VIA Announces ARM Cortex A9 Based Digital Signage System

VIA has unveiled its ARM Digital Signage (DS) system for cost sensitive high volume digital signage deployments. The system is based on an unnamed Cortex A9 processor (possibly Wondermedia WM8850?) with up to 2 GB RAM and 64 GB Flash. The company expects the device to be used in a wide range of applications such as kiosks, POS systems, video walls, menu boards to TVOIP, cloud streaming, and Out of Home Advertising. Here are the specs of this digital signage player: All in one system-ready to load software Designed for Android operating system Industry standard ARM Cortex A9 SoC Hardware acceleration of the most demanding video formats for resolutions up to 1080p DVI-D display port (HDMI Optional) 4x USB 2.0 ports 10/100 Ethernet port Audio-out/ Mic-in Up to 64GB NAND Flash Up to 2GB DDR3 SDRAM Dimension – 18 cm x 12 cm x 2.5 cm The VIA ARM DS […]

Phoronix Designed a Solar Powered ARM Cluster with 48 Pandaboards

Michael Larabel of Phoronix did a “little” week-end project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), building an ARM cluster with 48 Pandaboards mostly with standard Pandaboards (OMAP 4430), although some Pandaboard ES (OMAP 4460) were also thrown in the mix. The 96-core cluster consumes just over 200 Watts under load and can be powered by a solar panel. The boards are stacked up vertically in an industrial trashcan, and are powered via USB instead of AC adapters. Michael’s PandaBoard ES testing indicates about a 3 Watt idle per board, 5 Watt under load, or 6 Watts under extreme load. The cluster idle power consumption is just under 170 Watts while idle, and goes slightly over 200 Watts under load. Each Pandaboard runs Ubuntu 12.04 ARM OMAP4 installed on SD cards. MIT did some testing and provided Phoronix with benchmark results such as tests following Green500 benchmarking procedure, but they are […]

ARM vs x86 Servers Benchmark – Calxeda EnergyCore ECX-1000 vs Intel Xeon E3-1240

Calxeda has released the results of ApacheBench benchmark comparing their ARM-based EnergyCore solution to an Intel Xeon server in order to showcase the performance and the much lower power consumption of their servers. Here’s the setup: Hardware: Single Calxeda EnergyCore ECX-1000 @ 1.1 GHz, 4 GB of DDR3L-1066 memory, 1Gb Ethernet network port and 250 GB SATA 7200rpm HDD Intel Xeon E3-1240 @ 3.3 GHz, 16 GB memory and 1Gb Ethernet network port. No info on hard drive provided Software: Ubuntu Server v12.04 Apache Server v2.4.2 ApacheBench v2.3 (16k request size) They performed power measurements every 2 seconds and averaged the results. Power supply overhead and hard drive power consumption were not excluded in the measurement, but the entire SoC and DDR memory power consumption were included together. For the Intel server however, they could not measure directly, so they used published TDP values for the CPU (80 W) and I/O […]

The Future of ARM Linux by David Rusling, Linaro CTO

David Rusling, Linaro CTO, gave a presentation about the future of ARM Linux at Linaro Connect, in Hong Kong, at the end of May, where he discussed the current status of ARM Linux for mobile, consumer and enterprise markets, the future of ARM Linux and Linaro involvement. He started by saying what he wants personally: A mobile phone that can’t be easily hacked, with 10 hours of battery life for any kind of applications and data must be synchronized in the cloud. The second slide entitled “Future”, but it looked like more the present to me, addresses 3 markets: Mobile: Android vs. iOS, although Windows 8 is coming Post PC: The desktop fades and laptop/tablet merge (think Asus Transformer) Enterprise: Cooling and Power is key and the enterprise is ready for innovation, meaning it will start using ARM platforms. He then focuses on Linux explaining that Android has been the […]

ARM Unveils Some Details About Mali-450 GPU

EETimes reports that ARM has shown details about its new GPU, the Mali-T450, which offers up to twice the performance of the Mali-400 and can be scaled up to 8 cores, whereas Mali-400 can only be scaled up to 4 cores. The Mali-450 (codename Tyr) targets entry-level and mid-range mobile devices, and is said to be software compatible with Mali-400. ARM new GPU has also been “tweaked” to provide better performance at the cost of occupying a slightly larger area. The company recommends the use Mali-400 for 1 to 4 cores configuration and Mali-450 for 5 to 8 cores configuration for higher end products. Contrary to Mali-T604 and Mali-T685 GPU, Mali-450 does not support general purpose computing on GPU (GPGPU). ARM is also working on a new GPU codenamed Skrymir based on Midgard architecture (Like Mali-T604 & T658) that should be available in 2014. Source: EETimes Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started […]

TechNexion EDM Modules: Open Software and (somewhat) Open Hardware ARM & x86 CPU Modules

TechNexion, a Taiwanese “embedded solution” company, was present at Computex 2012 showcasing their ARM & x86 CPU Modules and corresponding development kits. The company recently created the EDM Standard, an open hardware and software standard for x86 and ARM Computer on Modules available under the creative commons share alike license. Their EDM modules come in three form factors: EDM Compact: 82 x 60 mm (ARM only) EDM Standard: 82 x 95 mm (ARM and x86) EDM Extended: 82 x 145 mm (x86 only) They have already designed 5 modules based on this standard: EDM-CF-iMX6 EDM Compact Module powered by Freescale i.MX6 (solo, dual or quad) EDM-CT-AM437x EDM Compact Module powered by TI Sitara AM437x (single core Cortex A9) EDM-SF-iMX6 EDM Standard Module with Freescale i.MX6 EDM-ST-AM437x EDM Standard Module with TI Sitara AM437x EDM-XI-QM77 EDM Extended Module with Intel QM77 3rd generation i3/i7 core I could not find information about […]

Mitac Unveils ARM Based GFX Server at Computex 2012

MiTAC International announced their first ARM server (MiTAC GFX) based on Marvell ARMADA XP SoC and running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS at Computex 2012, in Taipei. This solution appears to be similar to Dell “Copper” ARM server announced last week, which also uses Marvel ARMADA XP and runs Ubuntu 12.04, except its intended to be a real product rather than just a prototype. The MiTAC GFX with ASX-1 module is intended for deployment as a general purpose server where real estate, efficiency and throughput at a realistic price are key factors and typical applications include web hosting, web browsing, email, chat, social media and networking, etc. Later,  MiTAC will introduce an ASX-HP (High Performance) module for compute intensive workloads that can be add to GFX system, and ASX modules featuring 64-bit SoC are under development. MiTAC showcased a GFX System with 64 nodes (that’s 256 Cortex A9 cores) at Computex 2012, […]

Dell Announces Copper ARM Servers Based on Marvell ARMADA XP SoC

It looks like 2012 will be the year of ARM servers. After previous announcements of ARM servers based on Calxeda and Applied Micro SoC, Dell has just announced its own “Copper” ARM servers powered by Marvell ARMADA XP SoC (MV78460) that allegedly runs Ubuntu Server with a LAMP stack. Dell “Copper” ARM server is composed of 12 sleds with 4 SoC each slotted into a 3U C5000 Chassis. Here are the specs: Form factor 3U chassis 48 independent servers Architecture 1S 1.6GHz, quadcore Marvell Armada XP system on a chip (SoC) 4 discrete server nodes per sled 12 sleds per 3U chassis Memory 1 DIMM slot DDR3 UDIMM VLP, 1333MHz up to 8GB per node Drive bays 1 x 2.5″ SATA per node Hard disk drives 2.5″ SATA (7.2K rpm) Networking 1GB Marvell Ethernet uplink per node (QSGMII) connected to Marvell Integrated L2 Switch (98DX4122) Dell believes that ARM based […]