arm News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

October 19, 2021October 19, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Cortex-M55 based Arm Virtual Hardware is now available in AWS Cloud

The Arm DevSummit 2021 is taking place on October 19-21, and the first announcements from Arm are related to IoT with “Arm Total Solutions for IoT delivering a full-stack solution to significantly accelerate IoT product development and improve product ROI”, “Project Centauri” aiming to achieve for an extensive Arm Cortex-M software ecosystem in the way that Project Cassini does for the Cortex-A ecosystem, starting with support for PSA Certified and Open-CMSIS-CDI cloud-to-device specification, and Arm Virtual Hardware based on Corstone-300 IoT platform with a Cortex-M55 MCU core and an Ethos-U55 microNPU accessible from Amazon Web Services. The first two are quite abstract right now, and more information may become available in the future, but the Arm Virtual Hardware is available now from AWS as a public beta, with 100 hours of free AWS EC2 CPU credits for the first 1,000 qualified users. The virtual hardware does not emulate only the […]

October 16, 2021October 16, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Raspberry Pi 4, Rockchip RK3399 SBC’s get Arm SystemReady IR certification

RockPro64 RK3399 Arm SystemReady IR certification

The first hardware platforms getting Arm SystemReady IR certification for IoT Edge applications were announced a few months ago with namely NXP i.MX 8 Mini evaluation kit and Compulab IOT-GATE-IMX8 gateway being able to run off-the-shelf operating system images such as Fedora IoT, OpenSuSE Leap 15.3, and Debian 11 thanks to UEFI firmware. But following PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone announcement, and Pine64 October update, we also learned that Rockchip RK3399 based RockPro64 was also Arm SystemReady IR certified, and check Arm’s website directly revealed it was joined by Lenovo Leez P710 “Gateway” SBC, as well as Raspberry Pi 4 and Pi 400 platforms. Let’s check the details and see what off-the-shelf images each board has been tested with. Pine64 RockPro64 RK3399 SBC achieved SystemReady IR v1.0 Level 1 certification meaning it complies with some waivers and workarounds found in the errata document. The board has been successfully tested with Fedora […]

October 15, 2021October 21, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Rockchip RK3566 Benchmarks in Android 11 (Zidoo M6)

I received Zidoo M6 last month, a mini PC based on Rockchip RK3566 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor. I initially understood it came with Ubuntu Linux, but actually, it came pre-loaded with Android 11, so I’ve decided to run some benchmarks on the RK3566 device to see how it performs compared to other Arm systems Zidoo M6 system info But before running benchmarks, let’s have a look at some system info with CPU-Z CPU-Z has never heard about RK3566, so it detects it as RK3066, but the rest of the information seems correct with a quad-core Cortex-A55 clocked between 400 MHz and 1.8 GHz, an Arm Mali-G52 GPU, 3775KB RAM, and 24.12 GB internal storage from the 32GB flash. The system runs Android 11 on top of Linux 4.19 which will be supported until December 2024. I can set the video output to 4K, but the UI is still limited to 1920×1080 […]

September 16, 2021September 16, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

ADLINK COM-HPC Ampere Altra 80-core Arm server module targets embedded applications

ADLINK has integrated Ampere Altra, an up to 80-core Armv8.2 server processor with up to 175W TDP, into a COM-HPC module designed for embedded applications, together with the AVA Developer Platform equipped with a 32-core processor and housed in an “ultra-silent liquid-cooled tower system”. Both the ADLINK COM-HPC Ampere Altra module and the developer kit are compliant with the just-announced Arm’s Scalable Open Architecture for Embedded Edge (SOAFEE), a “software initiative and reference implementation providing a cloud-native environment for embedded edge development”. ADLINK COM-HPC Ampere Altra COM-HPC Ampere Altra key features and specifications: SoC – Ampere Altra with 32x to 80x Armv8.2 Neoverse N1-based cores with up to 3.3 GHz frequency, up to 128 lanes of high-speed PCIe Gen4 and 8×72 ECC protected DDR4 3200 memory; TDP: 60 to 175 Watts depending on the number of cores System Memory – Up to 768GB DDR4 with 6x individual memory channels Networking […]

September 2, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Windows 11 can run on Arm SystemReady ES platforms like Raspberry Pi 4, Solidrun SBC’s, etc…

While Windows 11 may have some problems running some x86 machines, I previously saw Windows 11 Arm on Raspberry Pi 4 with instructions telling you to download the images from UUP Dump and flash the ISO with Windows on Raspberry Pi Imager. At the time, I did not look into details, and it seemed was some hack involved, but I’ve just been told Windows 11 could also run without modification on some SolidRun’s single board computers, namely MacchiatoBin and CN913x CEx7 evaluation board. Marcin Wojtas explains Windows 11 Pro (version 22000.168) could be installed unmodified on an Arm computer based on MacchiatoBin mini-ITX board equipped with an NVIDIA Geforce GT630 GPU (using EFI Frame Buffer), a SATA SSD, connected through Ethernet (via USB2ETH), plus a mouse and keyboard. So what’s the trick, and what do Raspberry Pi 4 and a board like MacchiatoBin have in common? Answer: Arm SystemReady ES […]

September 2, 2021September 2, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Armbian 21.08 for Arm boards ships with latest Linux 5.10 LTS

Armbian provides stable releases four times a year, and Armbian 21.08 has just been released offering minimal, server or XFCE, Cinnamon and Budgie desktop Linux 5.10 LTS images for Arm boards, as well as a build system to customize your own image. If you’ve been using an Arm SBC that is NOT a Raspberry Pi board, you’ve probably been told to use Armbian, as the community is providing Debian and Ubuntu images for over 100 Arm boards that are either “Supported”, “WIP” (suitable for testing), or “CSC” (no official support, aka you’re on your own). Armbian 21.08 highlights (Note: EDGE are daily builds following daily builds of the Linux kernel and fresh packages from Debian sid, Ubuntu 21.04 “hirsute” or Ubuntu 21.10 “impish” userland): Based on Linux 5.10.59 released on August 15, 2021 Minimal, server or XFCE, Cinnamon, and Budgie desktop Fast automated language selection on the first run Regular […]

August 31, 2021September 1, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 75 Comments

Arm China appears to be fully independent of Arm

Arm China (安谋科技) has apparently split from Arm Holdings in an interesting saga. Last year we noted Allwinner R329 processor featured Arm China AIPU with 256 MOPS. But this AI accelerator was nowhere to be found on the official Arm website, which seemed odd. But it appears there have been conflicts with and within Arm China for a while. Allen Wu, who was President of ARM Greater China, Member of the Executive Committee between 2014 and 2018, and has been Chairman and CEO, Arm Technology (China) since April 2018, has set up an investment fund called Alphatecture Hong Kong Ltd in 2019 in order invest in Bestechnic, an ARM licensee and developer of audio chips, reaping hundreds of dollars in profit for himself. Arm Technology (China)’s board of directors was not impressed and voted 7 to 1 on June 4, 2020 to dismiss him, but Allen refused to leave since […]

August 30, 2021August 30, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Linux 5.14 Release – Main changes, Arm, MIPS, and RISC-V architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced Linux 5.14 release which happens to almost coincide with the anniversary of the initial announcement of the “small” project on August 25, 1991, about 30 years ago. Here’s Linux 5.14’s announcement: So I realize you must all still be busy with all the galas and fancy balls and all the other 30th anniversary events, but at some point you must be getting tired of the constant glitz, the fireworks, and the champagne. That ball gown or tailcoat isn’t the most comfortable thing, either. The celebrations will go on for a few more weeks yet, but you all may just need a breather from them. And when that happens, I have just the thing for you – a new kernel release to test and enjoy. Because 5.14 is out there, just waiting for you to kick the tires and remind yourself what all the festivities are […]