arm News - Page 21 of 84 - CNX Software

April 20, 2021April 23, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Linux 5.12 – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS and RISC-V Architectures

Linux 5.12 release was expected last Sunday, but Linus Torvalds decided to release one more release candidate, namely Linux 5.12-RC8, to “make sure things are all settled down“, so the latest Linux kernel is now expected this weekend. Tihs should not yield any significant changes, so we can check what’s new in Linux 5.12, notably with regards to Arm, MIPS, and RISC-V architectures often used in SoC’s found in embedded systems. Around two months ago, the release of Linux 5.11 added support for Intel’s software guard extensions (SGX) and Platform Monitoring Technology (PMT), AMD “Van Gogh” and “Dimgrey cavefish” graphics processors, MIPI I3C host controller interfaces, and much more. Some interesting changes in Linux 5.12 include: Added support for ACRN hypervisor designed for IoT & embedded devices Added support for Playstation DualSense & Nintendo 64 game controllers, as well as Nintendo 64 data cartridges Dynamic thermal power management via a […]

April 3, 2021December 7, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Top 5 most powerful Arm SBC’s & Devkits in 2021

Most Powerful Arm SBCs development kit 2021

While companies like Hardkernel, Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, and FriendlyArm offers affordable, great little Arm Linux development boards that are suitable for many projects, in some cases, your requirements may lead you to spend a bit more for either extra CPU power, more memory, AI processing power, faster I/Os and so on. That’s why I did a list of the most powerful Arm single board computers in late 2017, but with over three years passed since then an update is warranted. The boards from the list must be easily purchasable from individuals (with the cash to spare) or small companies, so we’ll exclude hard-to-source hardware, as well as Arm server boards like Ampere eMAG motherboard, that do not really qualify as single board computers. Snapdragon 888 Mobile Hardware Development Kit While there are plenty of Cortex-A72/A73 development boards around, it’s much hardware to find one with more recent Cortex-X1 or […]

March 29, 2021March 29, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

PanVk – Panfrost gets a Vulkan driver

We’ve followed with interest the progress of the Panfrost open-source driver for Arm Mali Midgard and Bifrost GPUs which has gotten more traction over time with official support from Arm and is getting closer to OpenGL ES 3.0 compliance with work on OpenGL ES 3.1 on the way. But Collabora has now started working on PanVk driver for the more recent Vulkan graphics API, as part of the Panfrost project. This is very early stage, but the 3D cube demo above appears to be rendered with Panfrost’s PanVk Vulkan driver on Wayland in a Khadas VIM3 board based on Amlogic A311D hexa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor with a Mali-G52 GPU. As noted in the announcement, getting a useful Vulkan driver will take time as : The driver lacks almost all core features that would make it usable for real-world applications Optimizations are left on the side for now The code base is […]

March 7, 2021March 6, 2021 by Saumitra Jagdale - No Comments

QuickLogic’s Hearable Reference Design enables Alexa Voice-Initiated Devices

Working with QuickLogic's Smart Hearable Reference Design

Last year we saw QuickFeather board featuring EOS S3 Cortex-M4F MCU with embedded FPGA, which was a crowdfunding project. This year the company has launched its smart hearable reference design based on a similar processor by QuickLogic. The device is dedicated to “Voice-Initiated, Hands-Free, Alexa Built-In Devices with Close-Talk Support.” QuickLogic’s smart hearable reference design is based on the company’s Open Reconfigurable Computing (QORC) which supports a complete open-source set of development options for the MCU and FPGA devices. It is also built on the EOS S3 Voice Processor and the QuickFeather open source development kit. This can enhance the user experience with a longer battery life of the device. The EOS S3 Arm Cortex- M4 processor features Low Power Sound Detection (LPSD) technology along with DSP Concepts’ TalkTo noise suppression and beamforming technology for the directional transmission of signals. It also comes with Alexa Wake Word engine technology, an […]

February 15, 2021February 17, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Linux 5.11 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linus Torvalds has released Linux 5.11 just in time for… “Valentine’s Day”: Nothing unexpected or particularly scary happened this week, so here we are – with 5.11 tagged and pushed out. In fact, it’s a smaller-than-average set of commits from rc7 to final, which makes me happy. And I already have several pull requests lined up for tomorrow, so we’re all set for the merge window to start. But in the meantime – and yes, I know it’s Valentine’s Day here in the US – maybe give this release a good testing before you go back and play with development kernels. All right? Because I’m sure your SO will understand. Linus Last time around, Linux 5.10 was an LTS release that added EXT-4 performance enhancements, improved post-Spectre performance, as well as the enablement of BCM2711 (Raspberry Pi 4) display pipeline, among other many changes. Some of the notable changes in […]

February 3, 2021February 3, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Ubuntu Core 20 released for secure Linux IoT devices and embedded systems

Canonical has just released Ubuntu Core 20, a minimal, containerized version of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS for IoT devices and embedded systems. The company highlights several security improvements and features of the new version of the Linux-based operating system with secure boot, full disk encryption, secure device recovery, and secure containers. Ubuntu Core 20 is said to come with all benefits from Ubuntu 20.04 LTS such as regular, automated updates, the ability to manage custom app stores, and offers a longer 10-year support window. Ubuntu Core is available and certified on popular32-bit and 64-bit x86 and Arm single board computers such as Intel NUC or Raspberry Pi 4. Minimum requirements include a single-core processor @ 500 MHz, 256MB RAM, and 512MB storage. Alternatively, it’s also possible to run it in a virtual machine on your PC. Security is further enhanced with apps running in containers, and since only the necessary software […]

February 1, 2021February 2, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

FOSDEM 2021 Online February 6-7 – Hardware, Embedded & IoT talks

FOSDEM is an open-source developer event that takes place on the first week-end of February every year in Brussels, Belgium. Every year except this year, as due to COVID-19 restrictions, FOSDEM 2021 will take place online like most events these days. The schedule has been up for some time, and today I’ll look at some of the interesting talks mostly from the Embedded, Mobile and Automotive “virtual devroom” but also other tracks. Saturday, February 6, 2021 13:00 – 14:00 – From Reset Vector to Kernel – Navigating the ARM Matryoshka Long gone are the times of executing the OS in-place from memory-mapped flash upon reset. A modern SoC now comes with complex mask ROM firmware, with driver, filesystem, protocol and crypto support for loading… yet another bootloader. In his talk, Ahmad follows this chain of bootloaders until the kernel is started, stopping along the way for RAM setup, peripherial initialization, […]

January 25, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Pipo W12 Arm Windows 10 Laptop finally launched for $422 and up

Pipo showcased a Snadragon 850 powered 2-in-1 laptop in fall 2019, and said it expected it to sell for around $400. But it appears it took quite longer than expected to launch the Arm Windows 10 laptop, and only now can we see PiPo W12 laptop sold on Aliexpress for around $422 and up plus shipping. The 2-in-1 laptop comes with a 12.3-inch touchscreen display, 4GB or 8GB RAM, 256GB storage, as well as WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, and 4G LTE connectivity. Pipo W12 specifications have changed a little bit since the first announcement, notably the display resolution, and we’ve got a few more details: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 octa-core Kryo 385 Arm cores clocked @ up to 2.96 GHz with Adreno 630 Visual Processing Subsystem, Hexagon 685 DSP System Memory – 4GB or 8GB DDR4 RAM Storage – 256GB flash storage, MicroSD card slot Display – 12.3″ IPS […]