firefly News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

August 6, 2022August 6, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 28 Comments

Firefly Station M3 – A Rockchip RK3588S mini PC with up to 16GB RAM

Firefly Station M3 is a mini PC powered by Rockchip RK3588S octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor, the cost-down version of the RK3588, and equipped with up to 16GB RAM, 128GB eMMC flash storage, support for M.2 SATA and NVMe SSD, 8K capable HDMI and DisplayPort (USB-C) video outputs, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 5, and more. The new model follows the Station M1 and Station M2 mini PCs with Rockchip RK3328 and RK3566 respectively and will deliver 4 times the CPU performance and up to 8 times the 3D graphics performance compared to the M2 model, but in a slightly larger and about twice as thick enclosure – probably for active cooling – than the first two Station M fanless mini PCs. Firefly Station M3 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores, Arm Mali-G610 MP4 quad-core GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL […]

August 1, 2022August 1, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Linux 5.19 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.19. It should be the last 5.xx version, with Linux 6.0 coming for the next cycle: So here we are, one week late, and 5.19 is tagged and pushed out. The full shortlog (just from rc8, obviously not all of 5.19) is below, but I can happily report that there is nothing really interesting in there. A lot of random small stuff. In the diffstat, the loongarch updates stand out, as does another batch of the networking sysctl READ_ONCE() annotations to make some of the data race checker code happy. Other than that it’s really just a mixed bag of various odds and ends. On a personal note, the most interesting part here is that I did the release (and am writing this) on an arm64 laptop. It’s something I’ve been waiting for for a _loong_ time, and it’s finally reality, […]

July 6, 2022July 7, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

Firefly ITX-3568JQ – A Mini-ITX motherboard with Rockchip RK3568 CPU

Firefly ITX3588J mini-ITX motherboard with Rockchip RK3588 SoC now has a little sister/brother based on Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor called ITX-3568JQ, and designed to power Arm PCs, cloud terminals, industrial controllers, edge computers, advanced NVR, NAS devices, and more. The motherboard supports up to 8GB RAM, 128GB eMMC flash, offers SATA storage, dual Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6, optional 4G or 5G cellular connectivity, can handle up to three independent displays, and offers plenty of I/O options including an RS232/RS485 DB9 connector and a PCIe slot. Firefly ITX-3568JQ specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568J quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G52-2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1, 1.0 TOPS NPU, 8MP ISP, 4Kp60 video decoding, 1080p60 H.265/H.264 video encoding System Memory – 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB LPDDR4 Storage 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash 16MB SPI flash 1x […]

April 19, 2022April 25, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 51 Comments

ROC-RK3588S-PC is the first Rockchip RK3588S SBC, supports up to 32GB RAM

Rockchip RK3588S processor, a cost-down version of Rockchip RK3588 SoC with fewer interfaces, has made its way into Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC SBC (single board computer) about the size of a credit card and equipped with up to 32GB RAM. The compact SBC also comes with up to 128GB eMMC flash, and offers support for NVMe storage, up to four video outputs through HDMI, USB-C and MIPI DSI interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, and more. Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores, Arm Mali-G610 MP4 quad-core GPU with OpenGL ES3.2 / OpenCL 2.2 / Vulkan1.1 support, 6 TOPS NPU, and an 8Kp60 H.265/VP9/AVS2 video decoder, 4Kp60 decoder, 8Kp30 H.265/H.264 video encoder System Memory – 4GB, 8GB, 16GB or 32GB LPDDR4/LPDDR4x/LPDDR5 Storage 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash M.2 (PCIe 2.0) socket for […]

April 17, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

EC-R3568PC is a compact rugged mini PC based on Rockchip RK3568 SoC

Firefly EC-R3568PC is a compact rugged mini PC powered by Rockchip RK3568 SoC with a built-in 1 TOPS AI accelerator, up to 8GB RAM, 128GB flash, M.2 NVMe and SATA 3.0 storage, dual Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.0 output, RS232 and RS485 interfaces through an RJ45 socket, and more. The fanless embedded computer is designed to be wall-mounted, and operates in a wide -20°C – 60°C temperature range making it suitable for smart NVR, cloud terminal, IoT gateway, and industrial control applications. EC-R3568PC specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0GHz with Arm Mali-G52 2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1. 1 TOPS NPU, VPU with 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoding, 1080p60 H.265/H.264 video encoding System Memory – 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB LPDDR4 Storage 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash 16MB SPI Flash M.2 PCIe 3.0 socket for 2242 / 2280 NVMe […]

March 17, 2022July 17, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Rockchip RK3588 TRM, Android 12 firmware & SDK released

Firefly ITX-3588J mini-ITX motherboard powered by Rockchip RK3588 processor was introduced at the beginning of the month, and now the company has started selling samples for the Core-3588J system-on-module and taken the opportunity to release the Rockchip RK3588 TRM (technical reference manual), Android 12 firmware, and the SDK. Firefly Core-3588J module Before we check out the new documentation and Android software development kit, let’s have a quick look at Firefly Core-3588J module specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor with four Arm Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, four Arm Cortex-A55 cores, ArmMali-G610 MP4 quad-core GPU with support for OpenGL ES3.2, OpenCL 2.2, Vulkan1.1, 6 TOPS NPU, 48MP ISP, 8Kp60 video decoding, 8Kp30 video encoding System Memory – 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB LPDDR4/LPDDR4x/LPDDR5 memory Storage – 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash 314-pin MXM 3.0 edge connector for peripherals interfaces including HDMI 2.1 outputs, HDMI 2.0 input, […]

March 5, 2022July 6, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 48 Comments

Firefly is working on a Rockchip RK3588 Mini-ITX motherboard (ITX3588J)

After Radxa ROCK5 Pico-ITX SBC and Banana Pi RK3588 SoM and devkit, Firefly ITX3588J mini-ITX motherboard is the third hardware platform we’ve seen with Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor. The board will be interesting to people wanting an Arm PC or workstation as the mini-ITX form factor will allow the board to be fitted to a standard enclosure, and there’s plenty of resources and I/Os with up to 32GB RAM, four SATA ports, multiple 8K/4K video outputs and inputs, dual Gigabit Ethernet, WiFI 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, and more. Firefly ITX3588J mini-ITX motherboard specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor with four Arm Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, four Arm Cortex-A55 cores, ArmMali-G610 MP4 quad-core GPU with support for OpenGL ES3.2, OpenCL 2.2, Vulkan1.1, 6 TOPS NPU, 48MP ISP, 8Kp60 video decoding, 8Kp30 video encoding System Memory – 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB […]

January 10, 2022February 1, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linux 5.16 Release – Main Changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.16: Not a lot here since -rc8, which is not unexpected. We had that extra week due to the holidays, and it’s not like we had lots of last-minute things that needed to be sorted out. So this mainly contains some driver fixes (mainly networking and rdma), a cgroup credential use fix, a few core networking fixes, a couple of last-minute reverts, and some other random noise. The appended shortlog is so small that you might as well scroll through it. This obviously means that the merge window for 5.17 opens tomorrow, and I’m happy to say I already have several pending early pull requests. I wish I had even more, because this merge window is going to be somewhat painful due to unfortunate travel for family reasons. So I’ll be doing most of it on the road on a laptop […]