CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 5, 2019December 6, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Marlin 2.0 Open Source 3D Printer Firmware Finally Released

Back in June, we wrote about Marlin 2.0 firmware supporting ESP32 3D printer board, but at the time the firmware was still in RC1 (Release Candidate) phase. I was informed Marlin 2.0 firmware had been in beta for several years now, but the good news is that Marlin 2.0.0 open-source 3D printer firmware has now been officially released. Some of Marlin 2.0.0 new features include: 32-bit support with several boards including Arduino DUE (SAM3X8E), Adafruit Grand Central (SAM5D), Smoothie / SBASE / EZBoard based on NXP LPC176x, SKR Mini powered by STM32, as well as ESP32 boards Some improvements were made to some AVR boards including Melzi (ATmega 1280), RAMPS (ATmega 2560), and RAMBo / miniRAMBo / Einsy RAMBo boards PlatformIO build environments for supported boards VSCode “Auto Build Marlin” extension for one-click build Power-Loss Recovery for SD print jobs Magnetic Parking Extruder support Magnetic Switching Toolhead and Toolchanger support […]

December 5, 2019 by Stephen Vicinanza - No Comments

Versalogic Owl Small Form Factor Apollo Lake Embedded Computer Targets Military & Industrial Applications

VersaLogic Owl VL-EPU-4012 Embedded System Computer In October 2019 we reported on the VersaLogic Harrier computer that was slightly bigger than a credit card. Just announced by the company is a new embedded computer system is being developed, the Owl. Basics of the VersaLogic Owl The intended uses are again industry and military-grade applications. The system uses ECC memory and the Embedded Processing Unit (EPU) format. The processing unit is an Intel Atom E39xx Platform, 5th Gen Apollo Lake processor with dual or quad-core options. Strength and Resilience The ECC memory is fixed to the board and can be up to 8 GB in size. This reduces the damage that can be caused by vibration and shock, making the system tough and resilient. Available Ports and Security Hardware-based security is through a TDM 2.0 chip. There are onboard power conditioning, mini-PCIe expansion sockets, analog inputs, standard USB 3.0 and 4x […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

December 5, 2019July 26, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon 865, 765, and 765G 5G Mobile Platforms

Qualcomm-Snapdragon 865 / 765 5G Mobile Platform

Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit 2019 is taking place in Maui, Hawaii, US on December 3-5, and the company announced three 5G mobile platforms at the event: Snapdragon 865 with Qualcomm Kryo 585 CPU, Adreno 650 GPU, and external Snapdragon X55 5G modem up to 7.5 Gbps download Snapdragon 765 with Qualcomm Kryo 475 CPU, Adreno 620 GPU, and external Snapdragon X52 5G modem up to 3.75 Gbps download Snapdragon 765G where G stands for Gaming and the SoC comes with a speed-binned Qualcomm Kryo 475 CPU, while the Qualcomm Adreno 620 GPU provides 10% faster graphics rendering compared to the standard Snapdragon 765. Snapdragon 865 5G Mobile Platform SM8250 specifications provided by Qualcomm: CPU – Octa-core Kryo 585 up to 2.84 GHz GPU – Adreno 650 GPU with support for Vulkan 1.1 API, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenGL 2.0 FP, 10-bit HDR gaming, hardware-accelerated H.265, and VP9 decoder DSP – Hexagon […]

December 4, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Desklab Ultrathin, Lightweight 15.6″ 4K Portable Touchscreen Display Comes HDMI, USB-C, Stereo Speakers (Crowdfunding)

We’ve already seen a fair amount of portable displays launched in recent years which are often supposed to be brought along with your laptop or smartphone, including DUO add-on display, TAIHE Gemini 15.6″ FullHD/4K display, and the low-cost BlitzWolf BW-PCM1 11.6″ display among many others. Another option is Desklab 15.6″ portable display available either in Full HD or 4K resolution and which comes with stereo speakers in a similar fashion to the TAIHE model but with different ports, and no battery. Desklab key features and specifications: Display 15.6″ IPS touchscreen display with FullHD (1920×1080) or 4K (3840×2160) resolution 10ms response time 400 cd/m2 luminance 183° viewing angles Ports mini HDMI input 2x USB typ-C ports 3.5mm audio jack Micro USB port Audio – Stereo speakers Misc – Power button, volume rocker Battery – None, used the host battery Thickness – ~0.6 cm Weight – 595 grams Since the display comes […]

December 4, 2019December 4, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

ROCK PI N10 RK3399Pro SBC Sells for $99 and up

Rockchip RK3399Pro processor is based on the popular Rockchip RK3399Pro hexa-core Arm Cortex-A72/A53 processor plus an embedded neural processing unit (NPU) delivering up to 3 TOPS for AI acceleration. So far you had to spend over $200 to get either Toybrick RK3399Pro board or 96Boards RK3399Pro development kit to get started with the processor. Some other companies announced their own RK3399Pro SBC such as Pine64 RockPro64-AI, or Khadas Edge board, but those are not available yet. But there’s now a more affordable Rockchip RK3399Pro SBC courtesy of Radxa’s Rock Pi N10 available on Seeed Studio in three variants: $99 model A with 4GB RAM (3GB for CPU/GPU + 1GB for NPU), 16GB eMMC flash $129 model B with 6GB RAM (4GB for CPU/GPU + 2GB for NPU), 32GB eMMC flash $169 model C with 8GB RAM (4GB for CPU/GPU + 4GB for NPU), 64GB eMMC flash Rock Pi N10 specifications: […]

December 4, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Think Silicon NEOX|V is the First RISC-V ISA based GPU

We are seeing more and more RISC-V microcontrollers and processors hitting the market, but so far they all lacked a GPU for 3D graphics acceleration. Think Silicon, the make of NEMA GPU for IoT and wearables, has now announced it will demonstrate NEOX|V GPU, the first RISC-V ISA based 3D, at the RISC-V Summit at the San Jose Convention Center, on December 10-12, in San Jose, California. NEOX|V key features: Parallel multi-core and multi-threaded architecture based on the RISC-V64GC ISA instruction set with adaptive NoC (Networks-on-Chip) Configurable from 4 to 64 cores Variety of cache sizes and thread counts organized in 1 to 16 cluster elements Variety of cluster/core configurations with compute power ranging from 12.8 to 409.6 GFLOPS at 800 MHz Support for FP16, FP32, and FP64 plus SIMD instructions Beside 3D graphics, the RISC-V GPU can also be used for machine learning, vision/video processing, and open GPGPU compute […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025

December 4, 2019December 5, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

AWS EC2 6th Gen Instances are 7x Faster thanks to Graviton 2 Arm Neoverse N1 Custom Processor

Last year Amazon introduced their first 64-bit Arm-based ECS2 “A1” instances which were found to deliver up to 45% cost savings over x86 Instances for the right workloads. A few months ago, AWS (Amazon Web Services) provides a new offering with bare-metal A1 instances, and with re:invent 2019 now taking place the company has unveiled AWS ECS2 6th generation Arm instances (which they did not call A2 instances yet) powered by Graviton 2 processor comprised of custom Arm Neoverse N1 cores and promising up to 7x the performance of the original A1 instances. There will be three types of Graviton2-powered EC2 instances with the d suffix indicating NVMe local storage: M6g and M6gd for General Purpose workloads (application servers, mid-size data stores, microservices, and cluster computing) with 1 to 64 vCPUs and up to 256 GB of memory. C6g and C6gd for Compute-Optimized workloads (high-performance computing, video encoding, gaming, and […]

December 3, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Sony Spresense 6-core MCU Development Board Now Supports Java

Sony Spresense board was introduced in spring 2018 with a 6-core Cortex-M4 microcontroller from the company, GPS & GLONASS, as well as audio support. The breadboard-compatible board could also be inserted into an Arduino UNO R3 compatible base board, and Sony offered support for both the Arduino IDE and a C-based NuttX-based SDK. You’ll find some more details and photos in our “review”. Sony has now partnered with MicroEJ to provide developers with Java support on Spresense board through MicroEJ Virtual Execution Environment (VEE). A Java simulator (VEE Virtual Device) allows you to develop software for Spresense independently of the hardware. Beside plenty of libraries, MicroEJ VEE features MEJ32 32-bit virtual core is compatible with various architectures including ARM Cortex-M, ARM Cortex-Ax, RX, V85, MIPS32, TriCore, and Tensilica. Java enables application portability which means that any GUI/IoT/Security or application code can run on various embedded systems supported by MicroEJ VEE. […]

Boardcon LGA3576 Rockchip RK3576 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications