Year 2021 in review – Top 10 posts and statistics

As per tradition, we’ll look back at what happened during the year in the last post, and see what 2022 may have in store, plus the usual statistics from CNX Software website. The biggest story of 2021 has to be the worsening of semiconductors shortages with extremely long lead times, prices of some components going up multiple folds, constant complaints on Twitter about availability and prices. I think I even saw a website, hopefully misconfigured, showing an estimated availability of a specific STM32 MCU in 2037. This also gave rise to opportunities and board redesigns, with MotorComm Ethernet chips replacing some Realtek chips in SBCs such as NanoPi R2C and  Orange Pi R1S Plus LTS, and CH9102F showing up as a replacement for CP2104 in some IoT boards. We also got some interesting Arm processors, but sadly the high-expected Rockchip RK3588 got delayed by another year, although it’s getting really […]

UGOOS UT8 PRO – An RK3568 TV box with 8GB RAM, 64GB storage

UGOOS UT8 PRO is the first TV box I’ve seen with a Rockchip RK3568 processor, if we exclude Firefly Station P2 that’s more like an Arm Linux mini PC. The device runs Android 11 and is equipped with 8GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash, and offers WiFi 6 connectivity. There’s also the “UGOOS UT8” with basically the same features except it ships with 4GB RAM and  32GB flash, and a dual-band WiFi 5 and Bluetooth module. We previously had seen TV boxes and mini PCs with the similar Rockchip RK3566 SoC in T95 Plus, H96 Max, and Zidoo M6, and the only reason for going with RK3568 in UGOOS UT8 (PRO) should be the extra USB 3.0 host/OTG interface, adding to the USB 3.0 host interface found in both RK3566 and RK3568 processors. UGOOS UT8 (PRO) specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 with a quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 1.8/2.0GHz, Arm […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

Allwinner Processor 2021-2022 Roadmap – Allwinner T827, T723 and T1033 SoC’s

Last year, we published the Allwinner A-series processor roadmap for 2020-2021 with notably Allwinner A33E, A100, and A200 SoCs. Allwinner A100 was supposed to be released in 2019, but a search on Aliexpress showed exactly zero matches. We did write about Allwinner A100 mainline Linux support a little while ago, and today, I eventually found one Allwinner A100 tablet with the $60 Hyundai HyTab 7WC1. I had no better luck in my search for Allwinner A33E and A200 platforms. But I also got lucky today with another Allwinner roadmap for 2021-2022 with some very interesting new processors, provided they happen. A look at 2020 processors But let’s look at the year 2020 first. We already have most details about Allwinner A133 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, which is also called T509 apparently following the merging of the Allwinner A-Series business unit, focusing on tablets, into the Allwinner T-Series for industrial & automotive […]

Top 5 most powerful Arm SBC’s & Devkits in 2021

While companies like Hardkernel, Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, and FriendlyArm offers affordable, great little Arm Linux development boards that are suitable for many projects, in some cases, your requirements may lead you to spend a bit more for either extra CPU power, more memory, AI processing power, faster I/Os and so on. That’s why I did a list of the most powerful Arm single board computers in late 2017, but with over three years passed since then an update is warranted. The boards from the list must be easily purchasable from individuals (with the cash to spare) or small companies, so we’ll exclude hard-to-source hardware, as well as Arm server boards like Ampere eMAG motherboard, that do not really qualify as single board computers. Snapdragon 888 Mobile Hardware Development Kit While there are plenty of Cortex-A72/A73 development boards around, it’s much hardware to find one with more recent Cortex-X1 or […]

Rockchip RV1109 SBC’s provide access control solutions with optional 4G LTE connectivity

We’ve been writing about Rockchip RV1109 and RV1126 AI camera SoC’s in recent days, as well as evaluation boards and modules, plus some complete solutions such as Firefly dual-lens AI camera modules. Shenzhen-based JWIPC, a company specifically in embedded PCs and motherboards, has designed three SBC’s powered by Rockchip RV1109 processor especially designed for access control, leverage the face detection capabilities of the Rockchip processor. The three access control boards are: R19S – Standard 100x72mm Pico-ITX board with industrial grade materials, support for wide temperature, hardware watchdog, and “rich peripheral interface”. R19F- Same as R19S, but with a mini PCIe socket for a 4G LTE module, plus a SIM card slot R19N – Similar to R19S with a narrower 100x60mm design JWIPC R19 boards share most of the same hardware key features and specifications: SoC – Rockchip RV1109 dual-core Arm Cortex-A7 @ 1.5 GHz, plus RISC-V MCU @ 400 MHz, […]

Firefly dual-lens AI camera module comes with Rockchip RV1109 or RV1126 processor

We’ve very recently written about Rockchip RV1126 quad-core Cortex-A7 processor designed AI cameras thanks to a 2.0 TOPS AI accelerator together with its little dual-core brother: RV1109. We’ve also found some RV1109 and RV1126 evaluation boards, but prices were in the hundreds of dollars. It was then brought to our attention than the upcoming MAIX-III board would feature RV1126 at a more affordable cost, but it turns out there’s no need to wait as Firefly has just launched a dual-lens AI camera module based on either Rockchip RV1109 or RV1126 for under $100 with respectively CAM-C1109S2U and CAM-C1126S2U models. Both version of the modules have the same specifications except for the processor: SoC (one or the other) RV1109 SoC with CPU – Dual-core Arm Cortex-A7 @ 1.5 GHz + RISC-V MCU @ 400 MHz GPU – 2D graphics engine NPU – 1.2 TOPS with support for INT8/ INT16 VPU Encoder […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025

Rockchip RV1126 AI Camera SoC features 2.0 TOPS NPU, promises 250ms fast boot

The Rockchip Developer Conference that took place at the end of November 2020 allowed us to learn more about RK3588, RK3566, and RK3568 64-bit Arm processors for AIoT applications. But the company also presented additional details about camera SoC’s, namely the dual-core RV1109 and quad-core RV1126, equipped with a 1.2 TOPS and 2.0 TOPS respectively, and both capable of delivering a 250ms fast boot. Rockchip RV1109 and RV1126 share many of the same specifications: CPU RV1109 – Dual-core Arm Cortex-A7 @ 1.5 GHz + RISC-V MCU @ 400 MHz RV1126 – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A7 @ 1.5 GHz + RISC-V MCU @ 400 MHz GPU – 2D graphics engine NPU RV1109 – 1.2 TOPS with support for INT8/ INT16 RV1126 – 2.0 TOPS with support for INT8/ INT16 Memory – 32-bit DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2/LPDDR3/DDR4/LPDDR4 up to 4GB RAM Storage – eMMC 4.51, Serial SPI NOR Flash or NAND flash with fast booting support, […]

Year 2020 in review – Top ten posts and stats

It’s this time of the year when we look back at what happened, and what may be next. 2020 did not pan out as planned in more ways than one, but there were still some interesting developments. Based on 2019 announcements, 2020 was promising to be an exciting year for Amlogic and Rockchip with the expected launch of RK3588 and S908X high-end processors for 8K capable devices,  but we’ll have to wait for 2021 for this to happen. Instead, the most interesting processor of the year from the Allwinner, Amlogic, and Rockchip offerings was probably Amlogic S905X4 processing adding AV1 hardware decoding. As pointed out in our “RISC-V 2020 highlights” post, it was a fairly eventful year for RISC-V architecture, although there’s still a long road ahead, especially for application processors. We had seen some general-purpose and Bluetooth RISC-V MCUs in 2019, but 2020 saw the launch of the first […]

Boardcon CM3588 Rockchip RK3588 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications