banana pi News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

May 5, 2025May 5, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Banana Pi BPI-CM6 is an octa-core RISC-V system-on-module compatible with Raspberry Pi CM5 carrier boards

Banana Pi BPI-CM6 is a SpacemIT K1 octa-core RISC-V system-on-module that follows the design of the Raspberry Pi CM5, and offers up to 16GB LPDDR4 RAM, up to 128GB eMMC flash, a gigabit Ethernet controller, and a WiFi 6 + Bluetooth 5.2 module. While it remains (mostly) compatible with the Raspberry Pi CM5, the BPI-CM6 exposes some additional I/Os from the K1 SoC through an additional 100-pin B2B connector. The company also offers a credit card-sized carrier board for the RISC-V SoM with HDMI, dual GbE, two M.2 PCIe x2 sockets, a few USB ports, and more. Banana Pi BPI-CM6 specifications: SoC – SpacemIT K1 CPU – 8-core X60 RISC-V processor @ 1.6 GHz GPU – Imagination IMG BXE-2-32 @ 819 MHz with support for OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.3, OpenCL 3.0; 20 GFLOPS VPU – H.265 and H.264 1080p60 decoding/encoding NPU – None, but the RISC-V cores can deliver up […]

May 2, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Felix86 is an x86-64 emulator for RISC-V hardware

Felix86 x86-64 emulator for RISC-V hardware

Some programs and most games are designed for x86 hardware, and we’ve already seen projects like box86 x86 emulator for 32-bit Arm targets and Box64 x86-64 emulator for 64-bit Arm hardware to run games on Arm hardware. The Felix86 x86-64 emulator is similar to Box64, except it targets specifically RISC-V hardware. The project is very new, but it can already run some Linux games like World of Goo 2, SuperTuxKart, and Quake OpenArena, while the Wine emulator can currently handle simple Windows games like Solitaire. You’ll find the full compatibility list on the project’s website. Felix86 features: Just-in-Time (JIT) recompiler Uses the RISC-V Vector Extension for SSE instructions Utilizes the B extension, if available, for bit manipulation instructions like bsr Supports a variety of optional extensions, such as XThead custom extensions You’ll find the source code on GitHub. Testing has mostly been done on a Banana Pi BPI-F3 SBC powered […]

April 22, 2025April 22, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-RV2 is a low-cost RISC-V router with a 2.5GbE port and five gigabit Ethernet ports

We briefly mentioned the Banana Pi BPI-RV2 router in our article about the Siflower SF21H8898 quad-core 64-bit RISC-V SoC designed for industrial gateways, routers, and controllers. But we now have more information about Banana Pi’s latest RISC-V router, and it’s available for purchase for $34.50 on AliExpress. So let’s have a closer look. The Banana Pi BPI-RV2 ships with 512MB DDR3 RAM, 128 MB SPI NAND, and 16 MB SPI NOR flash for storage redundancy. The router features one 2.5GbE port with optional PoE support, five gigabit Ethernet ports, an M.2 2242/2230 PCIe Gen 2 x1 interface for NVMe SSD storage, and a mini PCIe socket for a WiFi module. Banana Pi BPI-RV2 specifications: SoC – Siflower SF21H8898 quad-core 64-bit RISC-V @ 1.25GHz System Memory – 512MB DDR3 Storage 128 MB SPI NAND Flash for U-Boot and Linux 16 MB SPI NOR flash for U-Boot and Linux; write protected by […]

March 26, 2025March 26, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

$23 ArmSoM Forge1 industrial SBC is powered by Rockchip RK3506J SoC

ArmSoM Forge1 is an industrial SBC (single board computer) powered by the Rockchip RK3506J triple-core Cortex-A7 processor designed for Smart Audio, HMI, and factory automation applications. The Forge1 is equipped with 512MB RAM, 512MB NAND flash, two Fast Ethernet ports, a MIPI DSI display connector, USB Type-A and Type-C ports, an audio jack, a 40-pin GPIO header partially compatible with Raspberry Pi HATs, and a 16-pin header with speaker output, microphone input, RS-485, and CAN Bus. ArmSoM Forge1 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3506J CPU 3x Arm Cortex-A7 core up to 1.5 GHz Arm Cortex-M0 real-time core GPU – 2D GPU only No VPU, no NPU System Memory – 512MB DDR3L Storage 512MB SPI NAND flash MicroSD card Video Output – 2-lane MIPI DSI connector up to 1280 x 1280@ 60FPS Audio 3.5mm audio jack Speaker and Mic via expansion header Networking – 2x 100Mbps Ethernet RJ45 ports USB 1x USB […]

January 20, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.13 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.13 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: So nothing horrible or unexpected happened last week, so I’ve tagged and pushed out the final 6.13 release. It’s mostly some final driver fixes (gpu and networking dominating – normal), with some doc updates too. And various little stuff all over. The shortlog is appended for people who want to see the details (and, as always, it’s just the shortlog for the last week, the full 6.13 log is obviously much too big). With this, the merge window for 6.14 will obviously open tomorrow. I already have two dozen pull requests pending – thank you, you know who you are. Linus Release about two months ago, Linux 6.12 – the new LTS version – brought us real-time “PREEMPT_RT” support that had always required out-of-tree patchsets until now, the completion of the EEVDF (Earliest Eligible […]

January 15, 2025January 15, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Siflower SF21H8898 is a quad-core 64-bit RISC-V SoC for industrial gateways, routers, and controllers

Siflower SF21H8898 SoC features a quad-core 64-bit RISC-V processor clocked at up to 1.25 GHz and a network processing unit (NPU) for handling traffic and is designed for industrial-grade gateways, controllers, and routers. The chip supports up to 2GB DDR3, DDR3L, or DDR4 memory, offers QSGMII (quad GbE), SGMII/HSGMII (GbE/2.5GbE), and RGMII (GbE) networking interfaces, and USB 2.0, PCIE 2.0, SPI, UART, I2C, and PWM interfaces. Siflower SF21H8898 specifications: CPU – Quad-core 64-bit RISC-V processor at up to 1.25 GHz Cache 32KB L1 I-Cache and 32KB L1 D-Cache per core Shared 256 KB L2 cache Memory – Up to 2GB 16-bit DDR3/3L up to 2133Mbps or DDR4 up to 2666Mbps Storage – NAND and NOR SPI flash support Networking 1x QSGMII interface (Serdes 5Gbps rate) for 4x external Gigabit Ethernet PHYs 1x SGMII/HSGMII interface (Serdes1.25/3.125Gbps rate) supporting Gigabit and 2.5Gbps modes 1x RGMII interface for Gigabit Ethernet 1x MDIO interface […]

January 7, 2025January 6, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

FOSDEM 2025 schedule – Embedded, Open Hardware, RISC-V, Edge AI, and more

FOSDEM 2025 will take place on February 1-2 with over 8000 developers meeting in Brussels to discuss open-source software & hardware projects. The free-to-attend (and participate) “Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting” grows every year, and in 2025 there will be 968 speakers, 930 events, and 74 tracks. Like every year since FOSDEM 2015 which had (only) 551 events, I’ll create a virtual schedule with sessions most relevant to the topics covered on CNX Software from the “Embedded, Mobile and Automotive” and “Open Hardware and CAD/CAM” devrooms, but also other devrooms including “RISC-V”, “FOSS Mobile Devices”, “Low-level AI Engineering and Hacking”, among others. FOSDEM 2025 Day 1 – Saturday 1 10:30 – 11:10 – RISC-V Hardware – Where are we? by Emil Renner Berthing I’ll talk about the current landscape of available RISC-V hardware powerful enough to run Linux and hopefully give a better overview of what to […]

November 28, 2024March 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

$16 Banana Pi BPI-WiFi5 router is powered by Siflower SF19A28 dual-core MIPS SoC

Banana Pi BPI WiFi5 Low-cost WiFi 5 router

Banana Pi BPI-WiFi5 is a low-cost WiFi 5 AC1200 router with four gigabit Ethernet ports powered by a 1.2 GHz Siflower SF19A28 dual-core MIPS SoC coupled with 64MB DDR2 and an 8MB flash. It’s not the first low-cost router from the company, as the Banana Pi BPI-WiFi6 Mini was introduced this summer for $30 with Triductor TR6560 SoC, and with the Banana Pi BPI-WiFi5, they’ve now introduced a lower-end WiFi 5 router going for just about $16 plus shipping on AliExpress or $29.99 on Amazon. Banana Pi BPI-WiFi5 specifications: SoC – Siflower SF19A2890S2 dual-core MIPS processor @ 1.2GHz System Memory – 64MB DDR2 RAM Storage – 8MB flash Networking Switch – Airoha AN8855R Gigabit Ethernet switch 1x Gigabit Ethernet WAN port 3x Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports Wireless 2.4 GHz WiFi 2×2 MIMO up to 300 Mbps 5 GHz WiFi 2×2 MIMO up to 866.7 Mbps Frequency bands 2.4GHz – 2.4GHz […]