Qualcomm IPQ6000 embedded SBC offers dual Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 6 connectivity

Qualcomm IPQ6000 Embedded SBC

At the beginning of the month, we covered Mango-DVK development kit based on a  Qualcomm IPQ6000/IP6010 powered system-on-module enabling 2.5GbE and WiFi 6 connectivity. Wallys Communications contacted us earlier this week, about one of their new “802.11ax low-end product”, namely DR6000 SBC that happens to be based on Qualcomm IPQ6000 “CP03” reference design, and offers both WiFi 6 and dual Gigabit Ethernet connectivity in a round-shaped board. DR6000 / CP03 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Atheros IPQ6000 quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.2GHz processor System Memory –  512MB DDR3L Storage – 128MB Nand Flash, 16MB NOR flash Networking Wired – 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports Wireless 2.4GHz 2×2 MU-MIMO OFDMA 802.11b/g/n/ax WiFi 6, up 573 Mbps, up to 20dBm per chain 5GHz 2×2 MU-MIMO OFDMA 802.11a/n/ac/ax WiFi 6, up to 1201 Mbps, up to 20dBm per chain 2x U.FL Connectors, diplexer allows dual band concurrent operation USB – 1x micro USB […]

NanoPi R2S & NanoPi NEO3 tested with Armbian – Thermal test, Ethernet and USB performance

NanoPi R2S NanoPi NEO3 Review

In the first part of the review of NanoPi NEO3 and Nano R2S I checked out the hardware, with both tiny gateways powered by a Rockchip RK3328 processor but a different features as NEO3 includes a Gigabit Ethernet port and a USB 3.0 port, while R2S comes with dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and a USB 2.0 port. I’ve now had time to test both gateways using Armbian 20.08.1 release based on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal. Note that while NanoPi R2S is officially supported by Armbian, NanoPi NEO3 images are currently tagged as “suitable for testing“. Having that said I did not come across any specific issues on NEO3, and it may mostly mean it’s easier to get support on the forums with R2S. I flashed two microSD cards using USBImager with: Armbian_20.08.1_Nanopi-r2s_focal_current_5.8.6_minimal.img.xz Armbian_20.08.1_Nanopineo3_focal_current_5.8.6_minimal.img.xz That means Ubuntu 20.04 with Linux 5.8.6, but since Armbian is always updated, I ended the review with […]

Google Coral Dev Board mini SBC is now available for $100

Buy Coral Dev Board Mini

Google Coral SBC was the first development board with Google Edge TPU. The AI accelerator was combined with an NXP i.MX 8M quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor and 1GB RAM to provide an all-in-all AI edge computing platform. It launched for $175, and now still retails for $160 which may not be affordable to students and hobbyists. Google announced a new model called Coral Dev Board Mini last January, and the good news is that the board is now available for pre-order for just under $100 on Seeed Studio with shipping scheduled to start by the end of the month. Coral Dev Board Mini specifications haven’t changed much since the original announcement, but we know a few more details: SoC – MediaTek MT8167S quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 processor @ 1.3 GHz with Imagination PowerVR GE8300 GPU AI/ML accelerator – Google Edge TPU coprocessor with up to 4 TOPS as part of Coral […]

VIA VAB-950 SBC Features MediaTek i500 SoC for AIoT Applications

Mediatek i500 SBC

While MediaTek is better known for their mobile SoCs and they also offers processors made for AIoT (AI + IoT) applications such as MediaTek i700, i500 or i300 SoCs. We only covered a few development / evaluation boards so far, with Pumpkin i500 SBC or Innocom SB30 EVK, but we’ve now got another one with VIA VAB-950 single board computer equipped with MediaTek i500 AIoT octa-core processor, up to 4GB LPDDR4, 16GB flash storage, HDMI, dual Fast Ethernet, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, and support for 4G LTE cellular connectivity. VAB-950 SBC specifications: SOM-9X50 system-on-module SoC – MediaTek i500 octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A73 @ 2.0GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 @ 2.0GHz Arm Mali-G72 GPU up to 800 MHz with support for OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenCL ES 1.1, and Vulkan 1.0 VPU for 1080p30 H.264/H.265 decoding 2x Cadence Tensilica Vision P6 DSPs System Memory –  2GB or 4GB LPDDR4 SDRAM Storage – […]

Linux 5.9 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linux 5.9 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.9 on lkml: Ok, so I’ll be honest – I had hoped for quite a bit fewer changes this last week, but at the same time there doesn’t really seem to be anything particularly scary in here. It’s just more commits and more lines changed than I would have wished for. The bulk of this is the networking fixes that I already mentioned as being pending in the rc8 release notes last weekend. In fact, about half the patch (and probably more of the number of commits) is from the networking stuff (both drivers and elsewhere). Outside of that, the most visible thing is a reinstatement of the fbdev amba-clcd driver – that’s a noticeable patch, but it’s basically just mainly a revert. The rest is really really tiny (mostly some other minor driver updates, but some filesystem and architecture fixes […]

Kontron Introduces Tiger Lake 3U VPX Computer Blade and COM Express Type 6 Module

Tiger Lake 3U VPX Computer-Blade SBC COM Express

Intel launched several new embedded processors last month including the brand new Elkhart Lake family and some additional Tiger Lake UP3 processors designed for the IoT edge market. There’ve been several products announced with the new processors, but here are more with Kontron introducing two new Tiger Lake embedded hardware with COMe-cTL6 COM Express Compact Type 6 module and VX3060 3U VPX computer blade. As shown in the collage above, a 3.5-inch SBC is also in the works, but while we do not have the full details yet, the company expect the board to comes with SATA 3.0, M.2 socket, 2.5 GbE LAN, as well as four DP channels driving up to four independent 4Kp60 displays. VX3060 3U VPX computer blade Key features for both “3E” and “XG” variants: SoC – Intel quad-core Tiger Lake UP3 processor up to 2.5 GHz with up to 96EU Intel Iris Xe Graphics  – […]

NVIDIA Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit Launched for $54 and up

Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit

NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer kit was introduced in March 2019 for $99. With a quad-core Cortex-A57 processor, a 128-core Maxwell GPU, and 4GB LPPDR4 RAM, it’s a great low-cost AI platform as we wrote in our Jetson Nano getting started guide where we show how to perform inferences on still images and an RTSP video stream. The company has now gone further in providing an affordable AI computer for developers with the launch of NVIDIA Jetson Nano 2GB Developer Kit with similar features except for the 2GB RAM, and pricing starting at $54 without a wireless adapter or $59 with 802.11b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 USB dongle. Pre-orders are open on sites like Amazon or Seeed Studio and shipping is scheduled to start at the end of the month. If we look at the photo above, there are very few differences against the $99 version, and indeed most of Jetson Nano 2GB […]

Traverse Ten64 eight-core ARM64 10GbE networking platform runs mainline Linux (Crowdfunding)

Traverse Ten64 is a networking platform designed for 4G/5G gateways, local edge gateways for cloud architectures, IoT gateways, and network-attached-storage (NAS) devices for home and office use. Ten64 system runs Linux mainline on based NXP Layerscape LS1088A octa-core Cortex-A53 communication processor with ECC memory support, and offers eight Gigabit Ethernet ports, two 10GbE SFP+ cages, as well as mini PCIe and M.2 expansion sockets. Traverse Ten64 hardware specifications: SoC – NXP QorIQ LS1088 octa-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.6 GHz, 64-bit with virtualization, crypto, and IOMMU support System Memory – 4GB to 32GB DDR4 SO-DIMMs (including ECC) at 2100 MT/s Storage 8 MB onboard QSPI NOR flash 256 MB onboard NAND flash NVMe SSDs via M.2 Key M microSD socket multiplexed with SIM2 Networking 8x 1000Base-T Gigabit Ethernet ports (RJ45) 2x 10GbE SFP+ cages Optional wireless M.2/mPCIe card plus 3-choose-2 nanoSIM/microSD socket and up to 11x SMA connectors for antennas USB […]