CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

October 25, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Pretech F700Mi Low Cost 7″ Fanless Mini Laptop Features an Intel Atom X5 Cherry Trail Processor

We’ve covered a fair amount of mini laptops with 7″ to 9″ displays in the last few years, but most came with a fairly high price due to the somewhat high specs with Amber Lake or Gemini Lake processors, 8GB+ RAM, 128GB+ storage, etc… meaning in most cases you’d have to pay between $500 and $1,000 for a small device. If you’d like to have such a mini laptop for simple tasks but don’t quite want to spend that much money on it, Pretech F700Mi Mini laptop with a 7″ display should be much cheaper thanks to an Intel Atom X5-Z8350 quad-core processor, 4GB RAM, and 32GB to 128GB storage. Pretech F700Mi Mini specifications: SoC – Intel Atom x5-Z8350 quad-core Cherry Trail processor System Memory – 4GB or 8GB RAM Storage – 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash; MicroSD card slot Display – 7″ 1920 x 1200 touchscreen display with […]

October 25, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Intel Unveils Tremont Low-power x86 Architecture, Lakefield Hybrid Processor

Intel Tremont microarchitecture was first leaked in April 2018 as a successor to Goldmont Plus used in Gemini Lake processors among others. But Intel has now made it official and revealed details about Tremont architecture at Linley Fall Processor Conference in Santa Clara, California. The new architecture is said to deliver significant IPC (instructions per cycle) gains compared with Intel’s prior low-power x86 architectures. Tremont-based processors will target client devices, IoT products, 5G networking, efficient datacenter servers, etc… Tremont Architecture Some of the highlights of Tremont architecture include: Intel Core class branch prediction with long history,32 bytes based, L1 predictor (no penalty) and large L2 predictor Out of order fetch – 32KB instruction cache, 32 bytes/cycle, up to 8 outstanding misses 6-wide out of order instruction decode Dual 3-wide clusters Wide decode without the area of a uop cache Optional single cluster mode based on product targets 4 wide allocation […]

October 25, 2019 by Stephen Vicinanza - 2 Comments

STEEReoCAM is a 3D Stereo Camera for NVIDIA Jetson Nano, TX2, & AGX Xavier Dev Kits

STEEReoCam 2MP 3D Stereo Camera The latest e-con systems camera added to the lineup is the STEEReoCam. A 2MP 3D MIPI compliant stereo camera that works with the NVIDIA Jetson Nano, AGX Xavier, and Jetson TX2 development kits. Improved Overall Function The camera has greater accuracy and depth range, with an OmniVision 1/2.9″ OV2311 global shutter CMOS sensor. And the STEEReoCam comes bundled with CUDA the proprietary accelerated stereo SDK, that uses the GPU in the NVIDIA Tegra processors. AI and IoT Applications The camera is targeted towards depth sensing, AVG, robotics, face and gesture recognition, drones, medical procedure robots, and embedded visions. Software Development Kit e-Con Systems provides a Software Development Kit (SDK) package for the camera designed to work with NVIDIA Jetson development boards. The SDK is built on OpenCV 3.4.2 and CUDA Compute Capability 5.3/7.2/6.2. Sample Linux applications, some of which are shown in the video […]

October 24, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Samsung Exynos 990 SoC, 5G Exynos Modem 5123 Leverage 7nm-EUV Process

Samsung Electronics has announced two silicon products manufactured using a 7-nm process and extreme ultra-violet (EUV) technology with namely Exynos 990 mobile processor for premium smartphones, and 5G Exynos Modem 5123. Samsung Exynos 990 Preliminary specifications: CPU – Octa-core, tri-cluster CPU structure 2x Exynos M5 custom cores 2x high-performance Cortex-A76 cores 4x power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores GPU – Arm Mali-G77MP11 GPU with Valhall architecture AI Accelerators – Dual-core neural processing unit (NPU) and digital signal processor (DSP) that can perform over 10 TOPS Memory I/F – LPDDR5 data rates of up to 5,500 Mbit/s Display – 120Hz refresh-rate display driver Camera – Up to 108MP in total thanks to an ISP that supports up to 6x image sensors with concurrent processing of three Media – 8K30 / 4K120 encode & decode of H.265/HEVC, H.264, VP9 The GPU is said to improve graphic performance or power efficiency by up to 20 percent, […]

October 24, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

SiFive Shield is an Open Security Platform for RISC-V Processors

Most Arm processors and Armv8-M microcontrollers support Arm TrustZone security with hardware-enforced isolation built into the CPU. But so far, I had not read anything about equivalent solutions for RISC-V processors. It turns out Hex-Five’s MultiZone security is one of the RISC-V hardware-security providing an answer to Arm TrustZone, and besides checking out the presentation slides, you can also watch the video filmed at RISC-V Workshop Taiwan last March. But what brought me to write about RISC-V security is SiFive announcement for their Shield open security platform for RISC-V processors SiFive Shield Overview SiFive Shield is an open, scalable security platform designed for RISC-V processors. It supports root-of-trust, customizations, and offers per-memory protected memory regions and multi-core privilege modes. Combined with SiFive WorldGuard, SiFive Shield enables greater isolation. SiFive WorldGuard Isolation SiFive WorldGuard is a fine-grain security model for isolated code execution and data protection. It offers core-driven and process-id […]

October 24, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Orange Pi AI Stick Lite $20 Neural Compute Stick Ships with Free Training Tools

Shenzhen Xunlong Software launched Orange Pi AI Stick 2801 neural compute stick last year for $69. It was interesting as an alternative to Intel Neural Compute Stick. But once the documentation and SDK were released a few days later we discovered you could only run demos with the stick for that price, and the training tools would cost an extra $149. The excellent news is that the company has now launched an updated, yet similar Orange Pi AI Stick Lite for just $19.99, and best of all the PLAI training tools are now entirely free. Orange Pi AI Stick Lite specifications: ASIC – Gyrfalcon SPR2801S Lightspeeur series processor with 2-dimensional Matrix Processing Engine (MPE) with AI Processing in Memory (APiM) delivering up to 2.8TOPS @ 300mW, 5.6 TOPS @ 100 MHz (peak performance) Storage – eMMC 4.5 flash with 68 MB/s read, 84.69 MB/s write Host interface – USB 3.0/2.0 […]

October 24, 2019October 23, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

How to Use Wake-on-LAN to Power On Khadas VIM3/VIM3L SBC

Khadas VIM2, Edge and VIM3/VIM3L SBC’s all come with Wake-on-LAN (WoL) support which allows you to power on the board with a specific Ethernet packet. This is not especially useful if your board sits on a desk since you have easy access to the power button, but if you’ve placed the SBC in a cabinet, inside an enclosure without access to the power button, or in another hard-to-reach location this can be a lifesaver. I had never tried the feature until today, so I decided to give it up a go adapting the instructions provided on Khadas Wiki. I’ll use Khadas VIM3L running Android 9.0 and sent WoL packets from my Android phone as well as an Ubuntu 18.04 laptop. Khadas VIM3L WoL Configuration WoL is disabled by default, but it’s really easy to enable in Android 9. Go to Settings->More Settings->Device Preferences->WOL. Make sure Wake on LAN is enabled, […]

October 23, 2019October 23, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

GIGABYTE GA-PICO3350 Apollo Lake Pico-ITX Board Comes with SO-DIMM RAM Slot, SATA and mSATA Storage

GIGABYTE GA-PICO3350 may be the smallest motherboard from the company so far. The Pico-ITX board comes with an Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core Apollo Lake processor with a SO-DIMM slot, SATA port, and mSATA socket that give you more options will selecting RAM and storage. GA-PICO3350 specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core Apollo Lake processor @ up to 2.4 GHz with 2 MB cache, Intel HD graphics; 6W TDP System Memory – 1 x DDR3L SO-DIMM socket supporting up to 8 GB DDR3L 1866/1600 MHz Storage- 1x SATA 6Gb/s connector, 1x mSATA connector (multiplexed with mPCIe), 128 Mbit flash for BIOS/UEFI Video Output HDMI 1.4 up to 3840×2160 @ 30 Hz 1x LVDS header 1x flat panel display header Audio – Realtek ALC887 codec, 1x front panel audio header Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet port via Realtek PHY USB – 2x USB 3.0/2.0 ports on the back panel, 2x USB 2.0/1.1 […]