HiSilicon Category - Page 6 of 15 - CNX Software

January 13, 2018January 13, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

HiKey 960 Android Development Board Gets a 4GB RAM Version for $250

Hikey 960 development board is one of the most powerful Arm boards on the market thanks to Huawei/Hisilicon Kirin 960 octa-core processor with four ARM Cortex A73 cores, four Cortex A53 cores, and a Mali-G71 MP8 GPU, fast storage with 32GB UFS 2.1 flash, and 3GB LPDDR3 memory. Like the earlier Hikey (620) board, the board is also an official reference board for AOSP, so you should be able to run the latest Android version, and also play with sensors using Neonkey SensorHub 96Boards mezzanine board. If you are somehow limited by the 3GB RAM on the board, you can rejoice as Seeed Studio has just launched a 4GB RAM version selling for $249, or about $10 extra. Note that shipping is only scheduled for February 2, 2018, so those are pre-orders. The rest of the specifications for Hikey 960 4GB RAM version are unchanged: SoC – Huawei Kirin 960 […]

December 26, 2017June 26, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

What’s the Best Android TV Box (2017/2018 Edition)?

Since I was often asked which TV box to buy, I wrote a guide entitled “What’s the best Android TV box?” in April 2016. Time has passed, new products have launched, I tested more devices, and got further reader feedback, so it’s time for an update. There’s still no device that rules them all, and since everybody has different requirements and price points, what could the best Android TV box ever to one person, maybe be a piece of junk to another. Before purchasing a TV box, you should consider what you plan to do with it, and find the device with matches your needs and budget. So first, I’ll provide a list of things to look for – beside the SoC/RAM selection – before selecting three TV boxes that stand out (in no particular order), as well as alternatives worth looking at. Things to Look for The list is […]

December 13, 2017May 20, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

HiMedia Q10 Pro 4K TV Box Review – Part 2: Full Blu-ray Navigation & Playback

HiMedia Q10 Pro is an Android TV box powered by HiSilicon Hi3798CV200 SoC that was launched in March 2016, but the company recently provided a firmware update with support for Full Blu-ray navigation, and asked me to review that part. I received the device last month, posted the first part of the review with HiMedia Q10 Pro unboxing, and also explained how to install a 3.5″ SATA drive at the time. I’ve now acquired a few Blu-ray RIPs in order to test 4K Blu-ray video playback and navigation specifically. Initial Setup, Firmware Update, and Copying 4K Blu-ray Videos to the Hard Drive I connected the TV box to Onkyo TX-NR636 AV-Receiver, itself connected to LG 42UB820T 4K UHD television. If you’ve ever owned an HiMedia TV box the Android launcher should be familiar. If you want more details about the launcher, and user interface, checkout my HiMedia Q30 review. It’s […]

December 4, 2017April 14, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Top 5 Most Powerful Arm SBCs & Development Boards in 2017 / Early 2018

Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, and NanoPi boards among others are all great and inexpensive Arm Linux development boards that do good enough job for many tasks, but they may not cut it if you have higher requirements either in terms of CPU power, GPU capabilities and performance, I/O bandwidth, and in some cases software and support. So I’ve decided to make a list of 5 single board computers or development boards that I consider to be the most powerful in 2017, early 2018. I have limited the price to $1,000 maximum, the board must be easy to purchase for most people (e.g. you don’t need to be a tier-1 automotive supplier, or operate your own datacenter), and in case the board is not quite available yet, the likeliness of actual launch must be reasonably high. Those criteria for example exclude Intrinsyc Open-Q 835 development kit since it costs $1.149 and […]

November 22, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Hisilicon Hi3559A V100ES is an 8K Camera SoC with a Neural Network Accelerator

Earlier today, I published a review of JeVois-A33 machine vision camera, noting that processing is handled by the four Cortex A7 cores of Allwinner A33 processor, but in the future we can expect such type of camera to support acceleration with OpenCL/Vulkan capable GPUs, or better, Neural network accelerators (NNA) such Imagination Tech PowerVR Series 2NX. HiSilicon already launched Kirin 970 SoC with such similarIP, except they call it an NPU (Neural-network Processing Unit). However, while looking for camera SoC with NNA, I found a list of deep learning processors, including the ones that go into powerful servers and autonomous vehicles, that also included a 8K Camera SoC with a dual core CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) acceleration engine made by Hisilicon: Hi3559A V100ES. Hisilicon Hi3559A V100ES specifications: Processor Cores 2x ARM Cortex A73 @ 2 GHz, 32 KB I cache, 64KB D cache or 512 KB L2 cache 2x ARM […]

November 8, 2017August 21, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

HiMedia Q10 Pro TV Box Review – Part 1: Unboxing and 3.5″ SATA Bay

HiMedia Q10 Pro Android TV box was launched in March of last year, equipped with a HiSilicon Hi3798CV200 quad-core ARM Cortex A53 processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB flash, and a SATA bay for 3.5″ drives. When I wrote a post about the Best Android TV boxes, on commenter mentioned that while NVIDIA Android Shield was the best box for streaming, he felt HiMedia Q10 Pro offered the best quality for media playback. With now 18 months since launch, you may wonder why I would do a review now. That’s because Himedia keeps updating the firmware, and they asked me to check out and test their latest feature: 4K Blu-Ray navigation on Android 7.0 OS. As usual, I’ll start by checking out the hardware, and will publish a review focusing on Blu-ray playback in a few weeks. The package is more like a suitcase that your usual tiny box, but that’s common […]

October 12, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Huawei Honor WaterPlay is a Waterproof IP67 Tablet with Kirin 659 SoC

It’s quite easy to find smartphone with some level of dust and waterproofness, with many premium smartphone coming with IP67 or IP68 ingress protection rating, and if you search for IP67 / IP68 smartphones on Aliexpress, you’ll get a long list. Now replace smartphone by tablet, you’ll get a much shorter list, and most are rugged tablets. Huawei has just unveiled Honor Waterplay, that looks more like a normal tablet, and as it’s named implied is waterproof with an IP67 rating. Huawei Honor WaterPlay “HDN-W09 (WiFi)” & “HDN-L09 (LTE)” tablets specifications: SoC – Hisilicon/Huawei Kirin 659 octa-core processor with 4x ARM Cortex A53 @ up to 2.36 GHz, 4x Cortex A53 @ up to 1.7 GHz, ARM Mali-T830 MP2 GPU @ 900 MHz System Memory + Storage HDN-W09 – 3 to 4GB LPDDR3 + 32 to 64 GB eMMC 5.1 flash, micro SD slot up to 256GB HDN-L09 – 4GB […]

September 26, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro Connect SF 2017 Welcome Keynote – New Members, Achievements, the Future of Open Source, and More…

Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017 is now taking place until September 29, and it all started yesterday with the Welcome Keynote by George Grey, Linaro CEO discussing the various achievements since the last Linaro Connect in Budapest, and providing an insight to the future work to be done by the organization. The video is available on YouTube (embedded below), and since I watched it, I’ll provide a summary of what was discussed: Welcoming New Members – Kylin (China developed FreeBSD operating systems) joined LEG (Enterprise Group), NXP added LHG (Home Group) membership, and Xilinx joined LITE (IoT and Embedded). Achievements OPTEE open portable trusted environment execution more commonly integrated into products. Details at optee.org. LEG 17.08 ERP release based on Linux 4.12, Debian 8.9 with UEFI, ACPI, DPDK, Bigtop, Hadoop, etc… LITE group has been involved in Zephyr 1.9 release, notably contributing to LwM2M stack More projects to be found […]