Imagination PowerVR Series8XT GT8540 GPU Can Drive up to Six 4K Screens, Supports Hardware Virtualization

Imagination Technologies introduces PowerVR Furian architecture last year with improved performance, power and density, as well as dual cluster PowerVR Series8XT GT8525 GPU based on the new architecture, and targeting high-end smartphones, virtual reality and automotive products. The company has now introduced a quad cluster Furian GPU called PowerVR Series8XT GT8540 that can simultaneously drive up to six 4K screens at 60fps thanks to an 80% fillrate density improvement, and supports virtualization providing separation of services and applications. The new GPU mostly targets the automotive market with some new cars now requiring multiple screen support with high resolution displays for cluster, Head-Up Display (HUD) and infotainment. Hardware virtualization is equally important for automotive application, as you’ll want to separate safety-critical code, from infotainment applications for example, so if the latter crashes, the safety-critical code can still run unhindered. Each would run on separate shaders processing unit, with up to 8 […]

MeLE A1000 TV Box is Back! Cost: $29.99 Shipped

MeLE A1000 is an Android TV box powered by Allwinner A10 Arm Cortex A8 processor that was launched in 2012 with Android 2.3, and was featured prominently on this blog, as arm-netbook then linux-sunxi community was working on porting Linux to the platform at that time. I discovered the device after the launch of the first Raspberry Pi board, and its subsequent unavailability due to extreme demand, and was looking for an alternative which became MeLE A1000, since there was an active around the box that included a real SATA port as a bonus. Why am I writing about this today? Because the TV box just showed up in GeekBuying new arrivals feed for $29.99. The device’s appearance has not changed, and the hardware specifications are the same too: SoC – Allwinner A10 Arm Cortex A8 processor with Mali-400 GPU System Memory – 512MB DDR3 RAM Storage – 4GB NAND […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC

Logic Supply Introduces ML350 Customizable Fanless Industrial Computer Based on Intel Apollo Lake Processor

Fanless-Apollo-Lake-Industrial-Computer

Logic Supply has just unveiled their latest industrial grade computer with ML350 model that features an Intel Celeron or Pentium Apollo Lake processor, with up to 8GB RAM, two DisplayPorts, up to two Gigabit Ethernet ports, mPCIe and mSATA expansion slots and more. The mini PC is customizable, so when you order you can configure it match your exact requirements, for example you can select the amount of RAM (4GB or 8GB), storage up to 2TB mSATA SSDs, wireless connectivity (WiFI, Bluetooth, 4G), mounting options, and other hardware options. The company can also change the color of the front and back panels and add your own logo though their Rapid Branding program.Logic Supply ML350 (ML350G-10) specifications: SoC (one of the other) Intel Celeron N3350 dual core processor @ 1.10 / 2.40 GHz with Intel HD graphics 500 Intel Pentium N4200 quad core processor @ 1.10 / 2.50 GHz with Intel […]

$210 GPD XD Plus Handheld Android Game Console Launched with Mediatek MT8173 Cortex A73/A53 SoC

Not everybody is willing to spend around $650 on the recently announced GPD Win 2 portable Windows game console, and for people with a lower budget and happy to play Android games, the company has now launched the expected GPD XD+ console with GeekBuying and GearBest taking pre-orders for $209.99 including shipping. GPD XD+ will be an upgrade of the previous GPD XD console with Rockchip RK3288 replaced by a more powerful Mediatek MT8176 processor, and RAM capacity increased to 4GB. The rest of the design is pretty much unchanged. GPD XD Plus specifications: SoC – Mediatek MT8176 hexa-core processor with 2x Cortex A72 cores @ 2.1 GHz, 4x Cortex A53 cores @ 1.7 GHz, and Imagination PowerVR GX6250 GPU System Memory – 4GB RAM Storage – 32GB eMMC flash (GearBest shows 64GB instead), micro SD slot up to 128GB Display – 5″ 720p capacitive touch display Video Output – […]

Building a Compact Digital TV Transmitter with Raspberry Pi Zero, Pi Camera, and LimeSDR Mini USB SDR Board

There are few affordable standalone systems that allow you to transmit video over the air, and back in 2016, I had the chance to check out V-Bridge Muses-β MPEG-2/-4 encoder and DTV modular taking HDMI or composite video input. It was easy to use and worked fine, but it would still cost close to $600, and might have been a little smaller. Evariste Okcestbon has now created its own digital TV transmitter prototype, combining LimeSDR Mini USB SDR board with Raspberry Pi Zero board, and instead of supporting external input from HDMI or AV ports, he used an official Pi camera for video, and was able to transmit the video over a 1.2 GHz connection to a Raspberry Pi 2 with an RTL-SDR dongle, with the Pi 2 board also taking care of displaying the video signal.   The full flow of transmission can be summarized as follows: Video from […]

Mainline Linux on Amlogic S905/S905X/S912 SoCs – 2018 Status Update

BayLibre is working on mainline Linux for Amlogic SoC, and in February of last year, Neil Armstrong gave a presentation entitled “Mainline Linux on AmLogic SoCs” at the Embedded Linux Conference 2017. Neil has recently (actually yesterday) given another presentation about the status of mainline Linux on Amlogic processor at linux.conf.au 2018, so we have some updated information now. He goes through the whole history of upstreaming Linux for Amlogic SoCs, but I’ll provided summary of the new features, and if you have time you can watch the video (25 minutes) embed below, or the slides. Early last year, Linux 4.10 already supported general I/Os, USB host (for S905), Gigabit Ethernet, eMMC/SD/SDIO, PSCI for SMP, and SCPI for DVFS for Amlogic processor, and BayLibre was said to be working on HDMI display support, Mali (as external module), audio input/output, and high-speed eMMC modes. Based on the slide above, with Linux […]

UP 7000 SBC

$6 Maker UNO Arduino UNO Clone Comes with Micro USB Power, I/O LEDs, and a Buzzer

Arduino UNO is one of the older Arduino boards, but also one of the most popular, and there are already many clones, which you can buy for as low as $3 shipped. But Malaysian based Cytron Technologies has decided to make their own Arduino UNO Compatible board, designed specially for students to learn coding and microcontroller, that brings some tweaks to the original design. First, they’ve done away with the power jack, and instead went with a more convenient micro USB port for power. They also added an LED for each digital I/O, so students can easily see I/O activity, and finally included a piezo buzzer to play sounds or melodies, as well as a push button. Maker UNO specifications with differences highlighted in bold: MCU – Microchip Atmel ATMega328P AVR micro-controller @ 16 MHz with 32KB flash, 2KB SRAM, 1KB EEPROM I/Os 14x digital I/Os including 6x PWM 6x […]

BigClown is a Battery Powered Modular Wireless IoT Kit for Makers (Crowdfunding)

BigClown IoT Kit is designed to be as easy to use as building a castle from LEGO bricks or an IKEA cabinet. The open source kit is comprised of a coreboard module with STMicro STM32L0 Cortex M0+ micro-controller, and a sub GHZ (868/915MHz) radio for wireless communication, that accepts one or more compatible modules (currently ~30 different options), and communicate to a gateway such as Raspberry Pi or Turris Omnia where you’d connect BigClown RF USB dongle, although it’s also possible to include a Sigfox module for communication, and , LoRa & NB-IoT module appear to be planned. That’s for the hardware…The kit then connects to your chosen gateway via MQTT, which in turns accesses cloud services such as Ubidots, Microsoft Azure IoT, AWS, IFTTT, etc… , and you can monitor the data or control the kit through a web based dashboard or your own application. Core Module specifications: MCU […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC