ClearFog ITX Workstation May be the Ultimate Arm Developer Platform

ClearFog ITX Workstation

Most people are still doing Arm development work on x86 platforms, because there aren’t really any viable equivalent in the Arm world. Current options include Edge Server SynQuacer E-Series (aka Linaro Developer Box), a $1,250 Arm PC shipping with a 24-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor, 4GB RAM (by default), a 1TB hard drive, and Geforce GT710 graphics cards, as well as the much more powerful GIGABYTE ThunderXStation workstation with up to two Cavium ThunderX 32-core Armv8 processors,  32GB to 128GB RAM configuration, NVMe storage, and more. The former was a good place to get started, but the Arm Cortex-A53 cores clicked at 1GHz provided limited performance, and the GIGAGYTE workstation costs over $12,000, so it’s only suitable for projects with specific needs and/or a high expected return on investment. That’s why there will be a discussion about Designing a next generation ARM Developer Platform at Linaro Connect 2019 next week in […]

Kontron SMARC-sAL28 System-on-Module Supports ECC Memory, Up to 5 TSN Ethernet Ports

Kontron SMARC-sAL28

Many systems-on-module are equipped with one Gigabit Ethernet transceiver / PHY, but NXP LS1028A powered Kontron SMARC-sAL28 SoM is equipped with two Gigabit Ethernet PHY, and can optionally support up to 5 TSN-capable Gigabit Ethernet ports directly from the controller thanks one PCIe line that can be used as a QSGMII (Quad Serial Gigabit Media Independent Interface) port. Furthermore, the module comes with up to 4GB non-ECC or ECC memory. “What is TSN?” you may ask. It stands for “Time-Sensitive Networking“, provides distributed time synchronization and deterministic communication using standard Ethernet networks for applications such as distributed synchronized measurements, coordinated distributed data logging, next-generation computer numeric control machining, automotive networks, and more as explained on National Instruments website. But let’s go back to Kontron SMARC-sAL28 system-on-module with the hardware specifications: SoC – NXP LS1028A dual Arm Cortex A72 processor, 3D GPU System Memory – Up to 4GB DDR3L ECC or […]

Oxalis 96Boards Enterprise Edition Board Targets Low Power IoT and Networking Applications

96Boards EE Standard Motherboard

Most 96Boards on the market follow 96Boards Consumer Edition (CE) specification, and while 96Board Enterprise Edition (EE) specification was first announced in 2015 we had yet to have a board available for purchase after previous failed attempts with AMD Opteron (Arm Cortex-A57) powered Cello board. But there’s finally a 96Board Enterprise Edition available today thanks to Systart Oxalis board powered by NXP LayerScape LS1202 Cortex-A53 processor with a packet accelerator, designed for low power IoT and networking applications, and following 96Boards EE “standard” form factor. Systart Oxalis key features and specifications: SoC – NXP Layerscape LS1012A single core Arm Cortex-A53 processor with hardware packet forwarding engine System Memory – Up to 3GB  RAM Storage – 64MB SPI Flash for bootloader and RCW, MicroSD Card slot, 1x mSATA connector Networking – 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports (RJ45) USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports Expansion 40-pin low speed (LS) expansion connector with +1.8V, […]

ClearFog CX LX2K Networking Board is Powered by NXP LX2160A 16-core Processor

ClearFog CX LX2K

SolidRun started their ClearFog family of networking boards back in 2015 with Marvell ARMADA based ClearFog Pro board exposing 7 Gigabit Ethernet ports, an SFP cage, mPCIe/mSATA sockets, and more. Since then the company has launched several other ClearFog boards with small variation in the name with the latest being ClearFog CX 8K equipped with a COM Express module based on Marvell ARMADA A8040 quad-core Arm Cortex A72 processor. Today I was made aware that the company leveraged of the flexibility of having a COM Express module by offering a more powerful version of the board – ClearFog CX LX2K – powered by NXP LX2160A networking processor with 16 Arm Cortex-A72 cores, 100GbE support, 24x PCIe Gen4 lanes, and more. The rest of the specifications are pretty much the same since the COM Express carrier board – pictured above – remains the same: COM Module – CEx7 LX2K module with […]

NXP QorIQ LayerScape LX2160A is a 16-core Arm Cortex A72 Communication Processor with 100 Gbit/s Ethernet

NXP Semiconductors has been working  on a high-end communication processor with their QorIQ LayerScape LX2160A SoC equipped with 16 Arm Cortex A72 cores, 16 Ethernet ports supporting 1 to 100 Gbit/s, as well as 24 PCIe Gen4 lanes, and four SATA 3.0 ports. NXP LX2160A key specifications / features: Processor – 16x Arm Cortex-A72 CPU cores, running up to 2.2GHz with 8MB L2 cache, 8MB platform cache Memory I/F – 2 x DDR4 72b including ECC, up to 3200 MT/s, maximum capacity of 256 GB Storage – 4 x SATA3.0 Ethernet Up to 16 Ethernet ports Supported Ethernet speeds include 1, 2.5, 10, 25, 40, 50, and 100 gigabits per second 130Gbps Layer 2 Ethernet switch PCIe – Up to 24 PCIe Gen4 lanes, supporting ports as wide as x8 24 SerDes lanes, operating up to 28GHz Acceleration Engines – 50Gbps security accelerator, 100Gbps data compression/decompression engine Security – Secure […]

Linux 4.16 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.16: So the take from final week of the 4.16 release looks a lot like rc7, in that about half of it is networking. If it wasn’t for that, it would all be very small and calm. We had a number of fixes and cleanups elsewhere, but none of it made me go “uhhuh, better let this soak for another week”. And davem didn’t think the networking was a reason to delay the release, so I’m not. End result: 4.16 is out, and the merge window for 4.17 is open and I’ll start doing pull requests tomorrow. Outside of networking, most of the last week was various arch fixlets (powerpc, arm, x86, arm64), some driver fixes (mainly scsi and rdma) and misc other noise (documentation, vm, perf). The appended shortlog gives an overview of the details (again, this is only the small stuff in […]

Grapeboard Raspberry Pi Lookalike Comes with Dual Gigabit Ethernet, Two USB 3.0 Ports

Scalys is a startup founded in 2016 in the Netherlands by Sintecs in order to provide advanced high-performance embedded system solutions for automotive-, avionics-, defence-, industrial-, medical and telecommunication industries. So the company is rather new, but if you visit their website, you’ll find they already have several systems-on-module and single board computers (SBCs) based on NXP QorIQ processors. Grapeboard SBC is their latest product powered by NXP QorIQ LS1012A (LayerScape 1012A) single core SoC with 1GB RAM, and equipped with two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, two USB 3.0 ports, an M.2 SATA connector, etc… that make it suitable for IoT applications such as sensor/IoT gateways, communication hubs, and secure edge devices. GrapeBoard specifications: SoC – NXP QorIQ LS1012A single core Cortex A53 processor @ up to 800 MHz with Packet Forwarding Engine System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage 64Mb (8MB) SPI NOR Flash for BCD and bootloader, 512Mb/64MB SPI NOR […]

NXP Announces OpenIL Industrial Real-Time Linux Distribution for Industry 4.0

NXP has announced the release of OpenIL industrial Linux distribution with real-time OS extensions and Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) support for factory-automation for the Industry 4.0 era. The OpenIL distribution includes support for per-stream policing, time-aware shaping of network traffic, and 801.1AS time synchronization, and supports NXP Layerscape SoCs and boards such as LS1028A dual ARMv8 processor, or LS1021A-IOT IoT gateway. Some notable OpenIL features include: Xenomai real-time extensions to Unix, making porting relatively easy from an RTOS like VxWorks or pSOS Extensible Markup Language (XML) and NETCONF-based network configuration utilities for TSN Generalized precision time protocol (gPTP) with the linuxptp daemon Drivers for the Ethernet Interfaces and the NXP SJA1105T TSN switch Support for edge computing services Optional instantiation of the Ubuntu user-space filesystem layout You’ll find the source code on Gihub, and some more information on OpenIL.org website. NXP appears to be the only company involved in the project, […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case