radxa News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 1, 2025December 4, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Linux 6.18 LTS release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.18 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), which will likely become the next LTS kernel [update: it’s now official]: So I’ll have to admit that I’d have been happier with slightly less bugfixing noise in this last week of the release, but while there’s a few more fixes than I would hope for, there was nothing that made me feel like this needs more time to cook. So 6.18 is tagged and pushed out. Most of the last-minute fixes are minor fixes to drivers, with some random noise elsewhere (bluetooth, ceph, afs..). Nothing strikes me as standing out, but hey, there’s a shortlog appended if you want to see the details. And this obviously means that the merge window will open tomorrow, and I already have three dozen pull requests pending. Thanks. And as I already mentioned a couple of […]

November 4, 2025November 4, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Progress on upstream Linux for MediaTek Genio IoT SoCs and boards

upstream Linux Mediatek Genio 1200 Radxa NIO 12L SBC

Collabora announced a partnership with MediaTek to bring upstream support to the Genio IoT SoCs and boards in November 2024, but since the announcement was new at the time, no work had been done, and I didn’t write about it. However, almost one year later, Collabora can now report very good progress, especially for MediaTek MT8395 boards like Genio 1200 EVK and Radxa NIO 12L, which are now usable with mainline/upstream Linux since most features are implemented. But improvements also extend to MediaTek Genio 510 and Genio 700 EVKs, and the collaboration will continue with work on newer MediaTek Genio and Kompanio processors for IoT solutions and Chromebooks. The two MediaTek Genio 1200 boards can now boot mainline Linux without any out-of-tree patches while providing support for the Audio DSP, JPEG, video hardware encoders and decoders, the Arm Mali-G57 MC5 GPU (via the open source Panfrost driver), as well as […]

October 27, 2025October 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 48 Comments

Radxa Dragon Q6A – A $60+ Qualcomm QCS6490 Edge AI SBC with GbE, WiFi 6, three camera connectors

Radxa Dragon Q6A is a credit card-sized SBC powered by a Qualcomm QCS6490 octa-core SoC with a 12 TOPS AI accelerator, up to 16GB LPDDR5 memory, and the usual ports found on Raspberry Pi-like single board computers, such as gigabit Ethernet, four USB ports, HDMI video output, and a 40-pin GPIO header. The board also features an M.2 Key-M socket for SSD storage, a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless module, a MIPI DSI display interface, three MIPI CSI connectors, a connector for an eMMC or UFS flash module, a microphone input connector, and an RTC battery connector. Radxa Dragon Q6A specifications: SoC – Qualcomm QCS6490 CPU – Octa-core Kryo 670 with 1x Gold Plus core (Cortex-A78) @ 2.7 GHz, 3x Gold cores (Cortex-A78) @ 2.4 GHz, 4x Silver cores (Cortex-A55) @ up to 1.9 GHz GPU – Adreno 643L GPU @ 812 MHz with support for Open GL ES 3.2, […]

October 14, 2025October 15, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Radxa Orion O6N – A smaller, cheaper 12-core Armv9 Nano-ITX SBC based on CIX P1 (CD8160) SoC

Radxa Orion O6N is a Nano-ITX SBC powered by CIX P1 (CD8160 variant) 12-core Cortex-A720/A50 processor with a 30/45 TOPS AI accelerator, up to 64GB LPDDR5, support for UFS and M.2 NVMe storage, and plenty of interfaces. It’s a smaller and cheaper version of the Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard introduced at the end of last year. It offers most of the same features, but is equipped with a CD8160 SoC instead of a CD8180 with a slightly lower CPU frequency for the Cortex-A720 big cores (2.6 vs 2.8 GHz), more storage options, fewer display interfaces, no dedicated audio port, 2.5GbE networking instead of 5GbE, and a few other differences you can see in the specifications below. Radxa Orion O6N specifications (highlights in bold and strikethrough show differences against Orion O6): SoC – Cix P1 (Codename: CD8160) 12-core DynamIQ processor 4x Cortex‑A720 big cores @ up to 2.6 GHz 4x Cortex‑A720 […]

September 30, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Fogwise AIRbox Q900 – $599 Qualcomm IQ-9075 AI Box delivers up to 200 TOPS of AI performance

Fogwise AIRBox Q900 AI box is an upgrade to the Fogwise Airbox powered by a Qualcomm IQ-9075 SoC with up to 200 TOPS (sparse) of AI performance, 36GB RAM, and 128GB UFS storage. Radxa says its new AI micro-server competes directly against the NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX 16GB, offering cheaper overall system cost, similar performance, and higher efficiency. Other benefits include Cortex-R52 real-time cores, 2.5GbE networking, and separate GPU, NPU, and DSP. Fogwise AIRBox Q900 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm DragonWing IQ-9075 CPU Octa-core Kryo Gen 6 (Cortex-A78C-based) application cores @ up to 2.36 GHz Quad-ore Cortex-R52 real-time cores @ up to 1.85GHz GPU – Adreno 663 GPU delivering up to 1.2 TFLOPS FP32 with secure GPU compute; supports Vulkan 1.2, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0 FP, Adreno NN Direct VPU – Adreno VPU 765 Video Decode AV1 / HEVC / H.265 / H.264 / VP9 / MPEG-2 1x 8Kp60 / […]

September 5, 2025 by Debashis Das - 5 Comments

Radxa CM4 – A Raspberry Pi CM4 replacement with Rockchip RK3576 Edge AI SoC, up to 16GB RAM

The Radxa CM4 is a Raspberry Pi CM4-like compute module built around the Rockchip RK3576(J) octa-core Cortex-A72/A53 SoC and designed for Edge AI and multimedia applications. The SoC is suitable for Edge AI applications with a 6 TOPS NPU, and the module supports up to 16GB RAM. The system-on-module also features up to 256GB of onboard eMMC storage, a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 module, and a Gigabit Ethernet PHY. Besides the two 100-pin connectors found on the Raspberry Pi CM4, the Radxa module adds another one, for extra features like UFS 2.0, dual PCIe Gen2, SATA 3, DisplayPort, and more. It comes in commercial (0 – 60°C, RK3576) and industrial (-40 – 85°C, RK3576J) variants, and Radxa guarantees availability until 2035. Radxa CM4 Specifications SoC – Rockchip RK3576 or RK3576J (industrial-grade version) CPU – Octa-core CPU with 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2 GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores at 2.0 GHz GPU – […]

August 28, 2025 by Debashis Das - 3 Comments

Xerxes Pi – A Raspberry Pi CM4/CM5 carrier board with a rack-friendly design (Crowdfunding)

Xerxes Pi A cross vendor compute module carrier board

Designed by Rapid Analysis in Australia, the Xerxes Pi is a cross-vendor compute module carrier board that fits into a 1U rack and supports Raspberry Pi CM4/CM5, Radxa CM5, Banana Pi CM4/CM5, and Orange Pi CM4/CM5 compute modules. Designed at just one-third the size of a Nano-ITX board (120 × 40 mm), it’s ideal for home lab and small business servers looking for a low-cost way to run Docker containers and other open-source software. For storage, the carrier board includes a microSD card, and an M.2 E-Key slot enables support for accelerators or peripherals. Additionally, it features an I²C/SPI header and optional PoE via add-on boards or splitters. The design is well thought out and comes with a thermally efficient design with ventilated enclosures, optional PLA or metal heatsinks, and open-source 3D printable rack cases (single or multi-board). With open schematics, 3D files, Xerxes Pi targets DIY electronics, clustered computing, edge servers, […]

August 25, 2025August 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 30 Comments

Pi Zero-sized Radxa Cubie A7Z SBC features Allwinner A733 Cortex-A76/A55 SoC, up to 16GB RAM, WiFi 6

Radxa Cubie A7Z is the little brother of the Cubie A7A SBC, still based on a powerful Allwinner A733 octa-core Arm Cortex-A76/A55 SoC, but offered in a more compact form factor inspired by the Raspberry Pi Zero. The compact single board computer also comes with up to 16GB RAM, a microSD card slot, optional UFS flash, micro HDMI and USB-C DisplayPort video output, a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.x wireless module, a 4-lane MIPI CSI camera connector, a PCIe Gen3 FPC connector (at first for Pi Zero-sized board), and a 40-pin GPIO header. Radxa Cubie A7Z specifications: SoC – Allwinner A733 (A733MX‑HN3) CPU Dual-core Arm Cortex-A76 @ up to 2.00 GHz Hexa-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ up to 1.79 GHz Single-core RISC-V E902 real-time core GPU – Imagination Technologies BXM-4-64 MC1 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.3, OpenCL 3.0 VPU 8Kp24 H.265/VP9/AVS2 decoding 4Kp30 H.265/H.264 encoding AI accelerator […]