CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 17, 2016January 4, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Mobile Processor To be Manufactured with Samsung’s 10-nm FinFET Process technology

Qualcomm Technologies and Samsung Electronics have jointly announced that the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor for mobile devices will be manufactured using Samsung’s 10-nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology. Sadly, neither companies provided further details about the processor itself, but they did offer some insights in the performance and power efficiency improvement between 14nm and 10nm processes with Samsung’s 10nm technology allowing up to a 30% increase in area efficiency with 27% higher performance or up to 40% lower power consumption. Snapdragon 835 is said to be in production now with commercial devices featuring the new processor expected in H1 2017.

November 17, 2016September 20, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Khadas Vim Amlogic S905X Android and Linux Development Board Sells for $50 and Up

Last summer I wrote about Shenzhen Tomato TVI development board powered by Amlogic S905X processor, and at the time the company focused on business to business customers, but the board is now sold as Khadas Vim through GearBest with 2 GB RAM, 8 or 16 GB flash, and price starting at $49.99 including shipping. Khadas Vim and Vim Pro boards’ specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5 GHz with penta-core Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – 2 GB DDR3 Storage Vim – 8 GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot Vim Pro – 16 GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4K @ 60 Hz Connectivity Vim – Fast Ethernet port, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 (Ampak AP6212 module) with IPEX connector Vim Pro – Fast Ethernet port, dual band 802.11 b/g/n/ac WiFi and Bluetooth […]

November 17, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Egreat A10 4K Android Media Center Comes with an Internal 3.5″ SATA Bay, an external SATA Port and a USB 3.0 Port

Egreat A10 is an Android TV box powered by Hisilicon Hi3798CV200 processor, coupled with 2GB RAM, 16GB flash, and is an exciting device for people who like to keep the media files on local storage, as it includes an Internal SATA bay for 3.5″ hard drive, an external SATA connector for 2.5″ “laptop” drives, as well as a USB 3.0 port. Egreat A10 specifications: SoC – HiSilicon Hi3798C V200 quad-core ARM Cortex A53 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with ARM Mali-T720 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16 GB eMMC flash + 3.5″ SATA bay + external SATA interface with support for EXT-3/4, FAT32, NTFS and GPT Video Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4K2K @ 60 Hz and CVBS output (RCA) Video Codecs – 10-bit H.265/HEVC 4Kx2K@60fps, VP9 up to 4K @ 60 Hz, H.264 AVC, H.264/AVC MVC up 1080p30, MPEG-1/2/4 up to 1080p60, VC-1 up […]

November 17, 2016November 17, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Xiaomi Introduces Mi Box 3c and 3s TV Boxes with Artificial Intelligence Capabilities

Xiaomi has launched two new upgraded models based on their Mi Box 3 TV box powered by Amlogic S905-H processor, with Mi Box 3s with Amlogic S905X-H and 2GB RAM, and Mi Box 3c with Amlogic S905-H and 1 GB RAM. Beside the box hardware changes, the most significant updates are the replacement of MIUI TV interface by allegedly the first set-top box system with AI in the world, which the company calls Patch Wall, as well as Mi Touch IR remote control which include a touch ring in place of the usual arrow keys (3s only). Xiaomi Mi Box 3s specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X-H quad core ARM Cortex A53 processor + Mali-450MP GPU System memory – 2GB RAM Storage – 8GB eMMC flash Video Output – HDMI2.0a port with HDR support + AV port Audio – Dolby and DTS support Connectivity – WiFi 802.11ac Dual band 2.4 / […]

November 16, 2016November 17, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Make-WiFi-Fast Project Massively Improves WiFi Performance of Busy WiFi Routers

WiFi is a great way to add connectivity to a large group of people, but once everybody tries to connect at the same time, the network often becomes unusable due to very high latency, a problem that can occur on servers on the ISP side too, and that’s usually caused by excessive buffering, Bufferbloat. The Bufferbloat project aims to resolve this issue with both routers using CoDel and fq_codel algorithms, as well as WiFi via Make-WiFi-Fast project. Dave Täht gave a presentation of his work on Make-WiFi-Fast project entitled “Fixing WiFi Latency… Finally“showing how latency was reduced from seconds to milliseconds. It’s quite technical, but two slides of the presentation clearly shows the progress made. The first chart shows 100 stations connecting to a website using unpatched code with the top of the chart showing the bandwidth per node in MBits/s, while the lower part showing latency in ms. We […]

November 16, 2016September 27, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 40 Comments

Banana Pi M2 Ultra Allwinner R40 Development Board with SATA & GbE Sells for $46

Allwinner A10 and A20 processors have been quite popular in the past since they could handle Fast or Gigabit Ethernet and SATA natively, included decent multimedia capabilities, and were found in low-cost hardware such as Cubieboard 2 or MeLE A1000. Since then we’ve had a few boards with SATA using newer and faster processors without SATA IP, meaning it was usually implemented using a USB 2.0 to SATA bridge leading to mediocre to average performance depending on the implementation and selected bridge. Allwinner R40 is the successor of Allwinner R20 with a faster quad-core Cortex A7 processor, but keeping Gigabit Ethernet, SATA, and most features of its predecessor. The good news is that Banana Pi has now launched the promised M2 Ultra development board based on the new processor for $45.80 + shipping on Aliexpress (Total for me: $48.35). Banana Pi M2 Ultra specifications: SoC – Allwinner R40 quad-core ARM […]

November 15, 2016March 9, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Siemens SIMATIC IOT2000 UL Approved Educational & Industrial IoT Gateways are Powered by Intel Quark Processor

Siemens has recently released SIMATIC IOT2000 series IoT gateways based on Intel Quark X1000/X1020 processor also used in Intel Galileo Gen 2 board with both IOT2020 educational version, and IOT2040 industrial version featuring UL-approval, Arduino headers, and a mini PCIe expansion socket. SIMATIC IOT2040 specifications: SoC – Intel Quark X1020 32-bit processor @ up to 400 MHz with 16KB cache (2.2W TDP) System Memory – 1 GB RAM Storage – micro SD slot Connectivity – 2x Ethernet ports Serial – 2x RS232/485 interfaces USB – 1x USB 2.0 port, 1x micro USB device port Expansion – Arduino UNO compatible headers, mini PCIe socket Misc – Battery-backed RTC Power Supply – 9 to 36V DC wide-range power supply Dimensions – 144x90x54 mm Weight – About 200 grams Temperature Range – 0 °C to up to +50 °C Certificates – CE, UL, FCC, KCC, RCM The device support wall-mount and DIN rail […]

November 15, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Meet Body Heat Powered MATRIX PowerWatch, The Activity Tracker You Never Need to Charge (Crowdfunding)

There are currently several issues with wearables that makes it sub-optimal devices, from displays that can’t be always-on, to unreliable sensors, and in my experience pretty poor reliability, as I’ve managed to go through 4 fitness trackers / smartwatches in a year. Another issue is that contrary to typical watches lasting 10 years with a coin cell battery, most wearables require to be charge every few days, weeks, with the very best devices being chargers every few months. MATRIX PowerWatch promises to solve latter, as you will never need to ever charge it since it charges itself by harvesting energy using your body heat. The company promotes it as a smartwatch, but it’s closer to an activity tracker, since you can’t keep the Bluetooth LE connection all the time in order to receive notifications to your smartphone. It’s basically used to show time, track your activity and sleep patterns, and […]