The Recore A8 is an all-in-one 3D printer control board built around the Allwinner A64 SoC. The board includes six soldered TMC2209 stepper motor drivers, cooled by an 8-layer PCB for durability. To make the connection better the board features industry-standard JST PH connectors for secure cable connections. Most of the connectors are flexible and support end-stops, Neopixels, servos, inductive probes, and BLTouch. Two Expansion headers on the board allow for two additional stepper motor drivers. Additionally, the board supports various temperature sensors, including regular thermistors, thermocouples, and PT100/PT1000 sensors (PT100 requires an extra board). Elias Bakken has been working on this board since 2019 and in our post about the earlier Recore A5, we have seen how Elias leverages Allwinner A64’s 300 MHz AR100 core to control real-time I/Os. Recore A8 specifications: SoC – Allwinner A64 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor running at 1 GHz, with AR100 32-bit core @ 300 MHz, Mali-400MP2 […]
Rockchip RKLLM toolkit released for NPU-accelerated large language models on RK3588, RK3588S, RK3576 SoCs
Rockchip RKLLM toolkit (also known as rknn-llm) is a software stack used to deploy generative AI models to Rockchip RK3588, RK3588S, or RK3576 SoC using the built-in NPU with 6 TOPS of AI performance. We previously tested LLM’s on Rockchip RK3588 SBC using the Mali G610 GPU, and expected NPU support to come soon. A post on X by Orange Pi notified us that the RKLLM software stack had been released and worked on Orange Pi 5 family of single board computers and the Orange Pi CM5 system-on-module. The Orange Pi 5 Pro‘s user manual provides instructions on page 433 of the 616-page document, but Radxa has similar instructions on their wiki explaining how to use RKLLM and deploy LLM to Rockchip RK3588(S) boards. The stable version of the RKNN-LLM was released in May 2024 and currently supports the following models: TinyLLAMA 1.1B Qwen 1.8B Qwen2 0.5B Phi-2 2.7B Phi-3 […]
Linux 6.10 Release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures
Linux Torvalds has announced the release of Linux 6.10 on LKML: So the final week was perhaps not quote as quiet as the preceding ones, which I don’t love – but it also wasn’t noisy enough to warrant an extra rc. And much of the noise this last week was bcachefs again (with netfs a close second), so it was all pretty compartmentalized. In fact, about a third of the patch for the last week was filesystem-related (there were also some btrfs latency fixes and other noise), which is unusual, but none of it looks particularly scary. Another third was drivers, and the rest is “random”. Anyway, this obviously means that the merge window for 6.11 opens up tomorrow. Let’s see how that goes, with much of Europe probably making ready for summer vacation. And the shortlog below is – as always – just the last week, not some kind […]
GEEKOM Mini IT13 Core i7-13620H PC discounted by $100 for Prime Day (Sponsored)
You can now get the GEEKOM Mini IT13 mini PC with a $100/£100 discount when using the coupon code CNX13 on GEEKOM US or GEEKOM UK bringing the price down to $499 and £499 respectively. The offer is valid on the model with an Intel Core i7-13620H 10-core/16-thread Raptor Lake processor, 32GB DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD for storage. The mini PC can drive up to four 4K displays through HDMI and USB4 ports, supports 2.5GbE and WiFi 6E networking, and comes with six USB ports for expansion. GEEKOM Mini IT13 specifications: SoC – Intel Core i7-13620H 13th Gen Raptor Lake processor with 10 cores, 16 threads up to 4.90 GHz with 24MB Cache, Iris Xe graphics; PBP: 45W System Memory – 32GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 via 2x SODIMM sockets Storage 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD M.2 2242 SATA SSD slot, expandable up to 1TB […]
GEEKOM AE7 Review – An AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS mini PC tested with Windows 11 and Ubuntu 24.04
Today we’ll review the GEEKOM AE7 mini PC powered by an AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS octa-core processor with up to 32GB DDR5, a 1TB NVMe SSD, four 4K capable video outputs through HDMI and USB-C ports, 2.5GbE and WiFi 6E connectivity, and six USB ports for expansion. As its name implies the GEEKOM AE7 is an evolution of the earlier GEEKOM A7 with almost identical specifications that we reviewed with Windows 11 Pro and Ubuntu 22.04 earlier this year. So we won’t do our usual three-part review and instead focus on differences between the two Ryzen 9 7840HS mini PCs in terms of features, performance, and cooling ability in a shorter review that covers hardware, Windows 11 Pro, and Ubuntu 24.04 testing. GEEKOM AE7 specifications SoC – AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS 8-core/16-thread processor up to 4.0GHz with 16MB cache, AMD Radeon 780M Graphics; TDP: 35 to 54W System Memory – […]
conga-SMX95 NXP i.MX 9596 SMARC 2.1 SoM supports M.2 1216 WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 modules
We had already written about NXP i.MX 95 SMARC 2.1 system-on-modules from ADLINK, iWave Systems, Avnet, and Advantech, but congatec has now launched its own with the conga-SMX95 featuring the NXP i.MX 9596 hexa-core Arm Cortex-A55 AI processor and up to 16GB LPDDR5 memory. The conga-SMX95 also comes with up to 256GB flash, is available on both commercial and industrial temperature grade variants, and exposes most of the same interfaces as competing products. What might be different is that the conga-SMX95 is offered with an optional M.2 1216 WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless module. We’ve seen M.2 1216 wireless modules before, and they don’t use any M.2 socket but are LGA packages that need to be soldered to the target board/module. conga-SMX95 specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 9596 CPU Up to 6x Arm Cortex-A55 application cores clocked at 1.8 GHz (industrial) or 2.0 GHz (commercial) with 32K I-cache and […]
Mixtile Edge AI boxes work with ONVIF cameras to deploy video analytics solutions (Sponsored)
Mixtile Edge AI solution supports ONVIF cameras and leverages object detection, object classification, real-time analysis, and intelligent monitoring to create IoT video analytics applications across the security, transportation, logistics, retail, industry, and agriculture sectors. The hardware is based on the time-tested Mixtile Edge 2 Kit IoT gateway powered by a Rockchip RK3568 SoC with a 1 TOPS NPU and 1080p60 VPU, or Mixtile Blade 3 SBC featuring the more powerful Rockchip RK3588 octa-core SoC with a 6 TOPS AI accelerator and an 8Kp60 VPU. The former can analyze up to 10 streams in real-time, and the latter up to a whopping 40 streams. So the novelty here is on the software side that has been developed by Mixtile and works the following way: The ONVIF cameras transmit video streams to a Mixtile Edge AI Box over the network. The Edge AI Box then runs pre-trained AI models to analyze the […]
DFI ASL9A2 COM Express Mini Type 10 module features Intel Atom x7000RE Amston Lake processor
DFI ASL9A2 is a COM Express Mini Type 10 module based on Intel Atom x7000RE Amston Lake processors which are pin-to-pin compatible with the Alder Lake-N Series processors and designed for the embedded market with a wider operating temperature range. The credit card-sized COM Express Mini module supports up to 16GB LPDDR5 memory, up to 128GB an eMMC flash, and exposes various interfaces such as 2.5GbE, PCIe Gen3, SATA 3.0, DDI and eDP/LVDS for dual display support, ten USB 3.2/2.0, and more. DFI ASL9A2 specifications: SoC (one or the other) Amston Lake Intel Atom x7211RE dual-core processor @ 1.0 to 3.2 GHz with 6MB cache, 16EU Intel UHD graphics; 6W TDP Intel Atom x7213RE dual-core processor @ 2.0 to 3.4 GHz with 6MB cache, 16EU Intel UHD graphics; 9W TDP Intel Atom x7433RE quad-core processor @ 1.5 to 3.4 GHz with 6MB cache, 32EU Intel UHD graphics; 9W TDP Intel […]