Linux News - Page 233 of 481 - CNX Software

March 9, 2019April 13, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Nitrogen8M_Mini Single Board Computer Launched for $135 and Up

Last month we write about Nitrogen8M_Mini, the First NXP i.MX8 8M Mini SBC, but at the time, it was not available for purchase just yet. Boundary Devices has now announced the official release of the board and is taking orders / pre-orders for $135 and up. Nitrogen8M_Mini SBC Two versions are being offered either with the board only, or as part of a devkit with a 5V power supply, an 8GB microSD card with Linux OS, a battery, and serial console cable: Nit8MQ_Mini_2r8eWB with WiFi and Bluetooth, currently in stock, and sold for $155 (board only), or $175 (devkit) Nit8MQ_Mini_2r8e without wireless module, to ship in a few weeks, and sold for $135 (board only), or $155 (devkit) Nitrogen8M_Mini specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Mini with 4x Cortex A53 cores @ 1.5 to 2.0 GHz max, 1x Cortex-M4F real-time core, Vivante GCNanoUltra 3D GPU, Vivante GC320 2D GPU System […]

March 8, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

K3s Lightweight Kubernetes Distribution Targets Low Resources x86 and Arm Platforms

Kubernetes (K8s) is described as a “portable, extensible open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation. It has a large, rapidly growing ecosystem. Kubernetes services, support, and tools are widely available. Google open-sourced the Kubernetes project in 2014”. However, as Rancher Labs’ CEO Sheng Liang explains “existing Kubernetes distributions are often memory intensive and overly complex for edge computing environments”, so the company developed and launched K3s, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution designed for developers and operators looking for a way to run Kubernetes in resource-constrained x86, Armv7-A and 64-bit Armv8-A hardware platforms often found in edge computing environments, as opposed to the cloud. Rancher Labs managed to reduce the footprint of Kubernetes, and better adapt it to entry-level hardware by taking four main steps: Removing old and non-essential code – Alpha functionalities, all non-default admission controllers, in-tree cloud providers, and storage drivers are […]

March 7, 2019November 17, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

NXP i.MX 8X/8M based AI-ML and Thor96 Boards Target AI and IoT Applications,

We’ve already covered several 96boards platforms announced at Embedded World 2019, but we’re not quite done yet, as Arrow Electronics also introduced two NXP i.MX 8X/8M powered 96Boards CE Extended development boards with AI-ML board equipped with i.MX 8M quad core Arm Cortex-A35 processor coupled with 2GB RAM, an mPCIe slot for cellular connectivity, and Thor96 SBC featuring NXP i.MX 8M processor with 2GB RAM as well, but also two HDMI ports, a Thread and Zigbee module, and more. Arrow AI-ML Board AI-ML key features and specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8X quad core Arm A35 processor @ 1.2 GHz, Cortex-M4F real-time core @ 266 MHz, Tensilica HiFi 4 DSP Core, GC7000 Lite 3D GPU with 4x Vec4 Shaders with 16 Execution Units System Memory – 2 GB LPDDR4 @ 1,600 MHz Industrial Temp by Micron Storage – Micro SD card slot Video Output / Display Interface HDMI Output Dual […]

March 7, 2019March 7, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Maru 0.6 Combines LineageOS & Debian 9, Supports Wireless Desktop Streaming

Maru OS was first unveiled in 2016 as a smartphone operating system that relies on Android on the go, and Debian while connected to an HDMI display, and Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The downside was that it only works on Nexus 5 at the time, but Preetam D’Souza open sourced his solution, and more people joined the project to expand the number of supported hardware platforms. I had not heard about the project for a while, but Maru 0.6 Okinawa has just been released with the three main changes being the switch from Android 6.0.1 AOSP to a custom version of LineageOS based on Android 8.1.0 to support a broader range of devices, the upgrade from Debian 8 to Debian 9, and support for wireless desktop streaming meaning you don’t need a phone with HDMI / MHL support anymore. The reliance on AOSP meant Maru used to only work on […]

March 6, 2019March 6, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

MapleBoard MP130 Allwinner H3 Board Almost Follows 96Boards CE Extended Form Factor

There are so many Allwinner H3 SBCs or development boards that new ones are often uninteresting, but with the release of Linux 5.0, I discovered a new board that I had never heard of: MapleBoard MP130. The board is equipped with 1GB RAM, Fast Ethernet, four USB ports, and various I/O expansion headers. But the form factor looked familiar, and it seems compliant with 96Boards CE Extended, except for some reasons they decided to swap the low speed and high speed connectors, so I doubt the board is compatible with any of the 96Boards mezzanines. MapleBoard MP130 specifications: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Arm Cortex-A7 processor at up to 1.3GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3L 1600 MHz Storage – 8GB eMMC 4.41 flash, microSD slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4 output with HDCP1.2 Connectivity – 10/100Mbps Ethernet Audio 2-ch 92dB ADC, 2-ch 100dB DAC, I2S/PCM Interface, […]

March 4, 2019April 13, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Google to Launch Edge TPU Powered Coral Development Board and USB Accelerator

Several low power neural network accelerators have been launched over the recent years in order to accelerator A.I. workloads such as object recognition, and speech processing. Recent announcements include USB devices such as Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 or Orange Pi AI Stick2801. I completely forgot about it, but Google also announced their own Edge TPU ML accelerator, development kit, and USB accelerator last summer. The good news is that Edge TPU powered Coral USB accelerator and Coral dev board and are going to launch in the next few days for respectively $74.99 and $149.99. Coral Development Board Coral dev board is comprised of a base board and SoM wit the following specifications: Edge TPU Module SoC – NXP i.MX 8M quad core Arm Cortex-A53 processor with Arm Cortex-M4F real-time core, GC7000 Lite 3D GPU ML accelerator – Google Edge TPU coprocessor delivering up to 4 TOPS System Memory – […]

March 4, 2019April 22, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 5.0 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 5.0: Ok, so the last week of the 5.0 release wasn’t entirely quiet, but it’s a lot smaller than rc8 was, and on the whole I’m happy that I delayed a week and did an rc8. It turns out that the actual patch that I talked about in the rc8 release wasn’t the worrisome bug I had thought: yes, we had an uninitialized variable, but the reason we hadn’t immediately noticed it due to a warning was that the way gcc works, the compiler had basically initialized it for us to the right value. So the same thing that caused not the lack of warning, also effectively meant that the fix was a no-op in practice. But hey, we had other bug fixes come in that actually did matter, and the uninitialized variable _could_ have been a problem with another compiler. Regardless – all […]

March 3, 2019March 4, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

GameShell Kit Review – Part 2: An Hackable Retro Gaming Console

ClockworkPi GameShell is an hackable retro gaming console combining Arm Linux and Arduino boards that happens to come in kit form, and that’s lot of fun to assemble as we’ve seen in the first part of the review of ClockworkPi GameShell. Since then I’ve had time to have more fun, play some games, and experiment with the device, so I’ll report my experience and point out the good parts, as well as some of the shortcomings I came across. We can press the power button to start it up, and after a few seconds we get to the main menu with several icons including… the self-describing Settings, Retro Games with MAME, MGBA, NESTOPIA, and PCxs emulators that require your own ROMs/BIOS, as well as Indie Games with ready to play games like OpenTyrian spaceship shooting game, or NyanCat. Moving on to the right of the menu we’ve got the famous […]