MINIX NEO S2 Khadas Edge
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MINIX NEO S2 USB-C SSD Hub Review in Ubuntu 18.04 with Khadas Edge

MINIX NEO S1 & S2 are USB-C hubs with the usual HDMI and USB outputs, but also a built-in 120 GB & 240 GB SSD respectively. The company has sent me a sample of each, and in order to test the platform, I decided to do on a Khadas board running Ubuntu 18.04 with LXDE desktop environment (aka Lubuntu). I’ll start by checking out the packages’ content, before going through my experience with the MINIX NEO S2 USB-C hub in Ubuntu 18.04 with LXDE desktop environment. MINIX NEO S1 & S2 Unboxing Both packages are basically identical except for the different color, and one shows 120GB SSD capacity, while the other has 240GB The back side has some more details about the USB-C hub. I’ll focus on the 240GB model since it’s just the same, but around $13 to $20 more expensive, and it offers double the capacity, as well […]

RK3399 Panfrost GNOME
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Rock Pi 4 SBC Runs GNOME & KDE Plasma using Panfrost Open Source GPU Driver & Wayland

One of the highlights of Linux 5.2 release was support for two new Arm Mali GPU open-source drivers, namely Lima for Mali-4xx GPU, and Panfrost for the Midgard Mali-T6xx/7xx/8xx series, and the more recent Bifrost Mali-Gxx GPUs. Collabora worked on the release and was donated a few Rock Pi 4 boards from Radxa directly to work on the project. For those who are not familiar, Rock Pi 4 board is powered by a Rockchip RK3399 processor with a Mali-T860MP4 GPU that is supported by Panfrost open source GPU driver. The company managed to have Debian 10 Buster running on Rock Pi 4 using 3D graphics acceleration thanks to Panfrost drivers on both GNOME and KDE Plasma desktop environment, as well as Weston Wayland compositer. The good news is that you can build Rock Pi 4 images by yourself using Debos with the following commands:

Alternatively, you could directly download […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
TensorFlow Lite microcontrollers benchmark linux SBC
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TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers Benchmarked on Linux SBCs

Dimitris Tassopoulos (Dimtass) decided to learn more about machine learning for embedded systems now that the technology is more mature, and wrote a series of five posts documenting his experience with low-end hardware such as STM32 Bluepill board, Arduino UNO, or ESP8266-12E module starting with simple NN examples, before moving to TensorFlow Lite for microcontrollers. Dimitris recently followed up his latest “stupid project” (that’s the name of his blog, not being demeaning here :)) by running and benchmarking TensorFlow Lite for microcontrollers on various Linux SBC. But why? you might ask. Dimitris tried to build tflite C++ API designed for Linux, but found it was hard to build, and no pre-built binary are available except for x86_64. He had no such issues with tflite-micro API, even though it’s really meant for baremetal MCU platforms. Let’s get straight to the results which also include a Ryzen platform, probably a laptop, for […]

SOPINE Model A Baseboard + SoEdge-RK1808
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Pine64 SoEdge-RK1808 AI Module Delivers 3.0 TOPS via Rockchip RK1808 SoC

A few weeks ago, Ameridroid reported Pine64 would soon launch SoRock and SoEdge systems-on-module, but at the time there was virtually no info except SoRock would be likely based on either RK3328 or RK3399 and work on the existing Clusterboard, while SoEdge would be an AI Neural module for Artificial Intelligence tasks, with up to 3 TeraFLOPS of performance. I did not write about it at the time, simply because there was so little information, but this morning I’ve just received some photos of SoEdge-RK1808 module fitted to a baseboard that looks to be SOPINE Model “A” carrier board. SoEdge-RK1808 SoM Let’s try to derive the specifications from the photos even though some components appear to be blurred out or just unclear: SoC – Rockchip RK1808 dual-core Cortex-A35 processor with 3.0 TOPS NPU (Neural Processing Unit) System Memory – 2GB RAM (2x 8GBit Micro DDR4-2400) but limited PC-2133 Storage – […]

S922X-B vs S912
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Amlogic S912 vs Amlogic A311D/S922X-B Benchmarks Comparison

A few days ago we compared Amlogic A311D to Rockchip RK3399 since both the top-of-the-line processors from Amlogic and Rockchip are currently available. Rockchip RK3588 will even be faster, but we need to wait until Q1 2020 at least before it becomes available, and delays are not unheard of, so I’d expect it may take about one year before I can get my hands on a sample. Another comparison is against Amlogic S912, the previous high-end processor from the company. Amlogic A311D and S922X-B are newer and will be faster but it’s interesting to find out just how much. Note the Amlogic S922X found in ODROID-N2 is clocked at a lower speed compare to A311D/S922X-B, so performance will be somewhat lower. Since I recently benchmarked Khadas VIM3 with Amlogic A311D processor, I decided to dust off my old Khadas VIM2 Amlogic S912 development board, fit it a large heatsink, install […]

Android Gaming Khadas VIM3
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Android Gaming on Khadas VIM3 SBC (Video)

I started playing with Khadas VIM3 Basic SBC powered by Amlogic A311D processor and 2GB RAM, and noticed Android benchmarks, especially 3D graphics were significantly better (40% improvement) than the ones of Rockchip RK3399. So I decided it may be interesting to show Android gaming on the single-board computer, and installed the latest version of Android 9.0 with Google Play store. Finally I connected the RF dongle of Tronsmart Mars G01 wireless gamepad, as well as USB keyboard and mouse to get some fun. Since the board only has two USB type-A ports, I also inserted MINIX NEO S2 USB-C + SSD hub to connect the gamepad RF dongle. Then I tried to install and play four games Beach Buggy Racing Installed via Google Play Played with Tronsmart gamepad. Perfectly smooth with max graphics settings. Similar to other TV boxes or boards. Riptide GP2 Installed via Amazon Store Played with […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
Khadas VIM3 Amlogic A311D CPU-Z
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Khadas VIM3 (Amlogic A311D) Benchmarks & System Info in Android 9

I received Khadas VIM3 kit at the very beginning of this month, and showed the content of the kit, and how to assemble it. Now after clearing some other items for review, I’ve started to play with the Amlogic A311D board which ships with Android 9.0 by default.  I’ll focus my efforts on Ubuntu as most people will run Linux distributions on the board, but before doing so I’ve upgraded Android to the latest version, and checked out system information and ran some benchmarks in Android. Installing the latest Android firmware on VIM3 Instructions to upgrade the firmware over USB-C are available for Windows and Ubuntu, but since my laptop runs Ubuntu 18.04 I’ll focus on the latter. We can install the burn-tool for Linux as follows:

We can now download and extract the latest Android image:

Once it’s done you can connect your VIM3 board to your […]

Pinebook Pro Laptop
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PineBook Pro Arm Linux Laptop now up for pre-order for $199.99

Pine64 unveiled a Pinebook Pro laptop prototype at FOSDEM 2019 as an update to the original Allwinner A64 powered Pinebook laptop, but instead of just being a toy to play with, Pinebook Pro aimed to be used as a daily driver thanks to a relatively powerful Rockchip RK3399 processor combined with 4GB RAM, and 64/128GB storage, and equipped with a 14″ Full HD display all for a target price of $200. Last May, we noticed some good progress on the software development side with a demo showcasing Ubuntu & Debian with MATE desktop, 4K video playback, 3D graphics acceleration, and USB-C video output.  The good news is that Pinebook Pro has just launched and can be pre-ordered for $199.99 on Pine64 store. [Update: If you are an existing forum member, you may want to redeem your coupon here] Pinebook Pro laptop specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 big.LITTLE hexa-core Arm Cortex […]

Boardcon CM3588 Rockchip RK3588 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications