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October 21, 2021October 21, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 28 Comments

Khadas VIM4 – An Amlogic A311D2 SBC with 8GB RAM, Wi-Fi 6, HDMI input & output

We’ve just written about the Amlogic A311D2 processor with some pretty interesting features, and Khadas VIM4 will be one of the first single board computers equipped with the latest octa-core processor, succeeding the company’s earlier Khadas VIM3 board powered by an Amlogic A311D hexa-core processor. Khadas VIM4 makes good use of the extra memory allowance with faster 8GB LPDDR4 RAM, and also offers 32GB eMMC flash, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6, 4Kp60 HDMI input and output, independent USB 3.0, and PCIe (via M.2 socket) interfaces, and more. Khadas VIM4 specifications with bold highlights showing the differences with the VIM3 Pro model: SoC – Amlogic A311D2 octa-core processor with 4x Arm Cortex-A73 cores @ up to 2.2 GHz and 4x Cortex A53 cores @ up to 2.0 GHz, Arm Mali-G52 MP(8EE) GPU, NPU shown as TBD possibly due to license requirements System Memory- 8GB LPDDR4X @ 2112 MHz Storage – 32GB eMMC […]

August 28, 2021August 28, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

LibreELEC 10.0 minimal Linux OS for media playback released with Kodi 19.1

While most TV boxes and SBCs nowadays ship with or support a version of Android, people who just want the best viewing experience may prefer to switch to a Linux distribution such as LibreELEC or CoreELEC. The good news is that LibreELEC 10.0 has just been released with Kodi 19.1 and Linux 5.10 LTS. LibreELEC 10.0 is said to work well for Allwinner, Rockchip, and “Generic” Intel/AMD devices, while the Raspberry Pi 4 release’s codebase is rather new, and there may still be a few rough edges. Support for the previous generation Raspberry Pi boards has been dropped, and there’s no support for Amlogic platforms as CoreELEC already provides good support. Since LibreELEC 10.0 is based on Kodi 19.1, it benefits from the same features as Kodi 19 “Matrix” release including AV1 video decoding, a new skin, HDR support, and more. LibreELEC 10.1 support a wide range of single board […]

August 6, 2021August 6, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

Allwinner H313 HDMI TV Stick runs Android 10, features an Ethernet port

TOX2 is an HDMI TV stick powered by Allwinner H313 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor that we first found in an X96Q TV box. The device runs Android 10 operating systems and happens to provide Ethernet connectivity, a rarity for this form factor. The dongle also comes with 2GB LDRR4 RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, and dual-band WiFi 5, and supports 4Kp60 video output through a male HDMI 2.0 port. TOX2 specifications: SoC – Allwinner H313 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.35 GHz with Arm Mali G31 MP2 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2 and Vulkan System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card socket Video & audio output – HDMI 2.0a port up to 4Kp60 Video playback H.265 up to 4Kp60 H.264, VP9 Profile 2, AVS2 up to 4Kp30 H.263, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, MPEG-1, Xvid, Sorenson Spark, VP8, AVS/AVS+, VC1 up to 1080p60 Video encoding – H.264 […]

February 18, 2021February 18, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Open-source H.265/HEVC Hantro G2 decoder driver added to NXP i.MX 8M in Linux

H.265 Linux open-source driver NXP iMX 8M Quad

Getting open-source multimedia drivers on Arm Linux is one of the most difficult tasks, that’s why there’s no much talk about open-source GPU drivers for 2D & 3D graphics acceleration, but work on video hardware decoding and encoding is also a challenge. We’ve previously seen Bootlin work on Cedrus open-source driver for Allwinner VPU (Video Processing Unit), but Collabora has been working on open-source drivers for VeriSilicon’s Hantro G1 and G2 VPU found in some Rockchip, NXP, and Microchip processors. The company previously managed to have Hantro G1 open-source driver for JPEG, MPEG-2, VP8, and H.264 codecs, but H.265/HEVC relies on Hantro G2, and the patch for H.265 hardware video decoding on NXP i.MX 8M Quad has just been submitted to mainline Linux. Benjamin Gaignard explains more in his commit message: The IMX8MQ got two VPUs but until now only G1 has been enabled This series aim to add the […]

February 5, 2021February 5, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Ingenic T40 4K Video & AI Vision Processor mixes MIPS & RISC-V cores with AI accelerator

Ingenic T31 MIPS & RISC-V AI video processor was introduced last year with the MIPS core including SIMD128 Vector instructions for deep learning. The Chinese company has now introduced the new Ingenic T40 processor still with MIPS and RISC-V cores, but also a dedicated 8 TOPS AI engine/CNN accelerator. The new processor is especially suited to smart AI vision application thanks to support for 4K cameras, and 4K MJPEG/H.264/H.265 hardware video encoding, complemented by the 8 TOPS AI engine for computer vision workloads such as people detection, face recognition, object detection, and so on. Ingenic T40 key features and specifications: CPU – Dual-core MIPS XBurst2 @ 1.2 GHz with 256KB L2 Cache, SIMD512 instruction set MCU – 600MHz RISC-V coprocessor AI Engine – 8 TOPS neural network accelerator with 1MB memory pool, support for int16/int8/int4/int2 convolution width Memory – DDR2/DDR3/DDR3L up to 2GB Storage – SPI NOR flash, SPI NAND flash, […]

August 27, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Testing Hercules OTT Realtek RTD1395 4K Android STB Development Board

This is a guest post by Promwad, a software and hardware product development company with DTV & STB development expertise and know-how. Recently, they received a package from Realtek, their partner in Taiwan. There was a Realtek RTD1395 development board inside – Hercules 32-bit OTT – with 2 GB RAM and pre-installed Android 9 OS. Promwad team tested what it’s capable of and how it can be used by hardware and software engineers who design new TV set-top boxes and develop embedded software. Hercules OTT board is an Android IPTV box that plays videos of any formats with a maximum resolution of 4K. Streaming services such as Youtube, Netflix, etc. are supported via Dash and HLS. Also, the board supports other Android apps, including audio/video calls and conferencing. Realtek introduced RTD1395-based boards back in 2018. IP and cable TV operators used them in their subscriber devices. The RTD1395 chip with […]

June 13, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

Dune HD RealBox 4K TV Box Runs Android and Linux on Realtek RTD1395 SoC

Realtek RTD1395 processor is designed for 4K HDR TV boxes and set-top boxes. Equipped with a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor and Mali-470 GPU it offers a lower-cost alternative to Realtek RTD1295 and RTD1296 with the same 4K video processing and playback capabilities. So far, we had seen it in TV boxes designed for operators and Banana Pi BPI-M4 single board computer, but Dune HD RealBox 4K TV box is the first RTD1395 consumer device sold directly to end-users. Dune HD RealBox 4K specifications: SoC – Realtek RTD1395 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Mali-470MP4 GPU System Memory – 2 GB RAM Storage – 16 GB flash, MicroSD card slot Video Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4Kp60 HDR and AV port (composite) Audio – Optional S/PDIF, analog stereo audio via AV port, digital audio via HDMI port; HDMI audio pass-through to AV receiver Video Playback 4Kp60 HDR/HDR10+ with 10-bit H.265 and VP9 profile-2, […]

April 24, 2020April 26, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 68 Comments

Raspberry Pi 4 vs ODROID-C4 Features Comparison

Yesterday, Hardkernel launched ODROID-C4 Amlogic S905X3 SBC as an update to ODROID-C2 SBC launched in 2016. We’ve seen the board can compete with Raspberry Pi 4 4GB board thanks to benchmarks released by Hardkernel, but since those boards are so versatile, meaning they can be used in a variety of applications, it’s impossible to benchmark all use cases. One way to find out which board might be right for your application without going through benchmarks is to look at a list of features for each, and that’s exactly what we’ve done in this post. Let’s get straight to the Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB RAM) vs ODROID-C4 comparison table. Features/Specs Raspberry Pi 4B (4GB) ODROID-C4 Release date 24th June 2019 23rd April 2020 SoC Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 @ 1.5 GHz (overclockable to 2.0+ GHz) with NEON, FPU Amlogic S905X3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ 2.0 GHz with NEON, FPU, Armv8 Crypto […]