-30 PST – “On Sale” event with discounts up to […]

September 16, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Linux 6.11 Release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.11 is out with Linus Torvalds’ announcement on the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML): I’m once again on the road and not in my normal timezone, but it’s Sunday afternoon here in Vienna, and 6.11 is out. The last week was actually pretty quiet and calm, which is nice to see. The shortlog is below for anybody who wants to look at the details, but it really isn’t very many patches, and the patches are all pretty small. Nothing in particular stands out – the biggest patch in here is for Hyper-V Confidential Computing documentation. Anyway, with this, the merge window will obviously open tomorrow, and I already have 40+ pull requests pending. That said, exactly _because_ I’m on the road, it will probably be a fairly slow start to the merge window, since not only am I on my laptop, there’s OSS Europe starting tomorrow and then the […]

July 15, 2024July 16, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linux 6.10 Release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux Torvalds has announced the release of Linux 6.10 on LKML: So the final week was perhaps not quote as quiet as the preceding ones, which I don’t love – but it also wasn’t noisy enough to warrant an extra rc. And much of the noise this last week was bcachefs again (with netfs a close second), so it was all pretty compartmentalized. In fact, about a third of the patch for the last week was filesystem-related (there were also some btrfs latency fixes and other noise), which is unusual, but none of it looks particularly scary. Another third was drivers, and the rest is “random”. Anyway, this obviously means that the merge window for 6.11 opens up tomorrow. Let’s see how that goes, with much of Europe probably making ready for summer vacation. And the shortlog below is – as always – just the last week, not some kind […]

June 19, 2024June 18, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Sipeed Lichee Book 4A 14-inch modular Linux laptop launched with TH1520 quad-core RISC-V processor

We’ve just written about Deep Computing’s DC-ROMA RISC-V Laptop II, but Sipeed has just launched the Lichee Book 4A modular RISC-V laptop based on the quad-core Alibaba T-head TH1520 processor and running Debian Linux. I was expecting the Lichee Book to launch with the SpacemIT K1 octa-core RISC-V processor, but Sipeed started with the time-tested TH1520 quad-core RISC-V processor coupled with up to 16GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash and equipped with a 14-inch IPS display. In the future, we’ll get the Lichee Book 3A with the SpacemIT K1, and the Lichee Book 5A with an unnamed Cortex-A75-class RISC-V SoC with a 20 TOPS AI accelerator. Sipeed Lichee Book specifications: 260-pin SO-DIMM system-on-module (SoM) Sipeed LM3A – Upcoming module based on SpacemIT K1 octa-core RISC-V CPU (Cortex-A55 class) with 2 TOPS NPU Sipeed LM4A SoC – Alibaba T-Head TH1520 CPU Quad-core RISC-V Xuantie C910 (RV64GCV – RVV 0.7) processor @ […]

June 12, 2024June 12, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Meles RISC-V credit card-sized SBC is powered by T-Head TH1520 quad-core SoC

Shenzhen Milk-V Technology’s Meles SBC (single board computer) is powered by a T-Head TH1520 quad-core RISC-V processor and offered in a credit card form factor similar to the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B layout. The board is quite more powerful with a 2.0 GHz quad-core SoC equipped with a modern GPU, a 4K capable video encoder and decoder, and a 4 TOPS NPU. The board also features gigabit Ethernet, a WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.2 module, four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI 2.0 video output, MIPI CSI and DSI interfaces, and a 40-pin GPIO header. Meles specifications: SoC – Alibaba T-Head TH1520 CPU Quad-core RISC-V Xuantie C910 (RV64GCV – Vector Extension version 0.7) processor up to 2.0 GHz Low-power Xuantie E902 core GPU – Imagination BXM-4-64 GPU with support for OpenGL ES3.0/3.1/3.2, OpenCL 1.1/1.2/2.0, Vulkan 1.1/1.2; 50.7GFLOPS DSP – Xuantie C906 audio DSP @ 800 MHz VPU Video Decoder H.265, H.264, […]