sdk News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

January 22, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Cadence Tensilica HiFi iQ DSP to power next-generation Voice AI and Audio applications

Cadence Tensilica HiFi iQ DSP IP is the sixth generation of the company’s HiFi DSP family found in countless SoCs with audio features, and is based on a new architecture designed for next-generation voice AI and immersive audio applications. Compared to the Tensilica HiFi 5s DSP, the HiFi iQ DSP offers twice the compute performance, 8x higher AI performance, and more than 25% energy savings for most workloads, while delivering over 40% performance uplift on several audio codecs. The company claims it can act as an all-in-one AI processor for voice AI applications running popular SLMs and LLMs on the DSP itself. Tensilica HiFi iQ DSP key specifications: Load Units – 2 VLIW Slots – 5 Vector operations (SIMD) – 256-bit Accumulator Width – 80-bit Fixed Point MACs MACs for AI – Up to 128 16×8, up to 256 16×4 Optional instructions for AI (improved from HiFi 5s) Optional Vector […]

January 3, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

WCH CH32H417 dual-core RISC-V MCU offers USB 3.0, 500MB/s UHSIF, and Fast Ethernet interfaces

WCH CH32H417 is a high-performance dual-core RISC-V microcontroller clocked at up to 400 MHz with up to 960 KB flash, 896KB SRAM, and a range of interfaces, including a 5 Gbps USB 3.0 Host/Device SuperSpeed interface. Other notable features include a 500MB/s UHSIF (Universal High Speed Interface), 10/100Mbps Ethernet MAC and PHY, a SerDes high-speed isolated transceiver, a USB 2.0 High-Speed Host/Device, a USB 2.0 OTG Full Speed, USB PD support, and Display and Camera interfaces. The CH32H417 also offers the usual low-speed I/Os (95x GPIO, SPI…) and analog inputs and outputs (ADC/DAC). WCH CH32H417 CH32H417 specifications: Cores (Coremark: 5.73/MHz) QingKe RISC-V5F up to 400 MHz QinKe RISC-V3F up to 144 MHz GPU – Graphics Processing Hardware Accelerator GPHA Memory – 896KB SRAM Storage 960KB Flash 200MHz dual-edge SD/EMMC controller (SDMMC) SDIO master/slave interface with support for SD/SDIO/MMC Flexible Storage Controller FMC Display – DCT-TFT Display Controller LTDC Camera I/F […]

December 24, 2025December 24, 2025 by Debashis Das - 2 Comments

Firefly CAM-3576 series – Tiny Rockchip RK3576 SBCs for commercial, industrial, and automotive applications

Firefly Technology has introduced the CAM-3576 series of tiny (38 × 38 mm) SBCs based on the Rockchip RK3576 processor with a 6 TOPS NPU for AIoT, edge AI, smart vision, industrial, and automotive applications. It comes in three variants, which include the CAM-3576Q38 (commercial), the CAM-3576JQ38 (industrial), and the CAM-3576MQ38 (automotive) modules designed for smart cameras, intelligent security systems, dash cams, and private on-device AI model deployment. The CAM-3576 series supports up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM, up to 256GB eMMC flash, and also includes a microSD card for expansion. Additionally, the boards feature a MIPI CSI input for up to 16MP camera sensors with HDR support, Fast Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6, USB 2.0, USB-C (device), RS-485, UART, I²C, ADC, GPIOs, audio input/output, and RTC support. Firefly CAM-3576Q38 specifications: SoM – ICORE-3576Q38 SoC – Rockchip RK3576 (Q38 – Commercial) or Rockchip RK3576J (JQ38 – Industrial) or Rockchip RK3576M (MQ38 – Automotive) […]

December 13, 2025December 17, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

CIX releases P1 CPU TRM and developer guides for GPU, AI accelerator, OS and firmware/BIOS

CIX has finally released the technical reference manual (TRM) for the P1 (CD8180/CD8160) Arm Cortex-A720/A520 SoC, along with developer guides for the GPU (Arm Immortalis G720 and NVIDIA/AMD discrete graphics cards), the AI accelerator, as well as OS (Android, Linux, and Windows) and firmware (BIOS) installation and development. A slow (but steady?) progress There was a lot of excitement when the Radxa Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard was introduced in December 2024, as we were told the CIX P1 12-core Armv9 processor would offer performance similar to Apple M1 SoC and Qualcomm 8cx Gen3 platform, at an affordable price ($199 and up for the mini-ITX board), and software support would include a Debian image, full UEFI via an open-source EDKII implementation, as well as an SDK along with hardware and software documentation, community forum support, and regular firmware & OS updates. CIX was even called “a native open source ecosystem chip […]

October 3, 2025October 4, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Linux-based Vega OS replaces Android-based Fire OS in Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Select

Amazon has recently introduced the Fire TV Stick 4K Select media streamer with a MediaTek MT8698 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB eMMC flash, HDMI 2.1 video output, and WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity. However, the most interesting part of the announcement is the software, as Amazon has dropped the Android-based Fire OS used in its previous devices and instead relies on the new Linux-based Vega OS for the Fire TV Stick 4K Select. Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Select (AFTCA002) specifications: SoC – MediaTek MT8698 MCM CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 clocked up to 1.7 GHz GPU – Mali G310v2 up to 500 MHz with OpenGL ES 3.1 support VPU (hardware video decoder) AV1 up to 3840x2160p (4K) @ 60 fps, 100 Mbps, 8-bit and 10-bit input with HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG H.265 (HEVC) up to 3840x2160p (4K) @ 60 fps, 35 Mbps, 8-bit and 10-bit input with […]

September 9, 2025September 8, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Axelera Metis M.2 Max Edge AI module doubles LLM and VLM processing speed

Axelera AI’s Metis M.2 Max is an M.2 module based on an upgraded Metis AI processor unit (AIPU) delivering twice the memory bandwidth of the current Metis M.2 module for compute-intensive Edge AI inference applications such as large language models (LLMs) and vision language models (VLMs). The new Metis M.2 Max also offers a slimmer profile, advanced thermal management features, and additional security capabilities. It is equipped with up to 16 GB of memory, and versions for both a standard operating temperature range (-20°C to +70°C) and an extended operating temperature range (-40°C to +85°C) will be offered. These enhancements make Metis M.2 Max ideal for applications in industrial manufacturing, retail, security, healthcare, and public safety. Axelera AI Metis M.2 Max specifications and host requirements: Accelerator – Metis AIPU’ System Memory – 1GB, 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB memory Host Interface – M.2 2280 M-key edge connector with PCIe Gen. 3.0 […]

August 24, 2025August 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Getting Started with Quectel EC200U 4G LTE Cat 1 IoT board using the QNavigator and the QuecOpen SDK

Quectel EC200U development board QNavigator

CNXSoft: This is a guest post by Eicut showing how to get started with a Quectel EC200U 4G TLE Cat 1 IoT development board using QNavigator and the QuecOpen SDK. In IoT projects—and across embedded systems in general—we’ve seen a growing demand for higher data exchange rates, along with broader frequency band coverage. These advancements are critical for enhancing the reliability of a device’s communication link with the network. As a result, 4G modules with fallback capability to 2G and 4G networks have emerged as a leading solution in this space. But the key question remains: Which modules should we use to leverage this technology, and what features do they offer? Exploring the Quectel EC200U LTE Cat 1 Module for IoT In this section of the EC200U tutorial, we’ll take a closer look at one of the most popular and dependable options in the IoT space—Quectel’s EC200U module. If you’ve […]

August 13, 2025August 13, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Arm neural technology to add AI acceleration to Arm GPUs, enable “Neural Super Sampling” for lower bandwidth/higher FPS

Arm neural technology will add dedicated neural/AI accelerators to Arm GPUs launched in 2026 and beyond to deliver up to 50% GPU workload reduction for mobile games and other graphics-intensive apps. The first application is called Arm Neural Super Sampling (NSS). It’s a kind of AI Super Resolution implementation for games, where rather than upscaling videos, the AI accelerator upscales graphics to lower the required bandwidth and increase the frame rate (or lower the power consumption) with no impact on the rendering quality. Watch the video below to see a demo rendered at 540p resolution by the GPU and upscaled to 1080p resolution by Arm neural technology with no obvious defects. The upscaler will introduce some lag, but only about 4ms per frame in sustained performance conditions, as explained in a technical blog about the Arm Neural and NSS announcement: We assume a target of 10 TOP/s per-watt of neural acceleration […]