CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

February 25, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Freescale Announces i.MX 6SoloX ARM Cortex A9 & Cortex M4 Processor

Freescale i.MX6 SoloX processor started to show up in the ARM Linux Kernel mailing list last year, and Cortex A9 + Cortex M4 processor showed up in some marketing documents, but so far all documentation was tied to a non-diclosure agreement. However, all resources are now publicly available, as the company officially launched i.MX 6SoloX processor at Embedded World 2015. Freescale i.MX 6SoloX specifications: CPU – ARM Cortex-A9 up to 1 GHz with 512 KB L2 cache, 32 KB instruction and data caches and NEON SIMD media accelerator MCU – ARM Cortex-M4 up to 200 MHz with 16 KB instruction and data caches, 64 KB TCM, MPU and FPU Memory Interface 16/32-bit DDR3-800 and DDR3L-800, 16/32-bit LPDDR2-800 SLC/MLC NAND, 62-bit ECC, ONFI2.2 2x DDR Quad SPI NOR flash, 16/32-bit NOR Flash Display and Camera Interfaces Parallel RGB LVDS 20-bit parallel CMOS sensor interface NTSC/PAL analog video input interface Multimedia GPU […]

February 25, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Pebble Time is the Color Version of the Pebble SmartWatch (Crowdfunding)

The original Pebble Watch launched on Kickstarter about 3 years ago, and after selling over 1 million watches, the company is back on Kickstarter with Pebble Time, a thinner version of the watch with an always-on color e-Paper display, a new “timeline” user interface, a microphone for voice recognition, and 7 days of battery life. The complete Pebble Time specifications are not available, but the company still listed some key features: MCU – Cortex M4 Always-on, daylight readable 64 colors e-Paper display with backlight (no touchscreen) Six-axis gyrosope Microphone for dictation 3x tactile buttons Bluetooth for connectivity with mobile devices Up to 7 day battery life Compatible with any standard 22mm watch band Water resistant and durable Silent vibrating alarms Language and international character support (Chinese coming soon) The new Timeline interface focuses on past, present and future events such as basketball score, current steps, and weather forecast, and the […]

February 24, 2015May 1, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Freescale Kinetis based Mbed IoT Starter Kit Ethernet Edition Connects to IBM IoT Cloud

ARM, IBM and Freescale have jointly announced Mbed IoT Start Kit – Ethernet Edition at Embedded World 2015 that consists of a Freescale Kinetis Cortex M4 mbed-enabled development board and a sensor IO application shield that interface with IBM Bluemix cloud platform. Freescale FRDM-K64F Freedom development board specifications: MCU – Freescale Kinetis K64 (MK64FN1M0VLL12) ARM Cortex M4 MCU @ 120 MHz with 1 MB flash memory, 256 KB RAM External Storage – SDHC slot Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet USB – Dual role USB interface with micro-B USB connector Sensors – FXOS8700CQ accelerometer and magnetometer Headers – Arduino R3 compatible I/O connectors Misc – RGB LED, two user push buttons Power Supply – OpenSDAv2 USB, Kinetis K64 USB, and external source The board also features a programmable OpenSDAv2 debug circuit supporting the CMSIS-DAP Interface software that provides a mass storage device (MSD) flash programming interface, or a CMSIS-DAP debug interface, or […]

February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

EZChip TILE-Mx100 is a Network Processor with 100 ARM Cortex A53 Cores

As ARM gets into the server and networking business, the number of ARM cores in SoC starts to shoot up, and after Cavium ThunderX 48 core processor, here comes EZChip TILE-Mx100 Hecta-core network processor with 100 ARM Cortex A53 cores and capable of delivering up to 200 Gigabit throughput. Key features listed for EZchip TILE-Mx100: One hundred 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 CPU cores in one chip 3-level coherent cache architecture with over 40 Mbytes on-chip cache. DDR4 DRAM controllers with ECC and supporting up to 1TBytes of memory. SkyMesh coherent architecture for massive bandwidth, low latency and linear scalability Multitude of networking hardware accelerators for high-performance data-path packet processing including Wire-speed mPIPE packet processing engine delivering 300 million packets-per-second I/O. Integrated 5-level hierarchical Traffic Manager with 256,000 queues. MiCA™ acceleration engines for over 100Gbps of crypto. Over 200Gbps of integrated I/O including 1G, 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, 100G Ethernet, Interlaken, PCIe […]

February 24, 2015February 24, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Android 5.0 Binary and Source Code Release for Minnowboard MAX

Yet another development board gets a Lollipop update with Minnowboard MAX powered by Intel Atom E3815 or E3825 Bay Trail-I processor. Intel’s android-5.0.1_r1-ia0 release uses a 64 bit kernel and a 32 bit userspace, and supports all on-board peripherals such as Ethernet, HDMI (digital Audio + Video), USB host, SATA, I2C+SPI, GPIO, PWM and UART. New features and improvements features for this release include: Digital audio support using HDMI and USB. Linux console on serial port for debugging purposes. Android can be installed on SDCard, USB Stick or SSD. Android Runtime (ART). Material Design UI. Bluetooth 4.0 support using an external USB dongle. SELinux runs in enforcing mode. User data is encrypted by default. Bug fix – GPIO support The image is intended for developers interested in working with Android 5.0 on MinnowBoard MAX, but it does not have all the components to meet Android Compatibility requirements. If you own […]

February 23, 2015February 23, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

ARM Releases Kernel Drivers for Mali-T880 / T860 GPUs, User Space Drivers for Mali-T76x GPUs

ARM Mali GPU drivers includes both open source kernel drivers, and binary userspace drivers supporting framebuffer and/ior X11 implementation. The former is rarely an issue and is quickly released, but the latter requires porting and testing for a specific hardware platform, as well legal work, which greatly delay the releases. Mali-T880 GPU was announced at the beginning of the month together with ARM Cortex A72, and on February 17, 2015, ARM released an update to their Mali-T600 series, Mali-T700 series & Mali-T860/T880 GPU kernel device drivers with revision r5p1-00rel0 that adds supports to Mali-T860 and Mali-T880 GPU. These open source drivers are available for Android and Linux, and also support early Mali-T700 and T600 GPUs. Separately, the company has also released Mali-T76X GPU drivers for Firefly board powered by Rockchip RK3288 quad core Cortex A17 processor featuring a Mali-T764 GPU. The first release only supports the framebuffer driver, but ARM […]

February 23, 2015February 23, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Beam Android Projector Fits into Any Light Socket (Crowdfunding)

Four years ago, Seco showcased a prototype of a light bulb integrating a picoprojector and running Android, so you could fit it on the socket on your ceiling or compatible lamp. Now a company is planning to launch an Android projector that fits into E27, E26, or Bayonet light sockets called Beam. Beam projector specifications: SoC – Dual core processor @ 1.3GHz System Memory – N/A (1GB?) Storage – 8GB storage Projector LED pico projector; Currently 854×480 resolution, but it may be upgraded before the product ships ANSI 100 lumens 20,000 projection hours Max projection size – 120″ widescreen Throw ratop – 1.6:1 meaning at 1.8m, the project size will be 1.1m. Lamp function: 12 LED lights Audio – 2W stereo speakers Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 Light socket – E26, E27, or Bayonet via included adapter Power Supply – 110VAC to 240VAC Dimensions – N/A The version […]

February 22, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

DENX Computer Systems Introduces Atmel SAMA5D44 and Freescale i.MX6 System-on-Modules

Embedded World 2015 exhibition and conference will take place in Nuremberg, Germany on February 24-26, 2015, and we should expect interesting news related to MCU, industrial processors, and related development kits and boards next week. DENX Computer Systems has already unveiled two new SoM families with MA5D4 based on Atmel SAMA5D44 Cortex A5 processor, and M6R based on Freescale i.MX 6 Cortex A9 processors. DENX MA5D4 System-on-Module MA5D4 SoM specifications: Processor – Atmel SAMA5D44 Cortex A5 @ 528MHz with 720p hardware video decoder supporting H264/263, VP8, JPEG. System Memory – 128 – 512MB DDR2 RAM Storage – 4 – 32GB eMMC Flash (or optionally 256MB NAND Flash); 4 MB MByte SPI NOR-Flash; I/Os via 230-pin MXM2 edge connector Video Out / Display Support – HDMI. TFT controller, overlay support for image composition, resitive Touchscreen controller Camera – CMOS image sensor interface external bus A/D 25/16 bit 2x 10/100MBit Ethernet, IEEE1588 […]