uefi News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

October 14, 2025October 15, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Radxa Orion O6N – A smaller, cheaper 12-core Armv9 Nano-ITX SBC based on CIX P1 (CD8160) SoC

Radxa Orion O6N is a Nano-ITX SBC powered by CIX P1 (CD8160 variant) 12-core Cortex-A720/A50 processor with a 30/45 TOPS AI accelerator, up to 64GB LPDDR5, support for UFS and M.2 NVMe storage, and plenty of interfaces. It’s a smaller and cheaper version of the Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard introduced at the end of last year. It offers most of the same features, but is equipped with a CD8160 SoC instead of a CD8180 with a slightly lower CPU frequency for the Cortex-A720 big cores (2.6 vs 2.8 GHz), more storage options, fewer display interfaces, no dedicated audio port, 2.5GbE networking instead of 5GbE, and a few other differences you can see in the specifications below. Radxa Orion O6N specifications (highlights in bold and strikethrough show differences against Orion O6): SoC – Cix P1 (Codename: CD8160) 12-core DynamIQ processor 4x Cortex‑A720 big cores @ up to 2.6 GHz 4x Cortex‑A720 […]

August 23, 2025August 23, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

TrueNAS is now (unofficially) available for 64-bit Arm platforms with UEFI support

TrueNAS Scale NAS platform was designed to work on x86-64 computers only, but there’s now an unofficial port for 64-bit Arm (Aarch64) targets running a UEFI bootloader, including the Raspberry Pi 4/5 SBCs and other higher-end Arm boards. Previously known as FreeNAS, the community edition, FreeBSD-based TrueNAS Core was phased out in 2022 and replaced with the Linux-based TrueNAS Scale. iXsystems also provides TrueNAS Enterprise, a paid version with more advanced features, but all versions only work on 64-bit x86 machines. TrueNAS forum user Joel0 decided to change that and patched TrueNAS Scale to run on ARM (aarch64). The main requirements are having a 64-bit Arm target, at least 8GB RAM, 16GB boot storage, and a working UEFI bootloader. The image has been tested with a QEMU virtual machine, and it should also work on a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 with UEFI, but it has not been tested. One […]

April 30, 2025April 30, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Radxa Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard gets Arm SystemReady SR v2.5 certification

Radxa Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard powered by a CIX P1 12-core Cortex-A720/A520 SoC has just obtained Arm SystemReady SR (ServerReady) v2.5 certification, meaning it’s been shown to run unmodified several OS images such as Windows and Ubuntu. I’ve already tested a Debian 12 image modified by Radxa on the Orion O6, but one of the goals of the platform was to provide a universal UEFI + ACPI firmware to boot any Arm ISO released by OS vendors, for instance, the Ubuntu Desktop ISO for Arm 64-bit architecture downloaded directly from the Ubuntu website. The Arm SystemReady SR certification is a step in the right direction, as it means the Orion O6 has passed a number of tests showing it can boot several off-the-shelf OS images. We’ll find Radxa’s Orion O6 listed on the Arm SystemReady Compliance page among boards from other manufacturers, as well as the Radxa ROCK Pi 4B+, […]

April 27, 2025April 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Muse Pi Pro is a feature-packed, credit card-sized SpacemIT M1 RISC-V SBC with HDMI, GbE, 4x USB, M.2 and mPCIe sockets

Muse Pi Pro is a feature-packed, credit card-sized SBC powered by the SpacemIT M1 octa-core 64-bit RISC-V AI SoC with a 2 TOPS NPU and equipped with up to 16GB LPDDR4x and 128GB eMMC flash. The single board computer features gigabit Ethernet and a WiFi 6 + Bluetooth 5.3 module for connectivity, HDMI and MIPI DSI display interfaces, two MIPI CSI interfaces, a 3.5mm audio jack, four USB 3.0 ports, an M.2 socket for an NVMe SSD or wireless module, a mini PCIE socket for WiFi and 4G LTE/5G cellular connector, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion. That’s quite a lot of features for such a compact board. Muse Pi Pro specifications: SoC – SpacemiT M1 (similar to SpacemIT K1, but clocked at 1.8 GHz) CPU – 8-core X60 RISC-V processor @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Imagination IMG BXE-2-32 with support for OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.2, OpenCL 3.0; 20 […]

March 30, 2025March 31, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

Radxa Orion O6 Preview – Part 2: Debian 12 – What works, what doesn’t

I went through an unboxing and Debian 12 installation on the Radxa Orion O6 at the end of January, but decided to work on other reviews since software support still needed to be worked on. Since then, there’s been some work done, but no new image released. After waiting for almost two months, I’ve decided to carry on with the review by testing the Debian 12 image in a way similar to the Rock 5B SBC preview I did with Debian 11 in 2022 to check what works and what doesn’t on the Orion O6 at the time of the review. That will involve testing all ports, including 5GbE networking and the PCIe slot with an (old) NVIDIA graphics card, running some benchmarks, and also trying the Debian 12 image with a self-built Linux 6.13 kernel using ACPI instead of UEFI for the default image. Orion O6 SBC benchmarks on […]

December 18, 2024October 16, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 57 Comments

Radxa Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard is powered by Cix P1 12-core Armv9 SoC with a 30 TOPS AI accelerator

Radxa Orion 06 Armv9 mini ITX motherboard

Radxa Orion O6 is an Arm mini-ITX motherboard with performance similar to Apple M1 and Qualcomm 8cx Gen3 platform thanks to the Cix P1 12-core Armv9 processor with four Cortex-A720 cores clocked at 2.8 GHz, four Cortex-A720 cores at 2.4GHz, and four low-power Cortex-A520 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz. The Cix P1 SoC also features an Arm Immortalis-G720 GPU for graphics and AI computing, a 30 TOPS AI accelerator for a combined 45 TOPS of AI inference performance, an 8Kp60 video decoder, and an 8Kp30 video encoder. The Orion O6 SBC ships with up to 64GB LPDDR5, features a 4Kp60 HDMI 2.0 port, a 4Kp120 DP 1.4 connector, two 5Gbps Ethernet ports, M.2 socket for storage and wireless, a PCIe x16 slot, and more. Radxa Orion O6 specifications: SoC – Cix P1 (Codename: CD8180, not the CP8180 variant for AI PCs) 12-core DynamIQ processor 4x Cortex‑A720 big cores @ up […]

January 9, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

ASRock Industrial upgrades mini-ITX, micro-ATX, and ATX motherboards for Intel Core 14th Gen Raptor Lake-S Refresh processors

ASROCK Industrial 14th gen mini-ITX micro-ATX ATX motherboards

ASRock Industrial has just announced 25 (twenty-five!) industrial motherboards powered by 14th gen Intel Core Raptor Lake-S Refresh hybrid processors with up to 24 cores and 32 threads introduced last October, and supporting up to 96GB DDR5 4800/5600 memory. The thin and high-rise mini-ITX, micro-ATX, and ATX industrial motherboards support up to four 4K displays, PCIe Gen5 interfaces, up to three 2.5GbE ports (and 10GbE LAN for the IMB-X1316-10G model), and USB 3.2 Gen2x2 (20 Gbps) ports for factory automation, robotics, machine vision, smart retail, kiosks, digital signage, gaming, security, and more. I would usually list the specifications of the motherboards, but since we have 25 different models, I’ll skip that and provide a summary. One reason ASRock Industrial has so many models is that those are existing motherboards with socketed processors and the company offered 12th and 13th gen CPUs so far, and the company simply updated the BIOS […]

December 16, 2023February 9, 2024 by Vladislav Losev - 6 Comments

Chatreey AM08 Pro (Ryzen 9 7940HS) mini PC review – Part 1: unboxing, teardown, and first run

Chatreey AM08 Pro (also known as AM08pro) is a mini PC based on AMD Ryzen 7940HS CPU with up to 64GB dual-channel DDR5 RAM, one PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 2280 SSD socket, one SATA3 2.5” drive, WiFi 6E (8852BE) and Bluetooth 5.2, also 2.5GbE Ethernet, a full-fledged Type-C USB port, a 3.5mm audio jack and 4x USB 3.0 porta. I have bought AM08 Pro from Aliexpress with an AMD Ryzen 7940HS (8C/16T, 4.0GHz up to 5.2 GHz), 16GB DDR5 RAM (2x8GB), and 512GB SSD. The review will be done following the usual procedure with the first part listing the specifications, checking out the package content, tearing down the system, and giving it a first try, before testing it more thoroughly with the pre-installed Windows 11 and Ubuntu 22.04 in the next parts. AM08 Pro specifications Model AM08 Pro CPU AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS (8 Cores, 16 Threads, 16MB Cache, 3.2 […]