Linux 6.8 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.8 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.8 on the Linux kernel mailing list: So it took a bit longer for the commit counts to come down this release than I tend to prefer, but a lot of that seemed to be about various selftest updates (networking in particular) rather than any actual real sign of problems. And the last two weeks have been pretty quiet, so I feel there’s no real reason to delay 6.8. We always have some straggling work, and we’ll end up having some of it pushed to stable rather than hold up the new code. Nothing worrisome enough to keep the regular release schedule from happening. As usual, the shortlog below is just for the last week since rc7, the overall changes in 6.8 are obviously much much bigger. This is not the historically big release that 6.7 was – we seem to […]

Hubitat Elevation Model C-8 Pro Home Automation Hub supports Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Matter devices

Hubitat Elevation Model C-8 Pro gateway

Hubitat has recently launched the Elevation Model C-8 Pro Home Automation hub with a Z-Wave 800 radio, a Zigbee 3.0 radio, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet connectivity that upgrade on the earlier C-8 model with more memory (2GB RAM), and a faster 2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 processor. I’ve never written about Hubitat Smart Home solutions, but they seem to have an active community of users,  so I’ll check out their latest Elevation Model C-8 Pro gateway and what they have to offer in terms of software and device support. Hubitat Elevation Model C-8 Pro specifications: SoC – Arm Cortex A55 processor @ 2.016 GHz (that could be the Amlogic S905X3 found in the ODROID-C4 SBC) System Memory – 2GB RAM Storage – TBD Connectivity Ethernet RJ45 port WiFi Z-Wave 800 radio Zigbee 3.0 radio Matter support 2x external antennas Power Supply – 5V via USB-C port Dimensions – 8.2 x 7.5 x 1.7 […]

Vivante NPU (found in Amlogic A311D) gets its open-source driver upstreamed to Mesa

Vivante NPU open source

The Teflon project is an open-source TensorFlow Lite delegate that currently supports VeriSilicon Vivante NPU and aims to support several other AI accelerators over time. The project has recently been upstreamed to Mesa meaning AI inference with open-source software will work out of the box in supported hardware once Mesa 24.1 is released in May 2024. Teflon relies on the Etnaviv open-source driver better known for working with Vivante GPUs found, for instance, in NXP i.MX processors, but Tomeu Vizoso also worked on implementing Vivante NPU support since May 2022 thanks to a sponsorship from Libre Computer and documented the development progress on this blog. The VeriSilicon Vivante “VIPNano-QI.7120” 5 TOPS NPU is found in the Amlogic A311D processor, and Tomeu tested Teflon with the Etnaviv NPU drive on both the Libre Computer AML-A311D-CC Alta and Khadas VIM3 single board computers with decent performance although still slower than with the […]

Linux 6.7 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.7 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.7, following Linux 6.6 LTS a little over two months ago: So we had a little bit more going on last week compared to the holiday week before that, but certainly not enough to make me think we’d want to delay this any further. End result: 6.7 is (in number of commits: over 17k non-merge commits, with 1k+ merges) one of the largest kernel releases we’ve ever had, but the extra rc8 week was purely due to timing with the holidays, not about any difficulties with the larger release. The main changes this last week were a few DRM updates (mainly fixes for new hw enablement in this version – both amd and nouveau), some more bcachefs fixes (and bcachefs is obviously new to 6.7 and one of the reasons for the large number of commits), and then a few random […]

2023 Year in review – Top 10 posts, statistics, and what to expect in 2024

CNX Software Happy New Year 2024

It’s the last day and last article of the year, so we will look at some highlights of 2023, some traffic statistics on the CNX Software website, and speculate what interesting developments may happen in 2024. Looking back at 2023 The semiconductor shortage that had happened since 2020 started to fade away in early 2023, and supplies for most electronics components and devices seem to be adequate at this time, so that was a bright spot this year, and hopefully, it will stay that way in 2024 despite geopolitical tensions. We did not have any super exciting new Arm application processors from Rockchip, Amlogic, or Allwinner announced this year, although the Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 CPU started to show up in some 8K TV boxes. The launch of the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC with a Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor was probably the main highlight for Arm on this side […]

Libre Computer AML-A311D-CC “Alta” SBC features Amlogic A311D AI processor

Libre Computer AML-A311D-CC Alta SBC

Libre Computer has launched the credit card-sized “Alta” SBC, also known as AML-A311D-CC, designed for AI applications with the Amlogic A311D hexa-core Arm Cortex-A73/A53 processor equipped with a 5 TOPS AI accelerator. The board comes with 4GB LPDDR4, a 16MB SPI flash for the bootloader as well as a microSD card slot and eMMC flash module connector for storage, and offers many of the same ports as found on the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ with Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output, an AV jack, MIPI CSI and DSI connector, and a 40-pin GPIO header that should work with most Raspberry Pi HATs. AML-A311D-CC “Alta” specifications: SoC – Amlogic A311D CPU Hexa-core processor with 4x Arm Cortex-A73 cores @ up to 2.2 GHz and 2x Cortex A53 cores @ up to 1.8 GHz Built-in Cortex-M4 core for “always-on” processing GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MP4 GPU VPU 4K UHD […]

Linux 6.6 LTS release – Highlights, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.6 release

The Linux 6.6 release has just been announced by Linus Torvalds on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): So this last week has been pretty calm, and I have absolutely no excuses to delay the v6.6 release any more, so here it is. There’s a random smattering of fixes all over, and apart from some bigger fixes to the r8152 driver, it’s all fairly small. Below is the shortlog for last week for anybody who really wants to get a flavor of the details. It’s short enough to scroll through. This obviously means that the merge window for 6.7 opens tomorrow, and I appreciate how many early pull requests I have lined up, with 40+ ready to go. That will make it a bit easier for me to deal with it, since I’ll be on the road for the first week of the merge window. Linus About two months ago, […]

Amlogic S905X5 Armv9 TV Box SoC supports AV1, H.266, Ai-SR

Amlogic S905X5 TV Box

The Amlogic S905X5 may be first the Armv9 processor designed for set-top boxes (STB) and TV boxes, supports the latest AV1 and H.266 video codecs, and also comes with a 4 TOPS AI accelerator. We don’t have the full details yet, and the news comes from a tease from SEI Robotics which is about to unveil an Amlogic S905X5 AI-SR (AI Super Resolution) Android TV box at IBC 2023. Preliminary specifications for S905X5 SoC and SEI Robotics TV box: SoC – Amlogic S905X5 CPU – Quad-core Armv9 CPU (likely Cortex-A510 cores) delivering 40K+ DMIPS GPU – Arm Mali-G310 V5 entry-level GPU clocked at 1 GHz for 4K HDR user interfaces VPU – Up to 2x 4Kp60 10-bit H.266/VCC and AV1 video codecs, and the usual VP9, AVS3, H.265/HEVC, H.264 AI accelerator – 4 TOPS NPU enabling AI-SR Process – “Second generation” 6 nm process System Memory & Storage – TBD […]

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