Processors Category - Page 585 of 1071 - CNX Software

October 10, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Purism Librem 5 Open Source Linux Smartphone Meets its 1.5 Million Dollars Funding Target

Back in the summer, we reported about Purism Librem 5, a privacy-focused, open source Linux smartphone. The hardware has not been developed yet, at the time the company was still considering either i.MX 6 Cortex A9 processor or i.MX8 Cortex A53 processor for the phone, and asked for 1.5 million dollars in their self-managed crowdfunding campaign to get the phone delivered in 2019. The project was interesting but with the current status for the project, amount to be raised, and delivery timeline, it was a long shot. But it turns out there’s some demands for smartphones outside of Android and iOS ecosystem, and since then, KDE and the GNOME foundation have joined the project leading to more coverage & people getting involved, and Librem 5 phone is now fully funded with 13 days to go. The processor will likely be NXP i.MX 8M Quad quad core Cortex A53 SoC, as […]

October 9, 2017October 9, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

$290 DERE A3 Air Intel Celeron J3455 Apollo Lake Notebook Comes with 64GB SSD, 512GB HDD

We’ve already seen several laptops and notebooks powered by Intel Apollo Lake processors such as CHUWI LapBook 14.1, Voyo VBook A1, or Acer Spin 1. However, most of the time those models only come with 32 or 64GB eMMC flash for the operating system, which – for my needs at least – is clearly not enough, as I need extra space for data. Some allow for M.2 or mSATA card expansions but that’s usually expensive, and I’d prefer the combination of an eMMC flash (or ideally a similarly sized SSD) for optional performance, together with the capacity and cheaper price of an hard drive. DERA A3 Air notebook appears to provide just that as it includes a 64GB SSD and a 500GB HDD. The device also comes with a 14.1″ display, and is powered by an Intel Celeron J3455 quad core Apollo Lake processor. DERA A3 Air notebook specifications: SoC […]

October 8, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

NComputing RX300 Thin Client Review – Part 2: Hardware Setup, Windows Server 2016

Ncomputing RX300 is a thin client based on Raspberry Pi 3 board, allowing to run Windows operating systems on a powerful server with the Raspberry Pi 3 handling the display, audio, and keyboard/mouse inputs. The company sent me a sample for review, and I checked out the hardware and accessories in the first part entitled “NComputing RX300 Thin Client Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Teardown“, so in the post I’ve started the thin client, and connected it to vSpace Pro server. Hardware Setup RX300 uses the same peripherals as any mini PC, so I connected USB keyboard and mouse, an Ethernet cable (WiFi is also possible), and the power adapter. You could also connect other devices, and I added a USB flash drive which, as we’ll see later, will be properly recognized by the server. I was also sent a USB to VGA adapter that you can connect to […]

October 7, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Intrinsyc Launches Open-Q 660 HDK Snapdragon 660 Development Kit

For many years now, Intrinsyc has been releasing Qualcomm mobile development platforms that that are used by companies wanting to design and manufacture smartphones or other products based on Snapdragon processors. Those are usually full featured, including a smartphone display, and well suited to such product development. Their latest development kit is the Open-Q 600 HDK (Hardware Development Kit) powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC, an upgrade to Snapdragon 653 with about 20 percent improvement in CPU performance, and 30 percent in GPU performance. The kit is also equipped with 6GB RAM, 64GB flash, a display, wireless modules, sensors, camera interfaces, expansion headers, and more. Intrinsyc Open-Q 600 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 octa-core processor with Four Kryo 260 performance cores @ up to 2.2GHz, four Kryo 260 low power cores @ up to 1.8GHz Adreno 512 GPU @ up to 650 MHz supporting OpenGL ES 3.0/3.2, Vulkan, DX12 FL […]

October 6, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Hologram Unveils Nova 3G USB Dongle and Python SDK; 200 Raspberry Pi Zero W Kits Given Away to Developers

This summer I discovered Hologram global cellular IoT SIM card, and since they provided free developer samples with 2MB of monthly data includes, I decided to get one to try it out. I received it a few weeks later, and to my surprise it worked, despite my country of residence having some strict requirements with regards to SIM card registration. The SIM card uses roaming, but with a low fixed worldwide pricing, and does not come with a phone number by default, so maybe that’s why I did not have to register. The company is now back with Nova, an open source hardware cellular modem certified by OSHWA (ID #US000077). It’s basically 2G/3G USB dongle that’s controlled by Hologram Python SDK, specifically suited to Debian systems like Raspberry Pi 3 or BeagleBone Black. Hackster.io is also involved in the launch with a worldwide contest offering 200 free kits comprised of […]

October 6, 2017October 6, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Orange Pi Lite Based Seedi Retro Gaming Console Takes Your Old DVDs or CD-ROMs (Crowdfunding)

Shenzhen Xunlong’s Orange Pi family is a nice collection of low costs ARM Linux development boards that can be used in all sort of projects, just like Raspberry Pi boards, but cheaper at the cost of requiring more skills, and/or efforts to complete a project. One popular use for Orange Pi boards is retro gaming thanks to community supported images like RetrOrange Pi supporting games for Atari, Amiga, DreamCast, and other consoles. The implementation looks good enough for startups to sell their own products based on Orange Pi hardware and RetrOrangePi software, as we’ve already seen with RetroEngine Sigma Retro Game Console which had a very successful Indiegogo campaign with $629,368 USD raised. “Seedi Team” has now launched their own game console apparently based on Orange Pi Lite, but it’s a little different as instead of copying “ROMs” , you can simply insert your old CD-ROMs or DVDs. Seedi game […]

October 6, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

SiFive U54-MC Coreplex is the First Linux Ready RISC-V based 64-bit Quad-Core Application Processor

We first covered SiFive when they unveiled their open source Freedom RISC-V SoCs. Since then, they moved away from open source for their customizable IP, since their customers did not require fully open source designs, but kept releasing more RISC-V cores such as 32-bit E31 Coreplex & 64-bit E51 Coreplex, as well as offering their one-time fee pricing without recurring royalties, contrary to what some competitors – such as Arm – are doing. The company has now just announced U54-MC Coreplex quad core real-time capable application processor with support for full featured operating systems such as Linux. U54-MC Coreplex main specifications / features: Fully compliant with the RISC-V ISA specification 4x RV64GC U54 Application Cores 32KB L1 I-cache with ECC, 32KB L1 D-cache with ECC 8x Region Physical Memory Protection 48x Local Interrupts per core Sv39 Virtual Memory support with 38 Physical Address bits 1x RV64IMAC E51 Monitor Core 4KB […]

October 5, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Review of Sonoff B1 Smart RGB Light Bulb – Part 2: Sonoff-Tasmota Firmware

I’ve already reviewed Sonoff B1 light bulb using the stock firmware combined eWelink app for Android, and as promised in the first part of the review, I’ve also tested the ESP8285 based WiFi light bulb with Sonoff-Tasmota open source firmware, and report my findings in this new post. Before we can play with the new firmware, we need to install it, and I’ve just explained how to upgrade Sonoff devices to Sonoff-Tasmota firmware either using some soldering skills and a USB to serial board, or some network configuration skills and perform an OTA update using ITEAD Studio/eWelink original firmware update mechanism. So for this part of the review, I’ll assume we have just freshly update the light bulb with Sonoff-Tasmota using the binary images released by the developer. First, you’ll need to find the IP address of the light bulb with your router or tools like nmap or arp, and […]