AMLogic Category - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 31, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Year 2025 in Review, CNX Software stats, and looking ahead to 2026

Time for the last post of 2025, as the year is almost over. I’ll look back at key developments and notable products launched in 2025, share some CNX Software website traffic statistics, and look ahead to 2026. Year 2025 in Review After 22 product releases in 2024, Raspberry Pi calmed down a little bit in 2025, and the highlights of the year included the Raspberry Pi 500+ mechanical keyboard, the 5-inch variant of the Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2, and a Raspberry Pi 5 1GB RAM. What didn’t quite stop were the accessories from third parties for Raspberry Pi SBC and Raspberry Pi Pico boards. The most exciting Arm SoC release of 2025 was probably the 12-core CIX P1 Armv9 SoC found in Radxa Orion O6 SBC, MINISFORUM MS-R1 Arm mini PC, and Orange Pi 6 Plus board, but while performance was fine, it was overhyped in 2024, and software […]

December 1, 2025December 12, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Linux 6.18 LTS release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.18 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), which will likely become the next LTS kernel [update: it’s now official]: So I’ll have to admit that I’d have been happier with slightly less bugfixing noise in this last week of the release, but while there’s a few more fixes than I would hope for, there was nothing that made me feel like this needs more time to cook. So 6.18 is tagged and pushed out. Most of the last-minute fixes are minor fixes to drivers, with some random noise elsewhere (bluetooth, ceph, afs..). Nothing strikes me as standing out, but hey, there’s a shortlog appended if you want to see the details. And this obviously means that the merge window will open tomorrow, and I already have three dozen pull requests pending. Thanks. And as I already mentioned a couple of […]

November 20, 2025November 26, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025 – International deals, coupons, and events

Like every year since 2014, I’ll list a few international deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025, as many CNX Software readers cannot benefit from promotions on Amazon’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday events, which will take place from November 20 to December 1. I’ve gathered various deals, discount coupon codes, and events from relevant manufacturers of single board computers, MCU development boards, mini PCs, Smart Home devices, and DIY products, as well as popular online stores, including AliExpress, Banggood, and others. AliExpress Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025 event AliExpress sales event for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025 has just started and will last until December 3, 2025 (although I can see until November 29 and December 4 in some places). You can use some of the coupons on the screenshot above, or some alternative coupon codes for the US and some other countries (excluding DE, RU, […]

November 13, 2025November 13, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

4-inch UGOOS AC1 smart clock features Amlogic A213Y SoC for smart displays and digital signage

UGOOS is better known for its TV boxes, but the company recently introduced a different product with the AC1 smart clock based on an Amlogic A213Y SoC for smart displays and digital signage applications I had never heard of. Let’s have a look at both. UGOOS AC1 smart clock The AC1 smart clock features a 480×480 resolution display, supports Bluetooth pairing, alarms with different ringtones, displays weather, date, time, and sensor data, and supports features such as photo frame, event notes, and music playback. UGOOS AC1 specifications: SoC – Amlogic A213Y (more details below) System Memory – 256MB DDR4 Storage – 8 GB eMMC flash Display – 4-inch IPS touchscreen display with 480×480 resolution; 2.5D glass cover Audio 3W sound speaker Built-in microphone for voice search Wireless – IEEE 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.2 Sensors – Temperature and humidity sensor, light sensor Misc – Touch Key, mute switch, and […]

September 29, 2025November 6, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.17 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.17 has just been released on LKML: No huge surprises this past week, so here we are, with kernel 6.17 pushed out and ready to go. Below is the shortlog for just the last week – not the full 6.17 release – as usual. It’s not exciting, which is all good. I think the biggest patch in there is some locking fixes for some bluetooth races that could cause use-after-free situations. Whee – that’s about as exciting as it gets. Other than that, there’ the usual driver fixlets (GPU and networking dominate as usual, but “dominate” is still pretty small), there’s some minor random other driver updates, some filesystem noise, and core kernel and mm. And some selftest updates. This obviously means that the merge window for 6.18 will open tomorrow, and I already have four dozen pull requests pending. Thanks to the proactive people – you know who […]

September 4, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

EtherealOS: easily install Linux ISO and OS images from the Internet on Amlogic SBCs

Libre Computer has just announced the general availability of EtherealOS for the company’s Amlogic SBCs, namely AML-S905X-CC (Le Potato), AML-S805X-AC (La Frite), AML-S905X-CC-V2 ( Sweet Potato), AML-S905D3-CC (Solitude), and AML-A311D-CC (Alta). EtherealOS is described as a lightweight internet-booted operating system designed for performing tasks such as file and disk manipulation, operating system deployment, light browser tasks, and more. It includes a limited set of tools compared to a full operating system, and it’s basically an OS to install other operating systems directly from the Internet, in a way similar to Khadas OOWOW or Radxa ROOBI OS. The difference is that EtherealOS apparently supports upstreamed operating systems, namely Debian (debian-12.11.0-arm64-DVD-1.iso / debian-testing-arm64-DVD-1.iso), Fedora (Fedora-Workstation-Live-42-1.1.aarch64.iso), and OpenSUSE, besides images optimized by Libre Computer based on Debian, Ubuntu, and Raspbian. The video below shows how the terminal GUI in EtherealOS can install Debian to the eMMC flash of one of the company’s single […]

August 28, 2025August 29, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Ugoos AM9 Android 14 TV box features Amlogic S905X5 Armv9 SoC, supports H.266 and AV1 codecs

Ugoos AM9 is an Android 14 TV box powered by an Amlogic S905X5 quad-core (Armv9) Cortex-A510 SoC, which supports features such as H.266 and AV1 hardware video decoding and AI Super Resolution (AI-SR) through the built-in 4 TOPS NPU. We first noted the Amlogic S905X5 SoC in an upcoming SEI Robotics TV box about two years ago. Details were sparse at the time, and in the meantime, Amlogic introduced the similarly named S905X5M, which is still a “regular” Armv8 SoC with four Cortex-A55 cores, and found in products such as ODROID-C5 SBC and Ugoos X5M Pro. However, I had not heard anything about the more powerful S905X5 SoC until I came across the Ugoos AM9 TV box this morning. Ugoos AM9 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X5 CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A510 Armv9 processor delivering 40K+ DMIPS GPU – Arm Mali-G310 V5 GPU clocked at 1 GHz for 4K HDR user interfaces […]

August 28, 2025 by Debashis Das - 3 Comments

Xerxes Pi – A Raspberry Pi CM4/CM5 carrier board with a rack-friendly design (Crowdfunding)

Xerxes Pi A cross vendor compute module carrier board

Designed by Rapid Analysis in Australia, the Xerxes Pi is a cross-vendor compute module carrier board that fits into a 1U rack and supports Raspberry Pi CM4/CM5, Radxa CM5, Banana Pi CM4/CM5, and Orange Pi CM4/CM5 compute modules. Designed at just one-third the size of a Nano-ITX board (120 × 40 mm), it’s ideal for home lab and small business servers looking for a low-cost way to run Docker containers and other open-source software. For storage, the carrier board includes a microSD card, and an M.2 E-Key slot enables support for accelerators or peripherals. Additionally, it features an I²C/SPI header and optional PoE via add-on boards or splitters. The design is well thought out and comes with a thermally efficient design with ventilated enclosures, optional PLA or metal heatsinks, and open-source 3D printable rack cases (single or multi-board). With open schematics, 3D files, Xerxes Pi targets DIY electronics, clustered computing, edge servers, […]