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December 31, 2021December 31, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Year 2021 in review – Top 10 posts and statistics

As per tradition, we’ll look back at what happened during the year in the last post, and see what 2022 may have in store, plus the usual statistics from CNX Software website. The biggest story of 2021 has to be the worsening of semiconductors shortages with extremely long lead times, prices of some components going up multiple folds, constant complaints on Twitter about availability and prices. I think I even saw a website, hopefully misconfigured, showing an estimated availability of a specific STM32 MCU in 2037. This also gave rise to opportunities and board redesigns, with MotorComm Ethernet chips replacing some Realtek chips in SBCs such as NanoPi R2C and Orange Pi R1S Plus LTS, and CH9102F showing up as a replacement for CP2104 in some IoT boards. We also got some interesting Arm processors, but sadly the high-expected Rockchip RK3588 got delayed by another year, although it’s getting really […]

December 29, 2021December 31, 2021 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 22 Comments

OS and Memory Impact on Mini PC Gaming Performance

This article looks at what the effect of running a different operating system or having more memory has on similarly spec’d Intel and AMD mini PCs when gaming. Note: This article has been updated and corrected as a result of reader feedback and additional testing. It was inspired by having built and tested a pseudo ‘Steamdeck’ running Manjaro on an AMD-based mini PC with 16GB of memory, which made me wonder what the performance would be like using Windows 11. Initial results were surprising because Windows appeared much slower. As I’d previously heard of performance improvements when using 64GB of memory I swapped out the currently installed 16GB memory and immediately saw improved results. As I’d never observed such a dramatic performance increase on Intel mini PCs just through increasing the memory I decided to explore further by testing gaming performance on similar Intel and AMD mini PCs when using […]

November 30, 2021June 8, 2022 by Sponsored Post - No Comments

Download a free trial of the SoftNeuro Deep Learning SDK for Intel and Arm targets (Sponsored)

Jetson Xavier Tensorflow Lite vs SoftNeuro

Morpho, a global research & development company established in Japan in 2004 and specialized in imaging technology, is now offering a free trial for the SoftNeuro deep learning SDK working on Intel processors with AVX2 SIMD extensions, 64-bit Arm targets, while also leveraging OpenCL and/or CUDA. Some of the advantages of SoftNeuro are that the framework is easy to use even for those without any knowledge about deep learning, it’s fast thanks to the separation of the layers and their execution patterns, and it can run on several different hardware and OS being cross-platform. SoftNeuro relies on its own storage format (DNN format) to deliver the above advantages. But you can still use models trained with any mainstream deep learning framework. TensorFlow and Keras models can be directly converted to the DNN format, while models from other frameworks can be converted first to the ONNX format and then to the […]

November 23, 2021November 23, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Entry-level Alder Lake Pentium G7400 and Celeron G6900 processors show up online

Intel recently formally announced the 12th generation Alder Lake hybrid processors family with some high-end processors like the 125W Core i9-12900K processor designed for gaming. But we know some low-power parts are also expected, and @momomo_us recently shared a screenshot showing listings for the boxed version of Intel Pentium Gold G7400 and Celeron G6900 processor. The screenshot contains limited information revealing the $123 Pentium Gold G7400 comes with a 6 MB cache and clocks at up to 3.70 GHz, while the $91 Celeron G6900 features 4M of cache and a 3.40 GHz maximum CPU clock speed. Both are available in an (FC-)LGA16A package. What we do not know for sure from the screenshot is whether the two processors are indeed part of the Alder Lake family. and media reports like the NotebookCheck.net article that tipped us of the leak suspect they could either be an Alder Lake SoC, or Comet […]

November 17, 2021June 4, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Hardware security flaw impacts Intel Apollo Lake & Gemini Lake processors

Hardware security flaw intel-atom, celeron, pentium Apollo Lake, Gemini Lake

A few years go the Spectre and Meltdown hardware security vulnerabilities impacted a wide range of processors from Intel, AMD, Arm, and others. But a newly discovered hardware security flaw impacts specifically the Atom, Celeron, and Pentium from the Apollo Lake, Gemini Lake, Denverton … low-power processors we often feature on CNX Software. Researchers have managed to activate test or debug logic at runtime for some low-power Intel processors, which they could use to escalate privilege, retrieve the “fuse encryption key” aka “chipset key fuse” unique to each processor, and access encrypted data. Most people do not need to panic though, as the hack would require physical access to the machine, and Intel says it is releasing firmware updates to mitigate the vulnerability. High-value targets should care though as the hack only takes 10 minutes, and if a laptop is stolen or lost, a skilled attacker should be able to […]

September 16, 2021September 16, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Intel Seamless Update to enable BIOS/UEFI firmware updates without a reboot

Intel Seamless Update - MM Runtime Update System

Updating the BIOS/UEFI binary usually requires a reboot, but Intel is working on changing that, at least on Linux servers for now, with the Intel Seamless Update aiming to carry out system firmware updates (e.g. UEFI) at run-time without having to reboot, a bit like what Canonical does with the Ubuntu Livepatch service, but at a lower level in the software stack. Intel submitted a patch that “Introduces Platform Firmware Runtime Update and Telemetry drivers” to the Linux kernel mailing list a couple of days ago with the description reading in part: High Service Level Agreements (SLAs) requires that the system runs without service interruptions. Generally, system firmware provides runtime services such as RAS (Reliability, Availability and Serviceability) features, UEFI runtime services and ACPI services. Currently if there is any firmware code changes in these code area, the system firmware update and reboot is required. Example of bug fix could […]

September 13, 2021September 13, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

BrakTooth vulnerabilities impact closed-source Bluetooth stacks used in chips from Espressif, Intel, Qualcomm…

BrakTooth is a family of new security vulnerabilities in commercial, closed-source Bluetooth Classic stacks that range from denial of service (DoS) via firmware crashes and deadlocks to arbitrary code execution (ACE) in certain IoT devices. A team from Singapore has discovered 16 new security vulnerabilities after evaluating 13 Bluetooth devices from 11 vendors, but after browsing through the list of certified Bluetooth devices with impacted processors, they estimate it could impact 1400 devices. We can see the list of BrakTooth-impacted SoCs include some familiar names like Intel AX200 (found in many laptops and computers through M.2 cards), Espressif Systems ESP32, Texas Instruments CC2564C, Qualcomm CSR8811/CSR8510, Bluetrum AB32VG1 board (based on AB5301A SoC) which I’ve just reviewed, and more… The good news is that most vendors have either already submitted a patch or working on it. Espressif, Infineon (previously Cypress), and Bluetrum already have released patchsets for their firmware. It’s really […]

September 7, 2021September 9, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Intel NUC P14E Laptop Element features Intel NUC 11 Compute Element

Intel NUC P14E Laptop Element is a 13-9-inch modular laptop equipped with the same Intel NUC 11 Compute Element found in the Intel NUC 11 Enthusiast Phantom Canyon NUC11PHKi7C. The NUC 11 Compute Element “Elk Bay” is a U-Series Compute Element (95 x 65 x 6 mm) offered with a choice of Tiger Lake processors ranging from an Intel Celeron 6305 chip to a Core i7-1185G7 processor combined with up to 16GB RAM. The card also includes a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 module, a Gigabit Ethernet transceiver, and supports PCIe x4 Gen 3 and Thunderbolt 4. Intel NUC P14E Laptop Element (CMCN1CC) specifications: Computer module – NUC 11 Compute Element with 11th generation Tiger Lake Celeron to Core-i7 processor 4 GB to 16 GB LPDDR4x 4266 MHz 256 Mbit Flash EEPROM with Intel Platform Innovation Framework for EFI Plug and Play Intel AX201 wireless module for WiFi 6 up […]