Imagination IMG CXM is a small GPU with HDR support for TV boxes, wearables, and Smart Home appliances

IMG CXM-2-64 CXM-4-64 CXM-4-128

Imagination IMG CXM is a power-efficient embedded GPU family with HDR support user interfaces, thus enabling OEMs to provide users the enriching visual experience they have come to expect but at a lower cost and with more design flexibility. The new CXM GPUs also deliver close to 50% performance density improvement over IMG BXM consumer GPUs, offer support for 10-bit RGBA/YUV to deliver a HDR graphical user interface with less visible banding, and integrate well with Imagination RISC-V CPUs. Three CXM GPUs are available: The CXM-2-64 with 2 pixels per clock (PPC) and 64 FLOPS per clock is the smallest GPU with native support for HDR The CXM-4-64 with 4 pixels per clock (PPC) and 64 FLOPS per clock targets mainstream products The CXM-4-128 with 4 pixels per clock (PPC) and 128 FLOPS per clock targets is better suited to “premium DTV solutions” All share the following features: 10-bit RGBA/YUV […]

Beelink SER6 Pro 7735HS Review – Windows 11 benchmarks, USB4 port tested with NVIDIA RTX 3050 eGPU’s

Beelink SER6 Pro 7735HS review

Previously I reviewed Beelink’s SER6 Pro mini PC when it was released with an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H processor, mentioning that a ‘refreshed’ model had since been released. Beelink have kindly sent me this updated model which now uses an AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS. Given this is virtually an identical processor with just a 50 MHz improvement to the boost frequency, this review will look at confirming that the Windows performance is just as good as before and also revisiting the issues faced previously with the USB4 port. Spoiler alert: the USB4 now works perfectly! Beelink SER6 Pro 7735S specification Beelink list the SER6 Pro 7735HS specifications as: with the only differences to the original SER6 Pro being firstly the AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS processor which has a Max Turbo Frequency of 4.75GHz, and secondly that two variations are also available: one with ports exactly the same as the original […]

AMD Radeon PCIe graphics card tested with a Rockchip RK3588 SBC (Radxa Rock 5B)

AMD Radeon PCIe graphics card Rockchip RK3588 SBC

When Rockchip first introduced the Rockchip RK3399 processor with a PCIe interface people initially hoped they could connect graphics card, but those hopes were quickly squashed due to a 32MB addressing limit. However, the PCIe implementation on the newer Rockchip RK3588 processor does not have such a limitation, and last November, Radxa teased a demo with an AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 PCIe graphics card connected to the Rock 5B SBC running the glxgears demo on the Radeon GPU. I couldn’t find any instructions to reproduce this setup, but this got Jasbir interested, and he tried to do a test of his own with the Radxa Rock 5B connected to an AMD Radeon R7 520 (XFX R7 250 low-profile) through an “M.2 Key M Extender Cable to PCIE x16 Graphics Card Riser Adapter” ($14 plus taxes on Aliexpress) and powered by an LR1007 120W 12VDC ATX board. The experiment was […]

Pocket AI – A portable NVIDIA RTX A500 eGPU for AI developers, embedded & industrial applications

Pocket AI NVIDIA RTX 500 eGPU

We’ve previously seen it’s possible to connect an eGPU to a mini PC through a PCIe x16 to M.2 NVMe adapter or a Thunderbolt 3 port, but while it’s fine to install on your desk for gaming or develop AI applications, the eGPU being larger than most mini PCs, it’s a little too big to integrate into products, and potentially inconvenient to carry around. ADLINK Pocket AI portable eGPU changes that with an NVIDIA RTX A500 GPU housed in a 106 x 72 x 25mm box that’s about the size of a typical power bank and connects to a host through a Thunderbolt 3 connector. The company says the upcoming eGPU is mostly designed for AI developers, professional graphics users, and embedded industrial applications, but can also be for gaming. Pocket AI specifications: GPU – NVIDIA RTX 500 Architecture – NVIDIA Ampere GA107 Base clock: 435 MHz Boost clock: 1335 […]

NanoPi R6S RK3588S mini PC & router review – Part 2: Ubuntu 22.04

NanoPi R6S Ubuntu 22.04

NanoPi R6S is both a mini PC and a router based on Rockchip RK3588S processor. I received some samples in November and started the NanoPi R6S review with OpenWrt/FriendlyWrt quickly testing the 2.5GbE interfaces and routing with iperf3, and it worked pretty well. But using a system with an octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor and 8GB RAM as an OpenWrt router only feels like a waste of resources, so I wanted to install a more versatile operating system – Ubuntu 22.04 – for further testing. My struggles installing Ubuntu 22.04 on NanoPi R6S FriendlyELEC provides various images on the Wiki either booting from an SD card, installing from a MicroSD to the eMMC flash (aka eFlasher imagers), or flashing through USB with Windows tools. I like the eFlasher images since the OS runs from the internal eMMC flash and no special tools are needed. I had just used the FriendlyWrt eFlasher image, […]

STMicro adds more STM32U5 Cortex-M33 MCUs with NeoChrom 2.5D GPU, 128KB to 4MB flash, NIST certification, etc…

STM32U5 MCU family 2023

STMicro has added three new families to its STM32U5 Cortex-M33 microcontroller series with the entry-level STM32U535/545 with as little as 128KB flash, the STM32U595/5A5 with up to 4MB of Flash and 2,514KB of RAM, and the STM32U599/5A9 with similar features as the STM32U595/5A5 by adding the new NeoChrom 2.5D GPU plus TFT-LCD and DSI display interfaces. STMicro also announced that STM32U5 series MCUs were the first general-purpose MCUs to receive NIST-embedded random-number entropy source certification. As of now, along with the STM32U575/585 introduced in February 2021 with an optional Chrom-ART 2D GPU, STMicro offers eight product lines as part of the STM32U5 MCU series as shown in the table below. That means the STM32U5 microcontroller can address a wider range of applications with the STM32U535/545 targetting lower-cost applications with less flash and RAM, the “legacy” STM32U575/U585 for mid-range applications, and the STM32U59X/5AX for applications where more storage and memory is […]

StarFive JH7110 RISC-V processor specifications released

StarFive JH7110 block diagram

With the Star64 and VisionFive 2 single board computers, we’ve already got two hardware platforms based on the StarFive JH7110 quad-core RISC-V processor, but somehow we did not get the detailed specifications of the new processor, and some details such as the presence of AI accelerators or exact PCIe specifications were lacking. Some documentation for the StarFive JH7110 processor has been released and answers some of those questions. It’s actually an SoC with six RISC-V cores, of which four 64-bit RISC-V cores run the main OS, plus a 64-bit RISC-V monitoring core, and a 32-bit RISC-V real-time core. The AI accelerators found in the JH7100 (Neural Network Engine and NVDLA) appear to be gone for good, and there are two 1-lane PCIe 2.0 interfaces up to 5 Gbps each. StarFive JH7110 specifications: CPU sub-system Quad-core 64-bit RISC-V SiFive U74 (RV64GC) processor @ up to 1.5 GHz with 32KB D-Cache, 32KB […]

Raspberry Pi 4 gets Vulkan 1.2 conformance, Android Vulkan support

Vulkan deferred shading with shadows

Iglia has done more work on the graphics driver for the VideoCore VI GPU found in Raspberry Pi 4 and other Broadcom BCM2711-based hardware with Vulkan 1.2 conformance, and Roman Stratiienko added Vulkan 3D graphics acceleration to Android, or more exactly LineageOS. Raspberry Pi and Iglia have been collaborating together since the launch of the Raspberry Pi 4 SBC to develop a Khronos conformant Mesa 3D graphics driver for the board, and that’s a long-term project that’s been going on for over two years, and not quite finished yet. Here’s a non-exhaustive timeline of the project so far: February 2020 – Raspberry Pi 4 V3DV driver gets OpenGL ES 3.1 conformance, work on Vulkan starts with the basic triangle demo showcased June 2020 – Vulkan driver source code released with many demos working on Raspberry Pi 4 October 2020 – Iglia gives a project update status presentation for Raspberry Pi […]

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