CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

October 12, 2020October 12, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Linux 5.9 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.9 on lkml: Ok, so I’ll be honest – I had hoped for quite a bit fewer changes this last week, but at the same time there doesn’t really seem to be anything particularly scary in here. It’s just more commits and more lines changed than I would have wished for. The bulk of this is the networking fixes that I already mentioned as being pending in the rc8 release notes last weekend. In fact, about half the patch (and probably more of the number of commits) is from the networking stuff (both drivers and elsewhere). Outside of that, the most visible thing is a reinstatement of the fbdev amba-clcd driver – that’s a noticeable patch, but it’s basically just mainly a revert. The rest is really really tiny (mostly some other minor driver updates, but some filesystem and architecture fixes […]

October 11, 2020October 12, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Enabling AV1 Hardware Video Decoding in Windows 10

AOMedia AV1 royalty-free video codec delivers up to 50% better compression than H.264 and up to 20% better than VP9 for the same video content, so streaming companies like Netflix and YouTube enabled the codec a while ago. When I play a YouTube video in Chrome in Ubuntu 20.04 and check the stats for nerds info, it will usually show the video is played with “av01.0” codec which refers to AV1, but it’s played with software video decoding using libraries like Dav1d leveraging SIMD instructions. But ideally, you’d want hardware video decoding for lower power consumption for increased battery life, and potentially smoother videos. One good news is that Microsoft has recently announced support for AV1 GPU-accelerated hardware video decoding in Windows 10. The less good news is that support will be limited to recent and fairly powerful GPUs. So for instance, if you own mini PCs with older Intel […]

October 10, 2020October 10, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

NXP IW620 2×2 Wi-Fi 6 & Bluetooth 5.1 Chip Targets Gaming, Audio, Industrial and IoT Markets

NXP has announced the IW62X WiFi 6 & Bluetooth 5.1 family of chips designed for high-end gaming, audio, industrial and IoT markets. The family currently consists of IW620 and IW620S parts with respectively PCIe and SDIO host interfaces. Both chips integrate dual-band Power Amplifiers (PAs), Low Noise Amplifiers (LNAs), and switches in order to reduce the board-level BOM (Bill of Materials). IW62X key features and specifications: Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) 2×2 Wi-Fi 6 DB (802.11ax) 1024 QAM, 80MHz Peak Throughput: 1.2 Gbps Improved wideband noise & MU-MIMO performance Advanced active channel scanning 802.11s, EasyMesh 802.11mc Bluetooth & Bluetooth Low Energy 5.1 BLE 2Mbps + Long Range BLE direction finding with Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD) BLE Mesh Antenna support 2×2 5G 1×1 2.4G + BT Multimode energy-efficient support (TWT, Micro AP, TX Power Control, Wi-Fi Direct, BT5.1) Host Interfaces IW620 – PCIe 1.0 IW620S – SDIO 3.0 […]

October 9, 2020October 10, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

GSM repeater & signal booster extends 2G/3G/4G cellular coverage in your house or building

If your WiFi router range does not cover some of your rooms what do you do? You install a WiFi repeater or some of the more recent WiFi mesh networking solutions. What I did not know is that you can do something similar for cellular connectivity if you don’t quite get a reliable signal from your telco’s base station. Specifically, I’ve just come across a 900 MHz GSM repeater & signal booster that claims to be able to extend the 2G, 3G, and 4G cellular signal in a 100 to 300 m2 area, and sold for $59 on Banggood. Here are the specifications listed for the GSM repeater: Operating Frequency Band – GSM Uplink: 890-915Mhz Downlink: 935-960Mhz Gain: 70dbm Outdoor Directional Antenna Gain – 8dB Compatible with 2G / 3G / 4G cell phone signal Power Supply – 12V DC via 110-240V DC adapter Dimensions – 135 x 105 x […]

October 9, 2020October 9, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

$16 Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 Cortex-M4F Board Embeds AI Accelerator, WiFi Module

Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 AI MCU Development Board

Last April, we wrote about Edgeless EAI-Series dual Arm Cortex-M4 MCU equipped with a 300 GOPS CNN-NPU for AI at the very edge as we had discovered the chip in an upcoming Banana Pi board. It turns out Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 development board powered by Edgeless EAI80 AI microcontroller has just launched for $16 on Aliexpress, or you could get a complete kit with a touchscreen display, a camera, and a USB power supply for $80. Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 development board specifications: System-in-Package – Edgeless EIA80 dual-core Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 200MHz with 300GOPS AI accelerator (CNN-NPU), 384KB of SRAM including 256KB for CNN-NPU, and 8MB SDRAM Storage – SPI flash Display I/F – LCD connector up to 1024×768 Camera I/F – 1x DVP camera interface Audio – 2x onboard microphones Connectivity – 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFI 4 using ESP8266 module USB – 1x USB 2.0 Type-C port Expansion 40-pin GPIO header […]

October 9, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Renesas Launches RA6M4 Cortex-M33 Microcontrollers for Secure IoT Applications

Arm Cortex-M33 core with Arm Trustzone security was first unveiled in 2016, and since then several silicon vendors introduced secure Cortex-M33 microcontrollers with, for instance, Nordic nRF91 LTE-IoT SoC, STMicro STM32L5 MCU family, or NXP LPC551x/S1x. Renesas has now added one more alternative with RA6M4 Cortex-M33 microcontroller family clocked at up to 200 MHz with increased performance and security compared to their earlier Cortex-M4 RA6 microcontrollers clocked at 120 Mhz. Key features for RA6M4 microcontrollers: MCU Core – Arm Cortex-M33 @ 200 MHz with TrustZone technology Memory – 256 KB RAM include 64KB ECC RAM Storage – 512-1024 embedded flash, QuadSPI, and OctaSPI memory interface Networking – Ethernet controller with DMA USB – USB 2.0 Full Speed and CAN Other Peripherals Capacitive touch sensing unit SCI (UART, Simple SPI, Simple I2C), and SPI/ I2C multi-master interface SDHI and SSI (Serial Sound Interface) Security Renesas’ Secure Crypto Engine supporting multiple symmetric […]

October 8, 2020October 8, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

MAX78000 RISC-V & Cortex-M4F MCU enables IoT artificial Intelligence in battery-powered devices

Now even endpoints like sensors are capable of running basic artificial intelligence workloads thanks to microcontroller-class chips with built-in AI accelerators or instructions such as Kneron KL720 Arm Cortex-M4 AI SoC, GAP8 RISC-V IoT processor, or Cortex-M55 MCU core coupled with Ethos U55 MicroNPU. Maxim Integrated has now launched its own AI capable microcontroller with MAX78000 combining a Cortex-M4F core, a 32-bit RISC-V core, and a CNN accelerator enabling AI inferences at less than 1/100th the energy or 100 times the speed of software solutions making especially suited for battery-powered AI applications. MAX78000 specifications: Ultra-Low-Power microcontrollers Arm Cortex-M4F core with FPU Up to 100MHz with 512KB Flash and 128KB SRAM 32-Bit RISC-V ultra-low-power co-processor up to 60MHz Neural Network Accelerator optimized for Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) 442k 8bit Weight Capacity with 1,2,4,8-bit Weights Input Image Size up to 1024 x 1024 pixels Network Depth up to 64 Layers Layer […]

October 8, 2020October 8, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ ZU19EG MPSoC Devkit Offers HDMI 2.0, 10GbE, High-Speed Transceivers

iWave Systems iW-RainboW-G35D is a development kit powered by Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ ZU19EG Arm Cortex-A53 and FPGA MPSoC coupled with 4GB DDR4 RAM with ECC for the processing system (PS) & 4GB dual-channel DDR4 RAM for the programmable logic (PL). The board is equipped with HDMI 2.0 output/input ports supporting 4Kp60 UHD resolutions, a 10GbE SFP+ cage, FMC+, FMC, FireFly, and QSFP connectors for high-speed transceivers, and more. iW-RainboW-G35D specifications: iW-RainboW-G35M SoM Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ ZCU19EG MPSOC (-1 speed) with four Cortex-A53 cores @ 1200 MHz, dual-core Arm Cortex-R5 MPCore up to 600MHz, FPGA fabric with 1,143K logic cells, and Arm Mali-400 MP2 GPU (lower-end ZCU17EG and ZCU11EG MPSoC are also available) System Memory 4GB DDR4 RAM for PS 4GB Dual DDR4 RAM for PL Storage – 8GB eMMC Flash (for boot code) Transceivers PS-GTR Transceivers x 4 @ 6Gbps PL-GTH Transceivers x 32 @ 16.3Gbps PL-GTY Transceivers x 16 […]