CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

May 3, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ATMegaZero ESP32-S2 board supports OLED displays

EspinalLab ATMegaZero board was introduced last year with Raspberry Pi Zero form factor, the Arduino Leonardo compatible, 16 MHz Microchip ATmega32U4 microcontroller, and a connector for an optional OLED display. The company is now back with an update following the same form factor with ATMegaZero ESP32-S2 board equipped with a more powerful ESP32-S2 single-core processor @ 240 MHz with WiFi connectivity, and most of the same features, including OLED display support, plus a micro USB OTG port and an RGD LED. ATMegaZero ESP32-S2 board specifications: WiSoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S2 single-core processor @ 240 MHz with WiFi RAM – 8MB PSRAM Storage MicroSD card 256Mbit (32MB) SPI Flash (note: only 16MB can be used for now due to firmware limitations) Display – 32-pin OLED display port compatible with 30-pin SSD1306 and SH1106 based displays Wireless Connectivity – 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 up to 150 MHz with 3D antenna USB – […]

May 2, 2021May 10, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Allwinner D1 RISC-V processor SDK & Documentation

We published information about Allwinner D1 SBC and processor a few weeks ago. The news was pretty interesting as it’s the first RISC-V processor from the company, and one of the first affordable RISC-V SBC. But all we had at the time was hardware information from a leak, or rather from China-only Allwinner developer website. But now the company has added more information to its open-source development website with the release of documentation, now only in Chinese, as well as the Allwinner D1 Tina SDK. Eventually, there should be a better SDK via linux-sunxi community and some are already working on the Allwinner D1 SBC, but let’s try to get the SDK from Allwinner and build the code from source using the documentation. First, you’d need to register on Allwinner open-source website and click on signup. You’ll probably want to select Email registration. Now fill your username, select a country, […]

May 1, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

DR8072A embedded router board offers dual 2.5 GbE, WiFi 6 connectivity

We’ve previously found Qualcomm IPQ8072A quad-core Cortex-A53 networking processor in WPQ873 embedded SBC with support for WiFI 6, three GbE ports, one 2.5GbE port, and support for 5G M.2 modems. The design was adapted from Qualcomm HK09 reference design, and now another company, Wallys Communications, has launched another board based on HK09. DR8072A embedded router board is somewhat similar to WPQ873, but does come with two 2.5GbE ports instead of just one, one extra Gigabit Ethernet port, among other smaller changes. DR8072A specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Atheros IPQ8072A quad-core ARM 64 bit A53 @ 2.2GHz part of Qualcomm Networking Pro 600 Platform System Memory – 1x 512MB, DDR4 2,400 MHz 16-bit interface Storage – 256MB NAND flash, 8MB NOR flash Networking and Wireless Connectivity Ethernet 4x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports 2x 2.5 Gbps Ethernet RJ45 ports WiFi On-board 4×4 2.4GHz MU-MIMO OFDMA 802.11b/g/n/ax, up to 1182 Mbps, max 17dBm per […]

April 30, 2021April 30, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Antmicro ARVSOM offers StarFive JH71x0 RISC-V processor, Raspberry Pi CM4 compatibility

The Linux capable BeagleV SBC, now called “BeagleV Starlight”, was announced last January with a StarFive JH7100/JH7110 64-bit RISC-V processor, and developers and beta users have just started to get their hand on the board in recent days. But there’s another StarFive JH71x0 hardware in the works with Antmicro ARVSOM. The system-in-module will feature the dual-core RISC-V processor, and be compatible with Raspberry Pi CM4, and by extension Antmicro’s Scalenode server-oriented baseboard. The company did not provide the complete specifications for the module, but based on public information available, Antmicro ARVSOM should feature the following: SoC – StarFive JH7100 Vision SoC: RISC-V U74 dual-core with 2MB L2 cache @ 1.5 GHz Vision DSP Tensilica-VP6 for computing vision NVDLA Engine 1 core (configuration 2048 MACs @ 800MHz – 3.5 TOPS) Neural Network Engine (1024MACs @ 500MHz – 1 TOPS) VPU – H.264/H.265 decoder up to 4Kp60, dual-stream decoding up to 2Kp30 […]

April 30, 2021April 30, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

3.5-inch SubCompact board features LGA1200 socket for Comet Lake Embedded processors

Most compact boards covered on CNX Software are either getting the processor soldered on board, or with a system-on-module including CPU, storage, memory, and potentially other features like PMIC and Ethernet. But AAEON GENE-CML5 3.5-inch subcompact board adopts a different approach and uses an LGA1200 socket to offer a choice of five different Intel Comet Lake Embedded processors from Celeron up to Core i7. AAEON GENE-CML5 specifications: SoC (one or the other) Intel Core i7-10700TE 8-core/16-thread Comet Lake processor @ 2.0 GHz / 4.4 GHz (Turbo) with 16MB cache, Intel UHD Graphics 630; 35W TDP Intel Core i5-10500TE 6-core/12-thread Comet Lake processor @ 2.3 GHz / 3.7 GHz with 12MB cache, Intel UHD Graphics 630; 35W TDP Intel i3-10100TE quad-core/4-thread Comet Lake processor @ 2.3 GHz / 3.6 GHz with 6MB cache, Intel UHD Graphics 630; 35W TDP Intel Pentium Gold G6400TE dual-core/4-thread processor @ 3.2 GHz with 4MB cache, […]

April 30, 2021April 30, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

DFI EC90A-GH compact AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 mini PC is Ubuntu-certified

Last year, Taiwan-based DFI introduced DFI GHF51 SBC based on AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 dual-core SoC and roughly the size of a Raspberry Pi. We had the chance to test the Ryzen R1606G model with both Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC and Ubuntu 20.04. The board worked mostly to expectations except for compatibilities issues with one of my USB hard drives, some video playback issues, as well as a 3D graphics glitches in one benchmark in Ubuntu. The single board computer was designed to be integrated into the customer’s own chassis, but DFI has now launched EC90A-GH mini PC based on GHF51 SBC. The fanless system is offered with a choice of AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000-series processor with up to 8GB RAM, dual Micro HDMI output, and has recently been Ubuntu-certified by Canonical. DFI EC90A-GH preliminary specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 Series with Radeon Vega 3 GPU; 6W to 12W […]

April 29, 2021April 29, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Allwinner V831 NPU (Neural Processor Unit) reverse-engineered

When Sipeed introduced MAIX-II Dock AIoT vision development kit, they asked help from the community to help reverse-engineer Allwinner V831‘s NPU in order to make an open-source AI toolchain based on NCNN. Sipeed already had decoded the NPU registers, and Jasbir offered help for the next step and received a free sample board to try it out. Good progress has been made and it’s now possible to detect objects like a boat using cifar10 object recognition sample. Allwinner V831’s NPU is based on a customized implementation of NVIDIA Deep Learning Accelerator (NVDLA) open-source architecture, something that Allwinner (through Sipeed) asked us to remove from the initial announcement, and after reverse-engineering work, Jasbir determined the following key finding: The NPU clock defaults to 400 MHz, but can be set between 100 and 1200 MHz NPU is implemented with nv_small configuration (NV Small Model), and relies on shared system memory for all […]

April 29, 2021April 30, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 25 Comments

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 […]