Single Board Computer News - CNX Software

February 1, 2023February 1, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

WinLink E850-96Board SBC is powered by Samsung Exynos 850 Octa-core Cortex-A55 SoC

WinLink E850-96Board is a 96Boards CE Extended-compliant single board computer (SBC) based on a Samsung Exynos 850 octa-core Cortex-A55 processor plus 64GB flash and 4GB RAM found in a single eMCP (embedded Multi-Chip Package) chip. While the Samsung Exynos 5422 based ODROID-XU4/XU4Q was one of the most popular SBCs when it launched in 2015 thanks to its features set and affordable pricing, we haven’t really seen other interesting Samsung Exynos SBCs in recent years. I did notice a WinLink E850-96Board based on Exynos 850 in the Linux 5.17 release last March, but there was not enough information then. The good news is that the board has now launched so let’s have a closer look. WinLink E850-96Board “All-in” board specifications: SoC – Samsung Exynos 850 CPU – Octa-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MP1 GPU supporting OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0 Full Profile, and Vulkan 1.0/1.1 […]

January 24, 2023January 25, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

HiFive Pro P550 “Horse Creek” RISC-V motherboard with 16GB RAM to launch this summer

SiFive HiFive Pro P550 RISC-V motherboard based on Intel “Horse Creek” quad-core SiFive Performance P550 processor will launch this summer with 16GB DDR5 memory, two PCIe expansion slots, Gigabit Ethernet networking, USB 3.x ports, and on-board graphics. Intel Horse Creek platform was first revealed when SiFive unveiled the SiFive Performance P550 64-bit RISC-core with Cortex-A75 class performance in June 2021. The companies then demonstrated an internal Intel Horse Creek board with 8GB DDR5 and PCIe Gen5 at the Intel Innovation 2022 Developer Conference last October, and it looks like the 7nm RISC-V processor, manufactured with an Intel 4 process, will finally be available to developers this summer with the launch of the HiFive Pro P550 motherboard/development system. HiFive Pro P550 preliminary specifications: SoC – Intel-SiFive Horse Creek SoC equipped with 4x SiFive Performance P550 RV64GBC RISC-V cores with a 13-stage, 3-issue, out-of-order (OoO) pipeline GPU – “On-board graphics” [Update: […]

January 22, 2023January 23, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 59 Comments

Radxa ROCK 5A SBC – A Raspberry Pi 4 lookalike with up to 16GB RAM, Rockchip RK3588S SoC

Radxa has just unveiled the ROCK 5A single board computer (SBC) following Raspberry Pi 4 form factor and powered by a Rockchip RK3588S octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor coupled with up to 16GB of RAM as a way to celebrate Chinese New Year 2023. The Radxa ROCK 5A (aka ROCK5 Model A) closely follows the Raspberry Pi 4 layout, including two micro HDMI ports, a 3.5mm AV port, a microSD card, a 40-pin GPIO header, four USB ports, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. The MIPI DSI connector is there too, and so is the MIPI CSI camera connector, but in a different location. Radxa also added some features such as an M.2 socket for a wireless module (since there’s none on board) and eMMC flash module connectors, among other smaller changes (e.g. Power button!). ROCK 5A specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S CPU – Octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to […]

January 17, 2023January 17, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

FindBoard is another single board computer database

Hackerboards.com single board computer database has been around for several years starting as Board-DB, but I noticed another one called FindBoard while browsing on Aliexpress with some more exotic boards. Hackerboards’ database currently features 467 SBCs and MCU boards, while FindBoard has 453 boards. There are some overlaps, but also boards that are not found in the first database. Many of the boards on FindBoard are Linux-capable, but they are also some microcontroller boards as we can see from the screenshot above. If Chinese is selected, the “Buy now” will redirect you to Taobao, and if it is English they will be a link to an Aliexpress page. There’s a parametric search function for FinderBoard single board computer database but it’s really only useful when selecting one single parameter because the system use “OR” instead of “AND”. So if select 01Studio and Linux as above, it will show results for […]

January 9, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Khadas VIM1S (Amlogic S905Y4) SBC review with Android 11

We’ve previously tested Ubuntu 22.04 on Khadas VIM1S Amlogic S905Y4 SBC, so we’ll switch to Android 11 in the second part to check out the user experience and benchmark the system under Android. Installing Android 11 on Khadas VIM1S board with OOWOW We’ll basically follow the same procedure as with Ubuntu to flash the Android OS. Press and hold the Function button, press the Reset button, and release the Function button. to enter the OOWOW Wizard, and if an Ethernet cable is not connected, select Network to configure Wi-Fi as the installation process requires downloading an image from Khadas servers. This time, we’ll select the latest Android 11 image namely vim1s-android-11-v221020.raw.img.xz At just 525 MB in size (when compressed), the Android 11 image for Khadas VIM1S board is fairly compact. Installing Android with OOWOW is really easy with the interface downloading and flashing the image to the eMMC flash without […]

January 4, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Forlinx FET-MX9352-C – An NXP i.MX 9352 system-on-module for industrial AIoT applications

Forlinx FET-MX9352-C is a system-on-module based on NXP i.MX 9352 dual Cortex-A55 processor with Cortex-M33 real-time core and a 0.5 TOPS AI accelerator that can be used for industrial control, IoT gateways, medical equipment, and various applications requiring machine learning acceleration. The FET-MX9352-C follows last week’s announcement of the iWave Systems iW-RainboW-G50M OSM module and SBC with a choice of NXP i.MX 93 processors. The Forlinx module comes with two board-to-board connectors instead of solderable pads and can be found in the OK-MX9352-C single board computer with dual GbE, various display and camera interfaces, RS485 and CAN Bus, etc… FET-MX9352-C i.MX 9352 system-on-module Specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 9352 with 2x Arm Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 1.7GHz (commercial) or 1.5 GHz (industrial), Cortex-M33 real-time core @ 250 MHz, 0.5 TOPS Arm Ethos U65 microNPU System Memory – 1GB/2GB LPDDR4 RAM Storage – 8GB eMMC flash 2x high-density 100-pin board-to-board […]

December 31, 2022December 31, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Year 2022 in review – Top 10 posts and statistics

It’s the last day of the year and the time to look at some of the highlights of 2022, some traffic statistics from CNX Software website, and speculate on what 2023 may bring us. The semiconductors shortage continued in 2022, but things are looking brighter in 2023 with the full reopening of the world mixed with forecasts of difficult economic times that should keep the demand/supply equation in check. On the Arm processor front the biggest news of the year, at least in this corner of the Internet, was the launch of the Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor together with interesting single board computers that we’ll discuss below. Announced last year, the Amlogic A311D2 octa-core Cortex-A73/A53 was finally made available in a few SBC’s, and we finally got some news about the Amlogic S928X Cortex-A76/A55 SoC showcased in 8K TV boxes, but we have yet to see it in action. […]

December 30, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

Khadas VIM1S review – Ubuntu 22.04 tested on an Amlogic S905Y4 SBC

In this review of Khadas VIM1S SBC, we’ll install Ubuntu 22.04, and report our experience testing the performance such as memory speed and eMMC flash performance, and 3D graphics capabilities. Installing Ubuntu 22.04 on Khadas VIM1S Just like Khadas VIM4 and Edge2, the Khadas VIM1S SBC ships with the OOWOW firmware that allows easy installation of operating systems by downloading the images, and flashing them directly to the eMMC flash. You need just to connect a monitor and a USB keyboard and have an Internet connection through either LAN or Wi-Fi. Let’s start by installing Ubuntu 22.04 on Khadas VIM1S together. If no OS is installed, OOWOW will boot automatically, but if there’s already another OS installed, you can press and hold the Function button, press the Reset button, and release the Function button. After a few seconds, the OOWOW Wizard as shown in the picture below should show up. […]