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Linux for Cortex M3 & M4 Microcontrollers

There are plenty of low cost Linux development boards based on Cortex A8 or A9 such as the Beaglebone, as well as some devkits based on ARM7 and ARM9 such as SAM9 development kits , but if your application is cost and/or energy sensitive you can also switch to micro-controllers using Cortex M3 or M4 based development boards such as Emcraft SmartFusion devkits. You can run a functional uCLinux system with 1MB of RAM and 1MB of flash including the TCP/IP stack. You need to use uClinux and not directly Linux, because the Cortex M3 doess not have a Memory Management Unit (MMU) and only a Memory Protection Unit (MPU). This can bring some interesting software development challenges such as (apparently random) kernel panics, the lack of fork, memory fragmentation and more. You can check out http://kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/uclibc/Glibc_vs_uClibc_Differences.txt for the main differences between uClibc and Glibc. The instructions to patch and […]

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Linaro 11.12 Release with Kernel 3.1.5

Linaro has just released version 11.12 based on Linux Kernel 3.1.5 and further support for Android 4.0 including graphics hardware acceleration on Snowball and Origen development boards. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro ICS is built with the Linaro toolchain. Linaro ICS is running on all supported boards. DS-5 with Gator is supported in all Linaro Andoid ICS builds. The latest version of libpng (1.5.7) has been integrated in Linaro ICS. An AOSP master build is now available from linaro. ARM® Mali™ Hardware Accelerated Graphics is supported on Origen and Snowball. libjpeg-turbo has been integrated into all Andoid ICS builds. Developer Platform The linux-linaro and lt-panda kernel packages are now automatically generated by the CI build scripts DS-5 with Gator is supported in all Ubuntu LEB builds. XBMC packages, with Gstreamer and OpenGLES support, are now available at the Ubuntu Overlay (supporting only Panda initially) U-Boot-Linaro is […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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Archos 70b Internet Tablet: 199 USD Android 3.2 Tablet

Archos announced the 199 USD Archos 70b Internet Tablet (Archos 70b IT) , a 7″ Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) based on a 1.2GHz processor (probably OMAP3630) with 512 MB RAM, and offers a 1024 x 600 capacitive touchscreen, 8GB of storage, HDMI output, and support for Google apps and Android Marketplace. Archos product naming is rather confusing, as they also have an Archos 70b running Android 2.1. So if you go shopping for the new device, make sure it reads Archos 70b Internet Tablet and not just Archos 70b. The Archos 70b IT is an enhanced version of the Archos 70 G8(Generation 8). The CPU (OMAP3630 Cortex-A8 processor) clock rate has been boosted from 1GHz to 1.2GHz, RAM has doubled to 512MB, the resolution resolution has increased to 1024×600 (was 800×480) and the price has dropped to 199 USD from 275 USD.  Other features remain the same, as the tablet features […]

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Nvidia Announces CARMA Tegra 3 CUDA Development Kit

Nvidia has just unveiled its Tegra 3 development kit, the Nvidia CARMA. The development kit codename has been crowdsourced as Nvidia asked its followers to propose a name and vote for the best name. This development kit particularly targets CUDA, Nvidia parallel computing platform and programming model that enables dramatic increases in computing performance by harnessing the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU). The CARMA hardware has been designed by Seco and features an NVIDIA Tegra 3 ARM Cortex A9 Quad-Core CPU and NVIDIA CUDA GPU QuatroTM. Here are the technical specs for the development kit: CPU NVIDIA Tegra 3 Quad-Core ARM A9 GPU NVIDIA QuadroTM 1000M with 96 CUDA Cores Memory • CPU Memory: 2 GB • GPU Memory: 2 GB Peak Performance 270 Single Precision GFlops CPU – GPU Interface PCIe x4 Gen1 link Network 1x Gigabit Ethernet Storage 1x SATA Connector USB 3x USB 2.0 Display […]

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Copy/Paste Text between Windows XP Host and Ubuntu Guest in VirtualBox

I’ve recently upgraded the amount of memory and graphics card in my computer to order to be able to smoothly run virtual machines and support 2 monitors. So instead of using dual boot for Windows XP and Ubuntu, I’m now running Ubuntu in VirtualBox. One thing, I wanted to do is to copy text from the right screen (e.g. Instructions in Web Browser in Windows XP) to the left screen where I have Ubuntu 11.10 running in VirtualBox. This does not work right out of the (virtual)box however. The procedure to enable “Shared Clipboard” is straightforward. First, you need to install the guest additions. While Ubuntu is running, click on “Devices->Install Guest Additions” in VirtualBox top menu, this will start the installation in Ubuntu, simply enter you root password until the installation completes. Restart Ubuntu and you should now be able to copy/paste text between the host and guest machines. […]

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15 USD ARM Cortex A8 Linux Computer by Rhombus Tech

Many of you already probably know the Raspberry Pi Foundation 25 USD ARM Linux Computer. Rhombus Tech, another non-profit organization, is planning to design a 15 USD ARM Linux computer (excluding casing, power supply, shipping, VAT and custom duties) that the company claims would be at least 3 times faster that the Raspberry Pi. This computer would be an EOMA-PCMCIA CPU card powered by an Allwinner A10 ARM Cortex A8 CPU clocked at 1.5ghz. Here are the (expected) specifications of this board: Approximately Credit-card size format (56mm x 90mm) An Allwinner A10, 1.5ghz ARM Cortex A8 1GB of RAM At least 1gb of NAND Flash (possibly up to 16gb) Operation as a stand-alone computer (USB-OTG powered) 2160p (double 1080p) Video playback MALI 400MP 3D Graphics, OpenGL ES 2.0 compliant. HDMI, Micro-SD, Headphones Socket, EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant interfaces (RGB/TTL, I2C, USB2, SATA-II, 10/100 Eth) Expansion Header (similar to Beagleboard, IMX53QSB, Origen etc.) With this […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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Qt Labs Releases Qt 4.8.0

Qt Labs has just announced the release of Qt 4.8.0 featuring Qt Platform Abstraction, threaded OpenGL support, multithreaded HTTP and optimized file system access. Here are some of the new key features  in Qt 4.8.0: Qt Platform Abstraction (QPA) QPA restructures the GUI stack to enable easier porting of Qt to different windowing systems and devices. Previously called Lighthouse. Threaded OpenGL supportEnables developers to render OpenGL from more than one thread concurrently. See Threaded OpenGL in 4.8 for more details. Multithreaded HTTP HTTP requests are now handled in a separate thread by default. This should make application guis smoother, as networking will no longer use the main event loop. Optimized file system access The file system stack received some heavy lifting under the hood. The result is better I/O performance, achieved by reducing the number of system calls performed for I/O and by better use of cached data, when available. […]

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Android 4.0 Hardware Graphics Acceleration Coming to More Platforms

The Linaro Android Platform Team has just posted a weekly update to their progress. They are going to release 11.12 very soon with hardware graphics acceleration to 2 of their members development boards: ST Ericsson Nova A9500 Snowball and Samsung Exynos 4212 Origen boards. So if you have any boards or products based on those processors you should be able to get an hardware optimized version very soon. Hardware acceleration is already available on all OMAP4 platform such as Pandaboard, since this was the default Android ICS target. They also introduced support for the ARM DS-5 debugger, an Eclipse plug-in to help developer create high performance performance  and low power native software by integrating a graphical debugger for code generated for the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) and a basic version of the ARM Streamline performance analysis tool. Here’s a list of this week achievements: Key Points for wider discussion […]

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