LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max – Rockchip RV1106 powered boards with 10/100M Ethernet and camera support

LuckFox Pico Pro and Pro Max Rockchip RV1106 Powred Dev Board

The LuckFox LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max are two new Rockchip RV1106-powered development boards that offer a Linux-based development platform for IoT applications. The boards feature 10/100M Ethernet, up to 256MB DDR2 memory, and a 0.5TOPS NPU for AI tasks. With support for Buildroot and Ubuntu 22.04, this board can be used for smart homes, remote monitoring, and other AI-enhanced projects. Last year, we covered the LuckFox Core3566, a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 alternative, and the LuckFox Pico with its RV1103 SoC which has a similar form factor and similar features to these new modules. But the new modules are built around the RV1106 SoC which features an Arm Cortex-A7 processor (up to 1.2GHz),  a RISC-V co-processor, a 0.5 TOPS NPU for AI tasks, and a 4M @ 30fps ISP for high-quality image processing. LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max Specifications SoC – Rockchip RV1106G2 CPU – Arm Cortex […]

Testing AI and LLM on Rockchip RK3588 using Mixtile Blade 3 SBC with 32GB RAM

mixtile blade 3 review RK3588 AI LLM

We were interested in testing artificial intelligence (AI) and specifically large language models (LLM) on Rockchip RK3588 to see how the GPU and NPU could be leveraged to accelerate those and what kind of performance to expect. We had read that LLMs may be computing and memory-intensive, so we looked for a Rockchip RK3588 SBC with 32GB of RAM, and Mixtile – a company that develops hardware solutions for various applications including IoT, AI, and industrial gateways – kindly offered us a sample of their Mixtile Blade 3 pico-ITX SBC with 32 GB of RAM for this purpose. While the review focuses on using the RKNPU2 SDK with computer vision samples running on the 6 TOPS NPU, and a GPU-accelerated LLM test (since the NPU implementation is not ready yet), we also went through an unboxing to check out the hardware and a quick guide showing how to get started […]

$20 coupon codes for the GEEKOM Mini IT13 mini PC with Core i7-13620H, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD (Sponsored)

GEEKOM Mini IT13 20 dollar coupon codes

GEEKOM is offering a $20 discount for the powerful GEEKOM Mini IT13 mini PC with coupon codes for Amazon (code CNXSWIT13) and the official GEEKOM store (code cnxsoftware) bringing the price down to just $609. The mini PC features an Intel Core i7-13620H 10-core/16-thread Raptor Lake processor, 32GB DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD for storage. It can drive up to four 4K displays through HDMI and USB4 ports, supports 2.5GbE and WiFi 6E networking, and comes with a total of six USB ports for expansion. GEEKOM Mini IT13 specifications: SoC – Intel Core i7-13620H 13th Gen Raptor Lake processor with 10 cores, 16 threads up to 4.90 GHz, 24MB Cache, Iris Xe graphics; PBP: 45W System Memory – 32GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 via 2x SODIMM sockets Storage 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD M.2 2242 SATA SSD slot, expandable up to 1TB 2.5-inch SATA HDD (7mm) slot, […]

GEEKOM A7 mini PC review – Part 3: Ubuntu 22.04 (and Ubuntu 24.04)

GEEKOM A7 Ubuntu 22.04 Linux review

After a GEEKOM A7 mini PC unboxing and teardown, I tested the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS mini PC in Windows 11 Pro, but I’ll now report my experience with the GEEKOM A7 running Ubuntu 22.04.4 to see our well the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS system performs in Linux. I also had to install Ubuntu 24.04 to check the wireless module further, so I’ll report on that too. The Ubuntu 22.04 review will include features testing, several benchmarks, storage, 2.5GbE, and WiFi 6 networking performance testing, a stress test to check thermal performance, as well as fan noise and power consumption measurements. Ubuntu 22.04 installation I resized the Windows 11 partition to get an unused 500GB partition to install Ubuntu 22.04 from a USB drive. But the first time, it did not work as I was asked to disable BitLocker disk encryption in Windows 11 just like I did for the […]

Banana Pi BPI-M6 SBC features SenaryTech SN3680 quad-core Cortex-A73 AI processor

Banana Pi BPI-M6

Banana Pi BPI-M6 is a credit-card single board computer based on SenaryTech SN3680 SoC comprised of a quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 processor, an Arm Cortex-M3 real-time core, an Imagination GE9920 GPU, and an NPU delivering up to 6.75 TOPS. The board ships with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM and 16GB eMMC flash. Its layout is fairly similar to the one of the Raspberry Pi 4 with four USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, a 40-pin GPIO header, a USB Type-C port for power, and two micro HDMI ports. However, only one of those is for HDMI output, as the second is for HDMI input, and there’s also an M.2 Key-E socket for expansion. Banana Pi BPI-M6 specifications: SoC – SenaryTech SN3680 (also known as Synaptics VS680) with CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 processor up to 2.1GHz MCU – Arm Cortex-M3 real-time security core @ 250MHz GPU – Imagination PowerVR Series9XE GE9920 GPU VPU – 4Kp60 […]

EmbedFire LubanCat 4 card computer – A Rockchip RK3588S dev board with a mini PCIe socket for WiFi or 4G LTE

youyeetoo Lubancat 4 RK3588S Based Raspberry Pi Size SBC

Launched by Yehuo Electronic EmbedFire LubanCat 4 card computer or LubanCat 4 in short, is a Rockchip RK3588S SBC that packs quite a lot of features in an 85x56mm form factor with Ethernet, USB, mini PCIe, HDMI 2.1, SIM & microSD card holder, and more. The board comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC flash. It comes with a Gigabit Ethernet port, five USB ports (including one USB-C), a built-in microphone, multiple audio inputs and outputs, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible expansion header, and supports HDMI input through an adapter connected to a MIPI CSI port. EmbedFire LubanCat 4 card computer specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S CPU – Octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.2-2.4 GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 1.8 GHz GPU –  Arm Mali-G610 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2,  OpenCL 2.2, and Vulkan 1.2 support VPU – 8Kp60 video decoder […]

ODROID-M1S review – Part 2: Ubuntu 20.04 benchmarks and features testing

ODROID M1S Review Ubuntu 20.04

Over one month has passed since our unboxing and quick Ubuntu 20.04 testing of the ODROID-M1S SBC and we’ve now had time to test more features and run benchmarks using the official Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS release from Hardkernel. One user mentioned Ubuntu 22.04 is supported, but that’s supported by a third party and we used the official image for testing.

Our test results will show the performance and supported features of the Rockchip RK3566-powered ODROID-M1S SBC when running Ubuntu 20.04. Read on to find out how well the board works.

ODROID-M1S benchmarks

Let’s start benchmarking the ODROID-M1S with Thomas Kaiser’s sbc-bench.sh script:

Maxtang MTN-FP750 business mini PC review – Part 3: Ubuntu 22.04

Maxtang MTN-FP750 review Ubuntu 22.04

We’ve already checked out the hardware of the Maxtang MTN-FP750 mini PC in the first part of the review with an unboxing and a teardown, and tested the AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS Mini PC with 32GB DDR5 and a 512GB SSD in Windows 11 Pro in the second part. In the third part of the review, we will report our experience with the Ubuntu 22.04 Linux operating system. This includes features testing, several benchmarks, storage and networking performance testing, a stress test to check thermal performance, as well as fan noise and power consumption measurements. Ubuntu 22.04 installation Since the plan is to install Ubuntu 22.04 alongside Windows 11, so we will shrink the Windows 11 partition by about half first, before inserting the Ubuntu 22.04.3 USB drive to install the Linux distribution. The installation went smoothly with no issues to report on. Ubuntu 22.04 System information Going to Settings->About […]