Linux 5.16 release

Linux 5.16 Release – Main Changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.16: Not a lot here since -rc8, which is not unexpected. We had that extra week due to the holidays, and it’s not like we had lots of last-minute things that needed to be sorted out. So this mainly contains some driver fixes (mainly networking and rdma), a cgroup credential use fix, a few core networking fixes, a couple of last-minute reverts, and some other random noise. The appended shortlog is so small that you might as well scroll through it. This obviously means that the merge window for 5.17 opens tomorrow, and I’m happy to say I already have several pending early pull requests. I wish I had even more, because this merge window is going to be somewhat painful due to unfortunate travel for family reasons. So I’ll be doing most of it on the road on a laptop […]

Beelink Expand F USB-C Dock

Beelink Expand F USB-C dock takes M.2 SSD and 2.5-inch SATA drive

Beelink has previously introduced USB docks with the Expand X smartphone dock and Expand M with an SSD. The company’s latest Beelink Expand F USB-C dock looks really like a mini PC from the outside with the usual USB, HDMI, Ethernet, and audio ports, and it can also be fitted with an M.2 2280 SATA SSD and/or a 2.5-inch SATA drive. It can be useful to add PC-like connectivity to a smartphone or add additional storage to a laptop without cluttering your desk with multiple USB drives, and/or potentially saving some USB ports on the host machine. Beelink Expand F specifications: Storage Options No storage, i.e. bring your own SATA drive(s) via M.2 socket up to 440 MB/s and/or 2.5-inch SATA bay 512GB SATA III M.2 SSD 512GB SATA III M.2 SSD plus 1TB SATA HDD Video Output – 2x HDMI ports up to 4K resolution Audio – 3.5mm audio […]


Stellar Data Recovery Professional

Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows could save your day (Sponsored)

Even if you backup your data regularly, data loss can still occur for a variety of reasons be it a power failure, a user mistake, hardware failure, or even viruses or malware like ransomware. But luckily there are professional data recovery software programs that could help save your day, or even your job, such as Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows, previously known as Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Professional, that can recover lost or deleted data from any storage media including HDDs, SSDs, USB drives & optical media (CD or DVD), and it even works with the latest Windows 11 operating system. Stellar Data Recovery Professional supports recovery from NTFS, exFAT and FAT (FAT16/FAT32) formatted drives, even on crashed and unbootable systems, and a new feature is data retrieval from a partially burnt or scratched CD/DVD. The software can restore all types of data including documents, emails, photos, videos, […]

ODROID N2+ Ubuntu 21.10 review

ODROID-N2+ review with Ubuntu 21.10 using Wayland and Panfrost

ODROID-N2+ was launched in July 2020, but I only got the Amlogic S922X Rev C SBC recently with Hardkernel wanting me to test their latest Ubuntu 21.10 image with the Panfrost open-source GPU driver. ODROID-N2+ Kit Unboxing Let’s start by checking out the kit I received from the Korean SBC manufacturer. The package includes ODROID-N2+ single board computer fitted with a 32GB eMMC flash module, a 12V/2A power supply with an EU plug adapter, an 80mm fan kit, and a USB 3.0 to eMMC reader. ODROID-N2+ is now only available with 4GB RAM, as the old ODROID-N2 with 2GB was deprecated, and we get four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI 2.0 video output,  Gigabit Ethernet networking, and a 40-pin GPIO header with the board cooled by a larger heatsink attached to the bottom of the board. Fan installation, first boot, and system information As we’ll see below the fan is not […]

Libero SoC Windows Silver License ACTEL_BASESOC

My experience installing Libero SoC in Ubuntu and Windows 10

A few weeks ago, I received Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle Kit with FPGA fabric and hard RISC-V cores capable of handling Linux. I wrote “Getting Started with Yocto Linux BSP” tutorial for the board, and I had initially titled the current post “Getting Started with FPGA development using Libero SoC and Polarfire FPGA SoC”. I assumed I would write one or two paragraphs about the installation process, and then show how to work with Libero SoC Design Suite to create an FPGA bitstream. But instead, I spent countless hours trying to install the development tools. So I’ll report my experience to let readers avoid some of the pitfalls, and hopefully save time. (Failing to) Install Libero SoC v2021.v2 on Ubuntu 20.04 If we go to the download page, we’ll see Libero SoC v2021.2 for Windows and Libero SoC v2021.2 for Linux. Since my computer is running Ubuntu 20.04, I decided […]

OpenBSD 7.0

OpenBSD 7.0 adds 64-bit RISC-V, improves Apple Arm silicon support

OpenBSD 7.0, the 51st release of the UNIX-like operating system, was outed on October 14, 2021, with the introduction of 64-bit RISC-V support for HiFive Unmatched and PolarFire SoC Icicle Kit boards, as well as further improvements to ARM64 targets, notably for Apple Silicon Macs, although it’s not quite ready for general use yet. You’ll find the complete list of new features and updates on the OpenBSD website, but here are some of the highlights: New platforms – OpenBSD 7.0 add 64-bit RISC-V support Extended platforms arm64 Improvements to Apple Silicon Macs support USB 3, NVMe storage, GPIO driver, power management, etc… Enabled LEDs for the LAN7800 chip as found on the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. Added Type-C PHY controller found on the Rockchip RK3399. Implemented multicast support to Marvell ARMADA chips Various other changes to mips64, amd64, armv7, powerpc64 Kernel improvements Enabled dynamic tracker (dt) for GENERIC kernels […]

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Getting Started Guide PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle Kit

Getting Started with the Yocto Linux BSP for Polarfire SoC FPGA Icicle Kit

Last month I received Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA Icicle development kit that features PolarFire SoC FPGA with a Penta–core 64-bit RISC-V CPU subsystem and an FPGA with 254K LE, and booted it into the pre-installed Linux operating systems based on OpenEmbedded. Today, I’ll show how to get started with the Yocto BSP and run the EEMBC CoreMark benchmark, and I’ll check out the FPGA with Libero SoC Design Suite in a couple of weeks. Operating Systems supported by PolarFire SoC FPGA My initial idea was to focus this part of the review on Linux on RISC-V status, checking some system information, running some benchmarks (e.g. SBC-Bench), compiling the Linux kernel, and installing services like a LEMP stack (Linux, Nginx (pronounced Engine-X), MySQL, PHP) which could be used for WordPress hosting for instance. But then I looked at the operating systems supported with Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA. There’s a Yocto Linux […]

AYN Odin game console

AYN Odin – A Dockable portable game console offered with Snapdragon 845 or Dimensity 900 (Crowdfunding)

AYN Odin is a 6-inch portable game console powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 or MediaTek Dimensity 900 processor and offered with an optional dock with an HDMI port to connect it to a large screen, various ports for controllers, and even a 2.5-inch SATA bay. It offers a much more powerful experience, a larger display, a more recent Android 10/11 OS, and better multiplayer abilities than the Amlogic S905D3 powered Powkiddy A20 portable game console we have just covered. Three models of the Odin are offered with the Lite, Base, and Pro model differing in terms of processors, and/or storage and memory: SoC Odin Lite – MediaTek Dimensity 900 octa-core processor with 2x Cortex-A78 cores @ 2.4 GHz, 6x Cortex-A55 cores @ 2.0 GHz, Mali-G68 MC4 GPU Odin Base/Pro – Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor with 4x Kryo Gold (Cortex A75) cores @ 2.8 GHz, 4x Kryo Silver (Cortex A55) […]

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