CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 1, 2012November 1, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

$149 Hardkernel ODroid-X2 Development Board with Exynos 4412 @ 1.7 GHz and 2 GB RAM

You’ve probably heard about the ODROID-X development board announced in July by Hardkernel. They now have an updated version called ODroid-X2 with Samsung Exynos 4412 clocked at 1.7 GHz (vs 1.4 GHz) and 2 GB RAM (vs 1 GB RAM for the first version). They also boosted the Mali 400 clock speed from 400 MHz to 533 MHz. Apart from being a good mobile development platform, the 2 GB RAM could make the board a pretty good native ARM build machine under Ubuntu, as I’ve read 1 GB RAM is not always enough at link stage (e.g. for Debian packages, sorry I can’t find the link), unless you use swap which tremendously slows things down. The rest of the board seems identical and it just looks the same as the first version. Charbax shot a video of Hardkernel ODroid-X2 development board at ARM Techcon 2012: ODroid-X2 will cost $149 (ODroid-X […]

November 1, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

TI and AllGo Embedded Launch E-Tab Tablet Reference Design Powered by TI AM3354 Processor

Texas Instruments and Allgo Embedded jointly announced the availability of E-Tab, a tablet reference design based on Cortex A8 Sitara AM3354 processor that targets the healthcare, logistics, retail and education markets as well as hotels and restaurants. Here are the tablet reference designs specifications: Processor – TI’s AM3354 ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessor (up to 1 GHz) Operating System – Android ICS 4.0 System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 RAM Storage – 512 MB Nand Flash and 4GB Micro SD card Display – 7″ WVGA TFT LCD with 5-Touch Capacitive Touch panel Audio – Stereo Headphone, Internal MIC and Internal Mono Speaker Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 b/g/n + BT 2.1 Module Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR Ethernet 10/100Mbps (Optional) Camera – Internal USB Camera Module (Optional) USB Interfaces – USB High Speed Host Port and USB OTG (ADB and Debug purpose) Key/Button – Single Button for Back and Home screen, Reset Switch and Power […]

October 31, 2012October 31, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

VIA ARTiGO A1250 Slim System Powered by Quad Core E-Series Processor

VIA Technologies announced the VIA ARTiGO A1250 slim system featuring a 1.0 GHz VIA QuadCore E-Series processor and VIA VX11H media system processor (MSP). The VIA ARTiGO A1250 is a low profile system targeted at home or office applications such as home server, home automation, hotel management, media streaming, digital signage, surveillance as well as medical and healthcare applications. Here are the key features of ARTIGO A1250: VIA QuadCore E-Series processor (U4650E) @ 1.0 GHz Up to 8GB of DDR3 1333 SDRAM SODIMM Supports one 2.5″ SATA HDD or Flash SSD installation Quiet, ultra slim profile design (3cm high) VIA VX11H media system processor with DirectX11 support 3D and HD video up to 1080p HDMI & VGA display ports with dual independent display support I/O: HDMI, VGA, 2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, GigaLAN, Audio-in/out/mic-in Average power consumption of 27W TDP Dimensions: 17.7cm x 12.5cm x 3.0cm I understand that inside […]

October 31, 2012October 31, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

Crowdfunding Initiative to Open AMLogic AML8726-M3 STB Source Code

J1nx (Peter Steenbergen) has spend a lot of time together with XBMC developers to try to bring XBMC (Linux) to ARM based set-top boxes, and initially AllWinner A10 processor seemed like a good candidate, unfortunately due to the lack of proper video engine libraries for Linux, progress on this SoC has been extremely slow. Then when Pivos and XBMC announced Pivos Xios DS set-top box based on AMLogic aml8726-M(1) would support XBMC natively, and the kernel and bootlooader (u-boot) source code was made available both on Pivos github account and AMLogic open source website, AML8726 series of processors appeared to be an ideal solution for this purpose. Instead of AML8726-M (aka AML8726-M1) which is limited to 512 MB, it was decided instead to use a faster processor AML8726-M3 that supports 1 GB RAM. The STB of choice is based on “MBX – f16ref” which should be some kind of development […]

October 31, 2012October 31, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ARM Unveils its First 64-bit Cores: ARM Cortex A53 (LITTLE) and Cortex A57 (big)

ARM Techcon 2012 started yesterday with a major announcement, as ARM unveiled the ARM Cortex A50 series, the first 64-bit ARM Core based on ARMv8 architecture. The company announced 2 cores that can be used independently or in combination to take advantage of big.LITTLE processing: Cortex-A57 – 64-bit core that offers 3x the performance of 2012 superphone in 32-bit, 5x power-efficiency and is scalable beyond 16 cores. It’s the big core in big.LITTLE. Cortex-A53 – 64-bit core that offers the same performance as Cortex A9 but with 4x power efficiency and 25% the size of today CPUs. It’s the LITTLE core in big.LITTLE. Those cores manufactured using 28nm, 20nm and eventually 14nm process technology will be used in smartphones, tablets. mobile computers and servers (See AMD/ARM announcement). They’ll be software compatible with ARMv7-A processors (Aarch32) which should greatly facilitate the transition and support both 64-bit and 32-bit OS and applications, […]

October 30, 2012October 30, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Embest SBC8118 Single Board Computer Based on TI AM1808 Processor

Embest recently unveiled the SBC8118 Single Board Computer, an industrial grade SBC powered by Texas Instruments AM1808 ARM9 processor with 128MB Mobile DDR2 RAM and 128MB NAND Flash. The SBC8118 Single Board Computer is aimed at medical, industrial automation, control, communication, and other cost sensitive applications. As you can see from the picture above, it is comprised of a CPU board and an expansion board. Here are the specifications of the CPU board (Mini8118): Processor – 375MHz TI AM1808 ARM926EJ-S Microcontroller (also supports 456MHz operation) Memory – 128 MByte Mobile DDR2 Storage – 128 MByte NAND Flash (on the rear of the board) & 8 Mbit SPI Flash Connectors – Two 2.0mm space 3*27-pin dip connectors and the expansion board: Audio/Video Interfaces: TFT LCD interface (50-pin FPC connector, RGB565) 4 line resistive Touch Screen interface Camera interface (30-pin FPC connector, supports CCD and CMOS cameras) Data Transfer Interfaces: Serial port: […]

October 30, 2012October 31, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

AMD To Provide 64-Bit ARM Opteron Processors for the Server Market

AMD announced it will design processors based on 64-bit ARM technology in addition to its x86 processors for the cloud and data center servers. AMD will be the first company to provide both x86 and ARM solutions to the server market, and the first ARM-based server CPU is scheduled for 2014. There aren’t much details at this time, but AMD did say it will be take advantage of AMD SeaMicro Freedom supercompute fabric in order to link CPU, Ethernet and Storage and the processor will be sold as an AMD Opteron CPU. Interestingly, the company does not plan to design 64-bit ARM processor for the client market (e.g. Windows RT) for the time being. Red Hat and AMD partnered for the server software, and Red Hat has started to work to bring support for the next generation of 64-bit ARM server processors to the Fedora Project include 64-bit ARM OpenJDK. […]

October 30, 2012October 31, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

New Features in Android 4.2 Jelly Bean

As Google unveiled Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet, they also announced Android 4.2, the latest version of Google operating system, that brings the following new features. Photo Sphere Camera Going beyond panoramic photo shots, photo sphere allows you to generate a 360 degrees panorama by taking pictures in all direction, up, down, right and left. Head over Google maps to see a few examples. Keyboard with Gesture Typing You can now just glides over the letters you want to type, and the new improved keyboard will find the word you want to type. The keyboard is also said to be able to anticipate the next word allowing to type a full sentence by just selecting suggested words. Google also claims text-to-speech capabilities and voice typing have been improved, and you don’t need an internet connection to type with your voice anymore. Multiple User Profiles This is the most […]