CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 28, 2018November 28, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Wistrio LoRa Tracker RK5205 Complies with 96Boards IoT Edition Specification

It’s not hard to find a LoRa GPS tracker board such as Rak Wireless RAK811 these days, but if for some reasons, you’d also like your board to comply with 96Boards IoT Edition form factor, Rak Wireless just launched Wistrio LoRa Tracker RK5205 for $49.50 plus shipping on Aliexpress and Amazon. Wistrio specifications: LoRa Module – RAK5205 module with SX1276 LoRa chipset, STM32L1 Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller LoRa Connectivity LoRaWAN 1.0.2 protocol OTAA/ABP activation Programmable bitrate up to 300 Kbps Support for global bands: EU433, CN470, EU868, US915, AS923, AU915, KR920, and IN865 SMA & iPEX antenna options Location – Quectel L76-L GNNS chip supporting GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and QZSS system (pin-to-pin compatible with u-blox Max7) Sensors – LIS3DH 3-axis accelerometer, BME680 environmental sensor reporting gas, pressure, humidity and temperature data Expansion Header – I2C, GPIOs, UART and ADC Power Supply – Rechargeable battery via micro USB port, or 5V […]

November 27, 2018November 27, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 31 Comments

Amazon Launches 64-bit Arm Server “A1” Instances

Amazon has developed AWS Graviton processors optimized for cloud applications and delivering power, performance, and cost optimizations over their Intel counterpart. The processors feature 64-bit Arm Neoverse cores and custom silicon designed by AWS themselves, and can be found today in Amazon EC2 A1 instances. The screenshot above shows Amazon Linux 2, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6, Ubuntu 18.04 Server, and Ubuntu 16.04 Server machine images having options for either 64-bit x86 or 64-bit Arm servers. Amazon Arm server instance are particularly suitable for applications such as web servers, containerized microservices, caching fleets, distributed data stores, as well as development environments. Amazon further explains: A1 instances are built on the AWS Nitro System, a combination of dedicated hardware and lightweight hypervisor, which maximizes resource efficiency for customers while still supporting familiar AWS and Amazon EC2 instance capabilities such as EBS, Networking, and AMIs. Amazon Linux 2, Red Hat Enterpise Linux […]

November 27, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

VIA ALTA DS 3 Edge AI system Features Snapdragon 820E Processor

VIA has recently introduced ALTA DS 3 Edge AI system, a mini PC for the retail market powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 820E processor, and targeting intelligent digital signage, kiosk, and access control devices that require real-time image and video capture, processing, and display capabilities. VIA Alta DS 3 Edge AI system specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 820E quad core 64-bit Kryo CPU processor @ up to 2.15 GHz, Adreno 530 GPU @ 624 MHz supporting OpenGL ES 3.1/GEP, GL4.4, DX11.3/4, OpenCL 2.0, Renderscript-Next System Memory – 4GB POP LPDDR4 RAM Storage – 16GB eMMC flash memory, M.2 slot for M.2 2280 NVMe SSD (PCIe 1 Lane), SD card slot Video Output – 2x HDMI ports: one HDMI 2.0 port and one HDMI 1.4 port via dual DSI to HDMI converter Video Playback – H.264, H.265 (HEVC 8/10-bit) video decoding up to 4K@60fps Audio – WCD9335 Audio Codec; 3.5mm Line OUT […]

November 27, 2018November 27, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

HiMedia S1 TV Dongle Runs Android TV, Supports Netflix 4K

HiSilicon Hi3798MV200 media processor was announced in 2016 as a cost-down version of Hi3798CV200 processor for 4K TV boxes, and the next year I reviewed HiMedia Q30 TV box powered by the processor. Video playback was great with good 4K support and excellent video quality, although WiFi could have been better. Anyway, the processor has been around for a while, so yet another model with the SoC would not normally be newsworthy. Except HiMedia S1 is a little different, as the company confirmed the TV box is part of Netflix Hailstorm device scaling program meaning it officially supports Netflix 4K out of the box. HiMedia S1 specifications: SoC – HiSilicon Hi3798M V200 quad-core Arm Cortex A53 processor with Arm Mali-450MP GPU supporting OpenGL ES2.0/1.1, OpenVG1.1, EGL System Memory – 1 GB or 2 GB DDR3 Storage – 8 GB eMMC flash Video & Audio Output – Micro HDMI 2.0a up […]

November 26, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Forlinx OK1052-C Board Features NXP i.MX RT1052 Crossover Processor

NXP i.MX RT series crossover processors were first announced last year as processors providing the same real-time capability as found in microcontrollers while providing performance similar to entry-level application processors thanks to an Arm Cortex-M7 core clocked at up to 600 MHz. i.MX RT series also lower BoM thanks to integrated PMIC and up to 512KB SRAM/TCM. Later on uCLinux for NXP i.MX RT1050 evaluation board was released, and a few months ago, we covered the upcoming VisionSOM-RT industrial system-on-module powered by the crossover processor. That means we did not have production-ready commercial solutions so far, but this has changed recently, with for example Forlinx Embedded OK1052-C board. The solution is comprised of a baseboard and a system-on-module with the following specifications: FET1052-C SoM SoC – NXP i.MX RT1052 single core Arm Cortex-M7 crossover processor @ up to 528 MHz with 512KB SRAM/TCM System Memory – 16MB or 32MB SDRAM […]

November 26, 2018November 26, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Alfawise U30 3D Printer now Offered for $166 (Promo)

This time of the year is normally a good period to buy 3D printers at a discounted prices ,as we’ve seen in the past with the popular Anet A8 model, which again is sold for $139.99 plus shipping right now, or if you are based in Europe as low as $129.99 with coupon GB23CC4. Another potentially interesting deal is the new Alfawise U30 3D printer which can be bought on GearBest for $165.99 plus shipping ($7.57 here) with coupon GBBFEX017. The 3D printer is also said to offer safety features, support for left handed people, and resume after power failure or running out of filament. Alfawise U30 main features: 2.8″ full color touchscreen placed on the left or right of the printer frame Storage – micro SD card slot, USB port Build volume – 220 x 220 x 250mm Nozzle diameter – standard 0.4mm nozzle Print speed – Up to […]

November 26, 2018November 26, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Facebook BOLT Speeds Up Large x86 & ARM64 Binaries by up to 15%

Compilers like GCC OR LLVM normally do a good job at optimizing your code when processing your source code into assembly, and then binary format, but there’s still room for improvement – at least for larger binaries -, and Facebook has just released BOLT (Binary Optimization and Layout Tool) that has been found to reduce CPU execution time by 2 percent to 15 percent. The tool is mostly useful for binaries built from a large code base, with binary size over 10MB which are often too large to fit in instruction cache. The hardware normally spends lots of processing time getting an instruction stream from memory to the CPU, sometimes up to 30% of execution time, and BOLT optimizes placement of instructions in memory – as illustrated below – in order to address this issue also known as “instruction starvation”. BOLT works with applications built by any compiler, including the […]

November 25, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

An Attempt to Benchmark Entry-level x86 Boards against RK3399 & Exynos Arm Boards

Some Arm boards have become quite powerful, while hardware based on low power Intel processor has generally become cheaper with both architectures somewhat converging in terms of performance and price. Piotr Maliński got interested and purchased some low cost (<$150) Intel hardware to compare to mid-range Arm boards, throwing a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ into the mix as well for comparison. Those are the Intel test boards / computers: Qotom motherboard with Intel Atom Z3735F Bay Trail processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB flash – $74 + shipping on Aliexpress Piesia nano ITX board with Intel Celeron N2806 Bay Trail processor, DDR3 SO-DIMM socket, SATA / mSATA interfaces – Piotr found it for around $85 on Aliexpress, but the price now jumped to over $150 plus shipping, which does not make it very attractive Generic thin mini ITX motherboard based on Celeron N3160 “Braswell” processor, DDR3 SO-DIMM socket, SATA / mSATA interfaces. $62.68 […]