Panfrost now supports OpenGL ES 3.1 on Midgard (Mali T760 and newer) and Bifrost (Mali G31, G52, G76) GPUs

Panfrost OpenGL ES 3.1

OpenGL ES 3.0 experimental support for Panfrost open-source Arm Mali GPU driver was announced in February 2020 and culminate with the release of Mesa 20.3 with Panfrost support last December. Collabora has now started to work on Panvk, Panfrost Vulkan driver, but that does not mean OpenGL ES work is done, and the company has just published a blog post about OpenGL ES 3.1 support in Panfrost. Alyssa Rosenzweig explains OpenGL ES 3.1 extends to both the older Midgard GPUs that include Mali T760 and newer version, and the more recent Bifrost GPUs with Mali-G31, Mali-G52 and Mali-G76. Compared to OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenGL ES 3.1 adds compute shaders, indirect draws, and no-attachment framebuffers. Boris Brezillon, Italo, Nicola, Alyssa, and the wider Mesa community especially focused on Mali-G52 GPU, found for instance in Amlogic A311D and Rockchip RK3566, with Panfrost driver passing essentially all of drawElements Quality Program and Khronos […]

Arm introduces Open-CMSIS-Pack and Keil Studio Cloud for MCU software development

Keil Studio Cloud Beta

Arm has just announced two new initiatives that aim to boost the productivity embedded, IoT, ML, and MCU software developers: the Open-CMSIS-Pack project and Keil Studio Cloud. The Open-CMSIS-Pack Project The Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS) packs have been around for years providing a vendor-independent hardware abstraction layer for microcontrollers, mostly Cortex-M based, but others too, and currently support close to 9000 different microcontrollers. I always assumed CMSIS was open-source as the source code is available in Github under an Apache 2.0 license. But apparently, not all components are, and Arm has now announced the Open-CMSIS-Pack project that will move part of CMSIS into the open project in collaboration with the Linaro IoT and Embedded Group. Linaro, Arm, and other partners like STMicro and NXP will initially focus their work on command-line tools and CMake workflows, with the ultimate goal of making the CMSIS-Pack technology into a true open […]

First Armv9 cores unveiled – Cortex-A510, Cortex-A710, Cortex-X2

Armv9 Cortex-A510 Cortex-A710 Cortex-X2

Armv9 architecture was announced in Q1 2021, building upon Armv8 but adding blocks and instructions for artificial intelligence, security, and “specialized compute”, i.e. hardware accelerators or instructions optimized for specific tasks. The company has now introduced the first three Armv9 cores with Cortex-X2, Cortex-A710, and Cortex-A510 cores, providing updates to respectively Cortex-X1, Cortex-A78, and Cortex-A55 cores. The company calls those new cores “Arm Total Compute solutions”. Arm Cortex-X2 flagship core is the company’s most powerful CPU so far with 30% performance improvements over Cortex-X1 and will be found in premium smartphones and laptops. Arm Cortex-A710 “big” CPU core provides a 30% energy efficiency gain and 10% uplift in performance compared to Cortex-A78, while Arm Cortex-A510, high efficiency “LITTLE” Armv9 core delivers up to 35% performance improvements and over 3x uplift in ML performance compared to Cortex-A55 announced four years ago, or about the same performance as the “big” Cortex-A73 cores […]

Snapdragon QC710 Developer Kit targets Windows 10 on Arm app development

QC-710 Snapdragon Developer Kit

In order to encourage developers to port their apps to Windows 10 on Arm, Qualcomm and Microsoft have announced the Snapdragon Developer Kit based on a Snapdragon Compute platform and aiming to provide a cost-efficient platform that will be less costly than a laptop. The development kit looks like a mini PC, and while the full specs have not been announced, it could well be powered by the just-announced Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor, itself a cheaper version of Snapdragon 7c. Qualcomm did not share photos of all the ports from the developer kit, but the photos we’ve got come with “QC710” file name, and reveal a power button on the top, an LED on one corner, two USB ports, a MicroSD card slot, and a SIM card socket. I’d assume at least one HDMI or DisplayPort at the back, and possibly an Ethernet port, but we just don’t know […]

Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 SoC for laptops and Chromebooks

Snapdragon 7c Gen 2

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 SoC for entry-level laptops and Chromebooks follows the steps of the Snapdragon 7c processor with a slightly higher frequency for the Kryo 468 cores, leading to a 6% performance improvements. As we’ll see below, most of the specifications are exactly the same, except the built-in Snapdragon X15 LTE modem is now listed as supporting LTE Cat 14 up to 600 Mbps, instead of LTE Cat 15 up to 800 Mbps, and UFS downgraded to UFS 2.1 from UFS 3.0. Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 specifications: CPU – Octa-core Kryo 468 (Cortex-A76) processor up to 2.55 GHz GPU – Unnamed Qualcomm Adreno GPU (Note: Snapdragon 7c had Qualcomm Adreno 618 GPU) DSP – Qualcomm Hexagon 692 DSP Memory – 2x 16-bit LPDDR4x-4266 Storage – eMMC 5.1, UFS 2.1 Display On-device display up to QXGA (2048 x 1536) @ 60 Hz External display up to QHD (2560×1440) @ […]

SolidRun HoneyComb LX2K becomes a certified Arm SystemReady ES platform

Arm SystemReady ES certified SBC

SolidRun HoneyComb LX2K is part of our list of the 5 most powerful Arm SBC’s in 2021. The mini-ITX board features an NXP LX2160A 16-core Arm Cortex-A72 processor, supports up to 64GB RAM, offers high-speed networking thanks to up to 4x SFP+ 10GbE cages and a Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as four SATA ports, a PCIe x8 slot, M.2 SSD slot and more. The board is ideal for networking applications and can be also be integrated into an Arm workstation for native application development. But just last month, we noted that while SolidRun talked about SBSA compliance a while ago, the status was unclear. The good news is that HoneyComb LX2K has just now become a certified Arm SystemReady ES (Embedded Server) compliant platform. Arm SystemReady is a set of standards and a compliance certification program that ensures systems just work with generic, off-the-shelf operating systems straight out of […]

Huawei Qingyun L410 Linux laptop is powered by Kirin 990 Arm processor

Huawei Qingyun L410 Arm Linux laptop

While it’s already possible to purchase an Arm Linux laptop like PineBook Pro, the Rockchip RK3399 processor, and 4GB RAM may be limiting to some, especially when wanting to multitask. But most likely out of necessity, Huawei has unveiled a more powerful Arm Linux laptop with Huawei Qingyun L410 powered by a 7nm Kirin 990 octa-core Cortex A76/A55 processor, coupled with 8GB RAM, up to 512GB of storage, and a 14-inch display. Huawei Qingyun L410(L410 KLVU-WDU0) preliminary specifications: SoC – Hisilicon Kirin 990 octa-core processor with 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.86GHz, 2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.09GHz, 4x Cortex A55 @ 1.86GHz, Arm Mali-G76MP16 @ 700 MHz, DaVinci NPU System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4-4266 Storage – Up to 512 UFS of storage (SSD or UFS 3.0 TBC) Display – 14-inch 2K display with a 3:2 aspect ratio Camera – “hidden camera” Video – 4K 60fps video support Misc – Fingerprint sensor Dimensions – […]

JingPad A1 Arm Linux 2-in-1 tablet can run Android apps (Crowdfunding)

JingPad A1 Linux Tablet

If you are looking for an Arm Linux tablet option are limited with, for instance, the Allwinner A64 powered 10.1-inch PineTab tablet or the CutiePi tablet with a Raspberry Pi CM4 module. If you’d like more performance, the upcoming JingPad A1 2-in-1 tablet might be an option worth looking into. The 11-inch 2K tablet features an octa-core Cortex-A75/A55 processor, coupled with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage, and can be transformed into a laptop with an optional detachable keyboard. JingPad A1 runs the company’s JingOS optimized for tablets, and which also happens to be able to run Android apps. JingPad A1 specifications: SoC – Unnamed octa-core processor with 4x Arm Cortex-A75 CPU cores @ 2 GHz, 4x Arm Cortex-A55 CPU cores @ 1.8 GHz, Imagination PowerVR GM9446 GPU @ 800 MHz. (I can’t find an exact match, but if it looks similar to MediaTek Helio P90 except the configuration is 2x […]

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