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January 22, 2026 by Debashis Das - 1 Comment

TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro – A Thunderbolt 5 fanless SSD enclosure with 80Gbps bandwidth, 7GB/s practical performance

TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro connected to MAC Mini

TerraMaster has recently launched the D1 SSD Pro Thunderbolt 5 fanless enclosure, an update to the previous Thunderbolt 4-based TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus. The new version features an 80Gbps Thunderbolt 5 port, supports M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs with up to 8TB capacity, and has been tested at up to 7,061MB/s read and 6,816MB/s write speeds, nearly doubling Thunderbolt 4 performance. The enclosure uses a fanless, CNC-machined aluminum design that enables silent operation through passive heat dissipation. It also features smart LED indicators for connection speed, and offers compatibility with Thunderbolt 5/4/3, USB4, and USB 3.2 across Windows, macOS, and Linux, including boot support on macOS. With various protection features (short-circuit, surge, ESD) and a compact, rugged design, it is suited for 8K/4K video editors, power MacBook users, gamers who need real-time editing, ultra-fast transfers, and reliable external boot or workspace storage. TerraMaster D1 SSD Pro specifications Performance (claimed) – Up […]

January 16, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

NanoPC-T6 Plus Rockchip RK3588 SBC switches from LPDDR4x to LPDDR5 (up to 32GB)

It’s been a while since FriendlyELEC has released a board, and the NanoPC-T6 Plus SBC is more of a variant of the NanoPC-T6 and NanoPC-T6 LTS rather than a really new board. It’s still based on a Rockchip RK3588 octa-core SoC, and equipped with two HDMI 2.1 ports, an HDMI input port, MIPI DSI/CSI interfaces, two 2.5GbE ports, and M.2 sockets for NVMe SSD and wireless, among other features. The main change appears to be that the new model is now offered with up to 32GB LPDDR5 rather than up to 16GB LPDDR4x in the previous models. It’s closer to the NanoPC-T6 LTS, although it now supports two analog microphones instead of just one, and restores the M.2 Key-B socket for optional 4G LTE connectivity found in the original NanoPC-T6. The 10-pin UART + 2x USB 2.0 header found in the LTS variant gives way to a 3-pin UART debug […]

January 13, 2026January 12, 2026 by Debashis Das - 2 Comments

Radxa launches NX4 SoM with Rockchip RK3576(J) industrial SoC and NX4IO carrier board

Radxa NX4 is a 260-pin SO-DIMM SoM built around the Rockchip RK3576(J) octa-core Cortex-A72/A53 industrial SoC with a 6 TOPS NPU for edge AI workloads. It supports up to 16GB LPDDR5 memory along with optional SPI flash, eMMC 5.1 (up to 256GB), or UFS 2.0 storage (up to 1TB). Radxa has also introduced the NX4 IO carrier board for the module with an HDMI video output, two 4-lane MIPI CSI camera interfaces, four USB 3.2 Type-A ports, one USB 3.2 Type-C port, Gigabit Ethernet with optional PoE, and an M.2 M-key 2280 slot for storage, along with various I/Os. Radxa NX4 SoM specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3576J (industrial-grade version) CPU – Octa-core CPU with 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2 GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores at 2.0 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, and Vulkan 1.2 NPU – 6 TOPS […]

January 7, 2026January 8, 2026 by Debashis Das - No Comments

Quectel SP895BD-AP AIoT module features Qualcomm Dragonwing Q-8750 SoC with 80 TOPS NPU

Just yesterday, we wrote about the Qualcomm Dragonwing Q‑7790 and Q‑8750 AIoT SoCs, and on the same day, Quectel launched the SP895BD-AP smart AIoT module based on the Dragonwing Q-8750. It is designed for high-performance IoT applications, including video conferencing, 8K computing power boards, and smart retail terminals, running on Android 15 or Linux. Earlier in November, we saw Qualcomm introduce the Dragonwing IQ-X series of SoCs for industrial PCs running Windows. The Q-8750 in the Quectel SP895BD-AP seems to be a variant of the high-end version, with an 8-core Oryon CPU (up to 2x 4.32 GHz + 6x 3.53 GHz) and an Adreno Series 8 GPU. It supports 8K video encoding and decoding with three ISPs for up to 3×48MP camera inputs, or a single camera input of 108MP. The module comes in a compact LGA package and supports standard interfaces like MIPI DSI/CSI, PCIe, USB, I2S, UART, I²C, […]

January 6, 2026January 6, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Qualcomm Dragonwing Q‑7790 and Q‑8750 AIoT SoCs target AI-enhanced drones, cameras, TVs and media hubs

Qualcomm has made a range of announcements at CES 2026, and notably introduced the Dragonwing Q‑7790 and Q‑8750 processors supporting on‑device AI for drones, smart cameras & industrial vision, AI TVs/media hubs, and video collaboration systems. The mid-range Dragonwing Q-7790 targets both consumer and industrial IoT devices, and offers up to 24 TOPS of on-device AI, 4K video outputs and camera inputs, and AV1 hardware video decode. The higher-end Dragonwing Q-8750 is designed for more advanced IoT applications, delivers up to 77 TOPS (dense) for real-time inference and up to 11B LLMs, handles 8K displays and 8K cameras, and supports up to 12 physical cameras for drones, media hubs, and multi-angle vision systems. Dragonwing Q-7790 Dragonwing Q-7790 (CQ7790M/CQ7790S) specifications: CPU – Octa-core Kryo processor up to 2.8 GHz 1x Gold+ core @ 2.8 GHz 4x Gold cores @ 2.4 GHz 3x Silver cores @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Qualcomm Adreno […]

December 29, 2025 by Debashis Das - 1 Comment

Rockchip RK628D based HDMI-to-MIPI-CSI board converts HDMI video into camera feed for embedded systems

The Firefly HDMI-to-MIPI-CSI converter board converts an HDMI video and audio source into a MIPI-CSI camera stream for supported Rockchip SoCs, which is the complete opposite of the Olimex MIPI-HDMI adapter that converts MIPI DSI display signals to HDMI output. Built around the Rockchip RK628D video bridge chip, the board supports HDMI 1.4/2.0 input with 8-bit and 10-bit video, RGB888 and YUV420 color formats, and resolutions up to 4K @ 60fps. On the output side, it provides a MIPI-CSI interface compliant with MIPI D-PHY v1.2, with video output in YUV422 color format, supporting resolutions up to 4K @ 30fps. Audio output is available through a 3.5 mm headphone jack and onboard pin headers, making the board suitable for HDMI capture, smart display, micro-projector, and embedded video conversion applications. Firefly HDMI-to-MIPI-CSI board Specifications: Main Chip – Rockchip RK628D HDMI-to-MIPI CSI-2 converter Input HDMI 1.4 / HDMI 2.0 compliant 8-bit and 10-bit […]

December 15, 2025December 15, 2025 by Debashis Das - 1 Comment

Calixto Systems SL1680 OPTIMA industrial SoM and EVK features Synaptics SL1680 Edge AI processor

Calixto Systems has recently introduced the SL1680 OPTIMA, an industrial SoM built around the Synaptics SL1680 quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 SoC with a 7.9+ TOPS secure NPU for Edge AI and advanced multimedia applications. They also announced an evaluation kit (EVK) for rapid product development. The SoM offers up to 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, up to 16GB eMMC flash, an onboard Gigabit Ethernet PHY, and a wide range of interfaces through compact Hirose connectors, including dual MIPI CSI camera inputs, MIPI DSI, HDMI 2.1 Tx/Rx, PCIe 2.0, USB 3.0/2.0, SDIO, RS485, CAN-FD, and various GPIOs. The EVK further expands connectivity with MikroBUS, display and camera interfaces, and industrial I/O, making the platform suitable for AI-enabled vision systems, smart HMIs, automation equipment, and other edge computing applications. SL1680 OPTIMA SoM specifications SoC – Synaptics SL1680 (Astra Series) CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 processor @ 2.1 GHz GPU – Imagination PowerVR Series9XE GE9920 GPU with […]

December 13, 2025December 17, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

CIX releases P1 CPU TRM and developer guides for GPU, AI accelerator, OS and firmware/BIOS

CIX has finally released the technical reference manual (TRM) for the P1 (CD8180/CD8160) Arm Cortex-A720/A520 SoC, along with developer guides for the GPU (Arm Immortalis G720 and NVIDIA/AMD discrete graphics cards), the AI accelerator, as well as OS (Android, Linux, and Windows) and firmware (BIOS) installation and development. A slow (but steady?) progress There was a lot of excitement when the Radxa Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard was introduced in December 2024, as we were told the CIX P1 12-core Armv9 processor would offer performance similar to Apple M1 SoC and Qualcomm 8cx Gen3 platform, at an affordable price ($199 and up for the mini-ITX board), and software support would include a Debian image, full UEFI via an open-source EDKII implementation, as well as an SDK along with hardware and software documentation, community forum support, and regular firmware & OS updates. CIX was even called “a native open source ecosystem chip […]