Roshambo Pro Retro Gaming Console

Roshambo Retro Gaming Console Kit Features Rock64 or RockPro64 Board

Recalbox, Lakka TV, Retro Arena, and Batocera are some of the retro gaming distributions optimized to run on development boards. You can install those by yourself, and enclose the board is any case, but if you want something more fancy, Cloud Media is now selling Roshambo retro gaming kit based on Rock64 (RK3328) or RockPro64 (RK3399) SBC’s. Roshambo and RoshamboPro retro gaming kits are compatible with respectively Rock64 and RockPro64 boards, come with a shell with carrier board, power supply, cooling fan (Pro model only) and support cables. The kits support 256GB or 512GB SSD cartridges provided by the company, and optional game controllers with analog triggers and buttons are also available for purchase. Pine64 Rock64 / RockPro64 boards are compatible with Recalbox, Lakka TV, Retro Arena, and Batocera distributions, but bear in mind ROMs are not provided, so you’d have to install your own, or play free games only. […]

Linux 5.1 Changelog

Linux 5.1 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.1: So it’s a bit later in the day than I usually do this, just because I was waffling about the release. Partly because I got some small pull requests today, but mostly just because I wasn’t looking forward to the timing of this upcoming 5.2 merge window. But the last-minute pull requests really weren’t big enough to justify delaying things over, and hopefully the merge window timing won’t be all that painful either. I just happen to have the college graduation of my oldest happen right smack dab in the middle of the upcoming merge window, so I might be effectively offline for a few days there. If worst comes to worst, I’ll extend it to make it all work, but I don’t think it will be needed. Anyway, on to 5.1 itself. The past week has been pretty calm, […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
Pinebook Pro Laptop Demo

Pinebook Pro Arm Laptop Video Demo

Pine64 first revealed working on Pinebook Pro Arm Linux laptop at FOSDEM 2019 back at the end of January. The first Pinebook laptop had limited hardware resources, and as such was meant for simple tasks, but Pinebook Pro equipped with Rockchip RK3399 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB to 128GB flash, and a 14″ Full HD display is designed to be used as your main laptop. That means everything needs to work from 3D graphics acceleration, to hardware video decoding, and USB-C video output. Lukasz Erecinski very recently shot a demo of the laptop in action, and everything looks very good, meaning the laptop should be come available soon. You can watch the demo further below, but if you are in a rush here’s what has been tested and works: Ubuntu & Debian with MATE desktop 4K video playback 3D graphics acceleration for games (Quake demo) 3D graphics acceleration in Chromium web […]

SOM-RP301 Rockchip PX30 SoM

ARBOR Introduces SOM-RP301 Rockchip PX30 SoM for Retail Kiosks

Rockchip PX30 is a quad core Cortex-A35 processor with a dual VOP (Video Output Processor) in order to drive two independent displays, that has low power consumption, low thermal requirements, and that we previously found in some car infotainment systems. But the processor is also suitable for other applications, and ARBOR Technology recently launched SOM-RP301 system-on-module based on the PX30 processor, and specifically designed for fanless retail kiosks such as electronic restaurant menus, automated currency exchange machines, ticketing kiosks and more. SOM-RP301 system-on-module specifications: SoC – Rockchip PX30 quad core Cortex-A35 processor @ 1.5 GHz with Arm Mali-G31 MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB LPDDR3 (Up to 4GB as option) Storage – 16 GB eMMC flash Connectivity – Fast Ethernet transceiver, 802.11 b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 + Bluetooth 4.0 module Edge Connector – SO-DIMM connector with Display – LVDS or MIPI DSI Camera – MIPI CSI RX interface with 8MP ISP […]

96Boards SoM Carrier Board

TB-96AI & TB-96AIoT are the First 96Boards Systems-on-Module

First introduced in 2015, 96boards specifications define mechanical, electrical, and software specifications for single board computers, but in 2017 Linaro asked companies to provide some feedback on what they’d like for a 96boards system-on-module standard. And for the first day of Linaro Connect Bangkok 2019, the 96Boards SoM specifications have now been announced, together with the introduction of Rockchip RK3399Pro powered TB-96AI and Rockchip RK1808 based TB-96AIoT, the first compliant 96Boards SoMs, and corresponding 96Boards SoM Carrier Board. 96Boards System-on-Module Specifications Two 96Boards SoM specifications have been unveiled with the Compute Module Specification and the Wireless Specification. The 96boards Compute Module Specification defines a SoM with up to four 100-pin connectors, but only one is mandatory (X1), and two form factors are specified: SOM-CA (85 x 50 mm) and SOM-CB (50 x 50 mm). List of signals associated to each connectors: X1 – SoM managements, 1x UART, 2x I2C, 1x […]

24-node RockPro64 Cluster

PINE64 Plans to Move their Website on a 24-node RockPro64 Cluster

Boards’ clusters are always fun to see, and PINE64 has shared pictures of two RockPro64 clusters with respectively 48 and 24 boards neatly packed into  partially custom enclosures. The  48-node cluster will feature a total of 288 cores, including 96 Arm Cortex-A72 cores and 188 Cortex-A53 cores, as well as 192GB of LPDDR4 RAM. Low cost development boards may be seen as toys by some, so it’s interesting to learn that PINE64 plans to move their complete website infrastructure including the main website, a community website, forums, wiki, and possibly IRC on the 24-node cluster, while it seems the 48-node cluster may be used for their build environment. The company has just completed the assembly of the clusters, and did not disclose the full technical details just yet. However, a progress report may be written in due time. Once the migration is done, and everything works as it should, it […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
Ubuntu 18.04 Gnome Wayland ODROID-N2

ODROID-N2 GPU Drivers, Linux 5.0, and Impressive glmarks-es2 Score

ODROID-N2 was announced last February for $63 (2GB RAM), and $79 (4GB RAM), but Hardkernel was not quite ready to take orders at the time. One of the good news is that the 4GB RAM is now available for pre-order with shipping scheduled to start on April 3. Another good news is on the software side with Hardkernel having released the userland Mali-G52 Wayland driver. It does not work well with Linux 4.9 due to incomplete DRM implementation, but it goes work with Linux 5.0 plus some modifications as further discussed in the aforelinked forum thread. The screenshot above, courtesy of odroid forum member memeka , shows ODROID-N2 running Ubuntu 18.04 + Gnome3 + Linux 5.0 on top of Wayland with GPU drivers providing acceleration as shown by glmark2-es2-wayland test program. The benchmark results are pretty impressive:

I’ve never seen such as high score (1,119 points) on Arm hardware. […]

Linux 5.0 Changelog

Linux 5.0 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 5.0: Ok, so the last week of the 5.0 release wasn’t entirely quiet, but it’s a lot smaller than rc8 was, and on the whole I’m happy that I delayed a week and did an rc8. It turns out that the actual patch that I talked about in the rc8 release wasn’t the worrisome bug I had thought: yes, we had an uninitialized variable, but the reason we hadn’t immediately noticed it due to a warning was that the way gcc works, the compiler had basically initialized it for us to the right value. So the same thing that caused not the lack of warning, also effectively meant that the fix was a no-op in practice. But hey, we had other bug fixes come in that actually did matter, and the uninitialized variable _could_ have been a problem with another compiler. Regardless – all […]

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