Ocean is a Battery Powered Mobile Server Powered by Allwinner A20 Processor

ocean_server

iCracked, a company selling and repairing iPhones, has designed a thin and battery powered mobile Linux server called Ocean. The device is powered by Allwinner A20 processor with 1GB RAM, 4GB flash completed with 8 to 64 GB internal storage (SD card), and runs Debian 8.1 Jessie. Ocean mini server specifications: SoC – Dual core ARM Cortex A7 processor @ 1.0 GHz System Memory – 1GB DDR3 @ 480 MHz Storage – 4GB flash for firmware, 8 to 64 GB internal SD card Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n WiFi up to 72 Mbps, and Bluetooth 4.0 LE + EDR with 10 dBm Antenna USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port, 1x mini USB for power Misc – Programmable RGB button Battery – 4,200 mAh; good for two days of continuous CPU usage; Charged via mini USB port (~4 to 5 hours) or Qi charger (~10 hours) Dimensions – 15 x 7.8 […]

AMD Launches 3 ARM based Opteron A1100 Server SoCs: A1120, A1150 and A1170

AMD Roadmap showed “Seattle” Cortex A57 server SoC were expected in H2 2014, which later became known as Opteron A1100, and the company unveiled their Optron A1100 development board in summer 2014, but since then there has been a few delays, the announcement of Huskyboard 96Boards EE development board, and finally they announced availability of three Opteron A1100 processors yesterday. So there’s one quad core Cortex A57 with Opteron A1120, and two octa-core with Opteron A1150 and A1170 clocked at respectively 1.7 and 2.0 GHz. I was surprised by the rather high TDP at 25W and 32W since one of ARM advantage is low power consumption. But since it is a server SoC it needs to be compared to Intel server SoC, and AnandTech did that against Intel Atom C2750 with eight Silvermont cores @ 2.4 GHz. On the three important metrics, i.e. price, performance and power consumption, AMD A1170 […]

Outernet Shares Knowledge via their Lighthouse Satellite Receiver

While many of us take Internet access for granted, about 60% of the world population did not have access to Internet at the end of 2014, and Outernet initiative aims to provide educational, emergency, and news content to this segment of the population, which still represents the majority, at a rate of 1GB per day via a satellite receiver called Lighthouse. Let’s check the hardware first: SoC – Amlogic AML8726-MX dual core Cortex A9 @ 1.5GHz with Mali-400MP GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4 GB NAND flash + 1x micro SD slot Video Output – HDMI, AV (CVBS + R/L audio) Audio Output – HDMI, AV, and optical S/PDIF Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi with up to 5 clients Tuner – DVB-S2 tuner with two antenna connectors (only one used) USB – 3x external USB 2.0 ports, 2x internal USB 2.0 ports (used) Misc – […]

ARM TechCon 2015 Schedule – IoT, Servers, 64-bit ARM, Power Usage Optimization, and More

The ARM Technology Conference (ARM TechCon) will take place on November 10 – 12, 2015, in Santa Clara Convention Center, and just like every year, there will be a free exposition for companies to showcase their latest innovation and/or products, as well as a technical conference with sessions and workshops sorted into various tracks: Automotive/Embedded Vision Embedded IoT Mobile/Connectivity Networking Infrastructure/Servers Tools & Implementation Wearables/Sensors ARM Training Day Sponsored Vendor Training Special Event General Event Software Developers Workshop You can find the complete schedule on ARM TechCon website. Although I won’t attend, I’ve created my own virtual schedule with some of the sessions I found interesting. Tuesday – November 10 8:30 – 9:20 – ARM Vision for Thermal Management and Energy Aware Scheduling on Linux by Ian Rickards (ARM), Charles Garcia-Tobin (ARM), Bobby Batacharia (ARM) This talk will cover the history and where are we going, for ARM’s Power Software (IPA, […]

Infomir MAG Linux & Android Set-top-boxes Feature STMicro or Broadcom Processors, Support Open Source IPTV Solution

Infomir is a group of companies that specializes on the development, design, production and maintenance of equipment and client support for IPTV, OTT and VoD services, with offices in Ukraine and the US. They’ve been selling their Linux based MAG set-top-boxes based on STMicro STB SoC for a little while, and their upcoming model include either STMicro or Broadcom processor, and have support for “Stalker” open source IPTV middleware that allow their customers to setup their own IPTV services for thousands of clients. Their upcoming MAG products fit into three categories: Basic IPTV set-top boxes (no tuner) MAG257 – STMicro STiH301 single core Cortex A9 processor @ 1.5GHz with 512 MB RAM, 512MB storage, USB 2.0 & 3.0 ports, Ethernet, HDMI 1.4. The box runs Linux, and supports HEVC decoding up to 1080p. Hybrid set-top boxes MAG277 – STMicro STiH301 single core Cortex A9 processor @ 1.6GHz with 1 GB […]

Own-Mailbox is a Tiny, Secure, and Open Source Hardware Mail Server (Crowdfunding)

Email encryption has been around for a while, but virtually nobody uses it, because it’s quite complex to setup, and your recipients email clients, apps or browsers must also support encryption. Revolutek aims to simplify the setup and usage of encrypted email with their “Own-Mailbox” based on open source hardware and software technology. The hardware solution could have been based on the Raspberry Pi board in theory, but the popular board requires a closed source binary to boot, documentation about part of the hardware is lacking, and once the enclosure, and required accessories are included the price would have been higher. So instead they decided to design their own hardware based on an Allwinner processor: SoC – Allwinner A13 Cortex A8 processor @ 1GHz System Memory – 256 MB RAM Storage – (micro?) SD card slot with 16GB card included Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet (Lan9500A controller) USB – USB host […]

Loongson Introduces MIPS64 3A2000 & 3B2000 Processors Based on GS464E Architecture

Loongson recently unveiled two new quad core processors Loongson-3A2000 & Loongson-3B2000 targeting respectively consumer electronics and server, and on the company’s new GS464E architecture using MIPS64 cores. Both processors are 4-way superscalar processors built on a 9-stage, super-pipelined architecture with in-order execution units, two floating-point units, a memory management unit, and a crossbar interconnect. According to Imagination Technology, Chinese media reported that 3A2000 CPU was designed at high-performance consumer electronics products such as desktop computers and laptops, 64-bit embedded and DSP applications, and network routers, while 3B2000 will be used in 8 to 16 core server systems, meaning there would be 2 to 4 quad core processors in these servers. I could not find anything about the new processors on Loongson product page, but a white paper describes GS464E architecture in details. Unfortunately, the document is entirely in Chinese, except the abstract and some charts and tables: Loongson GS464E is […]

Scaleway C1 Dedicated ARM Server Price Drops to 3 Euros Per Month

Scaleaway launched their hosting services with dedicated ARM servers based on Marvell Armada 370/XP quad core ARM Cortex A9 processor this spring for 10 Euros per month, or 0.02 Euro per hour, and at the time, some people found it was not that attractive, as similarly priced plans provided by Linode or DigitalOcean with Intel server were also available, and it might have only been really compelling for people who specifically required an ARM server to play with. The company has now slashed its price, and it has become very attractive at 2.99 Euros (~$3.37 US) per month or 0.006 Euro per hour, excluding VAT. The server technical specifications and features are still the same: Server based on Marvell Armada 370/XP quad core ARMv7 processor Memory – 2 GB Memory Storage – 50 GB SSD Disk (extra space available for 1 Euro per 50GB) 1x Reserved public IPv4 200Mbit/s – Unmetered […]