Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments on Year 2019 in Review – Top 10 Posts and Stats

Year 2019 in Review – Top 10 Posts and Stats

Happy New Year 2020

2019 is closing to an end, or you may already be into 2020 while reading this post. In any case, that means it’s time to look back at 2019 and look forward to the events and new products to take place next year. While 2018 was a boring year for new processors, 2019 brought us some interesting new chips such as Amlogic S922X / A311D, or the first Arm Cortex-A55 only processors such as Amlogic S905X3. Rockchip RK3399Pro was promising when it was announced last year, but it never really took off. It was a pretty quiet year for Allwinner as well. RISC-V architecture has been ramping up with the first general-purpose RISC-V MCU: GD32V, WCH CH572 Bluetooth LE MCU, the launch of more SiFive RISC-V cores, and Kendryte K210 RISC-V AI processor announced last year has found its way into more and more boards. There have also been the usual launches of mobile Arm processors from Qualcomm, Samsung, and […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Centaur Unveils an x86 SoC with Integrated AI Coprocessor

Centaur Unveils an x86 SoC with Integrated AI Coprocessor

Artificial intelligence is handled at different levels in the ecosystem with ultra-powerful systems in the cloud equipped with dedicated hardware such as FPGA or GPU cards, while on the other side of the spectrum we have Arm or RISC-V based processor with AI accelerator for low power systems like smartphones or battery-powered smart cameras. Centaur Technology aims to provide a solution catering to the middle segment of devices that don’t need ultra-low power consumption, nor the highest possible peak performance, but still require a relatively compact form factor and low costs. Their solution is a still-unnamed octa-core x86 processor featuring Centaur NCORE AI coprocessor. SoC with built-in NPU (Neural-network Processing Unit) is pretty common in the Arm and RISC-V world, but it’s apparently a world’s first in the x86 space since existing solutions are all based on external accelerators. Key features of the Centaur x86 AI processor: x86 microprocessor with high instructions/clock (IPC) Microarchitecture designed for server-class applications with extensions […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Changing Ubuntu Apt Mirror from the Command Line, and the Lack of Arm64 Mirrors

Changing Ubuntu Apt Mirror from the Command Line, and the Lack of Arm64 Mirrors

When you install Ubuntu on a computer, you’d normally go through the installation ISO which guides you through a wizard where you select your location among other things, and that means you get connected to the mirror closest to your location allowing timely updates. But for those of us who flash Ubuntu images on Arm SBC’s, the mirror is normally fixed to the one set by the developer be it in China or Slovakia, or defaults to the US mirror. It still works, but it can be slower than necessary. In a computer, an easy way to change that from Ubuntu desktop to launch Software & Update program and change the download from field to a mirror in your country or neighboring country as shown below. But I’ve found myself mostly connecting to boards over SSH since it’s easier that way for reviews. One way to change the mirror would be to edit /etc/apt/sources.list manually, or just not bother, but […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Atomic Pi x86 SBC Meets Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 in $99 Neural Computing DevKit (Crowdfunding)

Atomic Pi x86 SBC Meets Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 in $99 Neural Computing DevKit (Crowdfunding)

Atomic Pi Neural Computing Development Kit

IoT Team launched the $34 Atomic Pi SBC powered by an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor via a Kickstarter campaign last December. At the time, it only ships to the US, and looked too good to be true. But the thing is real coming from a failed robotics project, and the low-cost x86 board went back for sale via Amazon and other channels with worldwide availability last spring. The price has even gone a bit lower as you’ll find it for $32.95 on Amazon. Note that it requires some technical skills to get started and with 16GB eMMC flash it only supports Liux distributions such as Ubuntu 18.04, and installing Windows 10 is possible, but you’ll be seriously limited. Atomic Pi is back in the news, as IoT Team has now launched another Kickstarter campaign for the board, except it’s not sold standalone, but instead as part of a $99 neural computing development kit that combines Atomic Pi SBC with 2GB […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on UDOO X86 II SBC Combines Intel Braswell SoC with Microchip ATMega32U4 “Arduino” MCU

UDOO X86 II SBC Combines Intel Braswell SoC with Microchip ATMega32U4 “Arduino” MCU

UDOO x86 II

UDOO X86 development board was first introduced in a crowdfunding campaign in 2016 with a quad-core Intel Braswell processor coupled with an Arduino 101 compatible Intel Curie module for real-time I/O processing. Early July of next year (2019) the Intel processor and module seems to be going so well and have a bright future together with UDOO X86 board and accessories becoming broadly available. But life can be cruel at times, and Intel announced their plan to discontinue Intel Curie and other IoT projects just a few weeks later with the last shipment scheduled for July 2018. SECO, the company behind UDOO, could only order so much stock of Intel Curie module, so they had to design an alternative, and here we are with UDOO X86 II SBC offering many of the same features but replacing Intel Curie module by a Microchip ATmega32U4 MCU compatible with Arduino Leonardo.   Two UDOO X86 II models – Ultra and Advanced Plus – […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Debian 10 “Buster” Released

Debian 10 “Buster” Released

If you’re a recent owner of a Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, you should have had an early taste of Debian 10 “Buster”, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation decided to release their Raspbian “Buster” image before the actual release to lower software development costs, as Debian developers only just announced the release of Debian 10 “Buster”. The new version of Debian supports various desktop environment including Cinnamon 3.8, GNOME 3.30, KDE Plasma 5.14, LXDE .99.2, LXQt 0.14, MATE 1.20, and Xfce 4.12. Beside the official announcement Debian also posted tidbits on their twitter feed, where we learn for example that “Debian 10 buster has 28,939 source packages with 11,610,055 source files”. Officially supported architectures for Debian 10 include i386 and amd64 for x86 targets, arm64, armel and armhf Arm architectures, as well as various other architectures includings MIPS (mips64el, mipsel…), PowerPC (ppc64el), and IBM System z (s390x). One notable change is that GNOME defaults to using the Wayland display server instead […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments on DM&P Vortex86EX2 Dual Core Processor Targets Dual OS Systems, Support ISA & PCI Interfaces

DM&P Vortex86EX2 Dual Core Processor Targets Dual OS Systems, Support ISA & PCI Interfaces

Vortex86EX2 Block Diagram

Most people will probably think about Intel and AMD when asked about x86 processors, at least those who understand the question… But there are also other companies such as Zhaoxin (based on VIA Technologies designs) and DM&P. Last time I wrote about the latter was in 2015 with the introduction of DM&P Vortex86DX3 dual-core x86 SoC for embedded systems and the corresponding evaluation board. The company is still making new x86 processors, and I’ve just been information the company unveiled  Vortex86EX2 dual-core processor last year with master and slave cores suitable for running two operating systems at the same time without the need for virtualization, nor hypervisor. The new processor still supports ISA & PCI interfaces for legacy expansion cards and targets real-time industrial or automation applications. DM&P Vortex86EX2 specifications: Processor Cores Master @ 600MHz max with Build-in FPU L1/L2 Cache for user interface Slave @ 400MHz max with Build-in FPU, L1 Cache for real-time control GPU – N/A, external […]

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Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Embedded Linux Conference & Open Source Summit 2019 Schedule

Embedded Linux Conference & Open Source Summit 2019 Schedule

Embedded Linux Conference 2019 Schedule

In the last few years, I covered the Embedded Linux Conference and IoT Summit schedules since both were happening at the same time and in the same location. But the Linux Foundation have recently announced the Embedded Linux Conference will combine with the Open Source Summit, so the IoT Summit appears to have been phased out. The full schedule for the events taking place on August 21 – 23, 2019 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, USA, has also been released, so I’ll create a virtual schedule with some of the sessions most relevant to this blog. Wednesday August 21, 2019 11:30 – 12:05 – What’s New with U-Boot? by Simon Glass, Google LLC U-Boot is a widely used bootloader in embedded systems. Many users are unaware of the wide feature-set of U-Boot, particularly features added in the last few years. This talk aims to bring users (and prospective users) up to speed on the state of the art in […]

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