8k News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

February 21, 2026February 21, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 review – Part 2: An AMD Ryzen 5 6600H-powered, mid-range laptop tested with Windows 11 Pro

CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop review Windows 11

I’ve already checked out the hardware of the CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop in the first part of the review, so today, I’ll report my experience using the AMD Ryzen 5 6600H laptop with the pre-installed Windows 11 Pro operating system. We’ll start with a software overview and a test of key features, followed by benchmarking, evaluation of WiFi 6 performance, and measurement of fan noise, power consumption, and battery life. Software Overview and Features Testing The CoreBook Air Plus 16 ships with Windows 11 Pro 64-bit 24H2 operating system, upgraded to the 25H2 version after running Windows updates. The System->About window confirms we have a CoreBook Air Plus laptop powered by a 3.3 GHz (base frequency) AMD Ryzen 5 6600H processor with Radeon graphics paired with 16GB of RAM and 447GB of storage. None of the mini PCs and laptops we’ve reviewed in the past come with Microsoft […]

February 19, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ASRock Industrial NUC(S) Ultra 300 BOX Series is powered by Intel Core Ultra 5 325 or Ultra 7 358H “Panther Lake” SoC

ASROCK NUC Ultra 300 BOX Series NUC BOX 325

ASRock Industrial NUC(S) Ultra 300 BOX Series are powered by the Intel Core Ultra Series 3 “Panther Lake” SoC family, delivering up to 180 TOPS of AI performance. The NUC Ultra 300 BOX Series (117.5 x 110.0 x 49mm) integrates two 2.5GbE RJ45 jacks and three USB 3.0 ports, while the slimmer NUCS Ultra 300 BOX Series (117.5 x 110.0 x 38mm) comes with one 2.5GbE RJ45 jack and four USB 3.0 ports. They support DDR5 7200 MHz memory and M.2 NVMe (PCIe Gen5/Gen4) SSD storage, and offer four display interfaces up to 8K resolutions, WiFi 7 wireless connectivity, and more. The industrial mini PCs were first unveiled at CES 2026, but the press release lacked details, and I was unable to find extra information at the time. We now have more details with four SKUs available: the Intel Core Ultra 5 325-based NUC BOX-325 and NUCS BOX-325, and the […]

February 4, 2026February 4, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

AMD Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2 mid-range FPGA family to be available until at least 2045

AMD Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2 is a mid-range FPGA family designed for the broadcast, test, industrial, and medical markets, which provides an update to the Spartan UltraScale+ FPGA family introduced in 2024, and promises availability until at least 2045. Key features include high-speed transceivers and PCIe Gen4 for support of 4K AV-over-IP, multi-stream capture, and frame-accurate transport, increased memory bandwidth for semiconductor test and inspection systems, and advanced imaging and real-time control for machine vision, industrial automation, medical imaging, and robotic systems. AMD Kintec UltraScale+ Gen2 key features AMD says the Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2 devices deliver up to 5x increase in memory bandwidth when comparing the AMD Kintex UltraScale+ Gen 2 XC2KU040P and XC2KU050P FPGAs to the previous generation Kintex UltraScale+ FPGA, and up to 2x higher channel density per PCIe interface compared to the Altera Agilex A5EC065A FPGA. The company further states that compared to “competing platforms”, the family delivers […]

January 29, 2026January 29, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

UP Xtreme PTL Edge – Intel Core Ultra X5 338H/X7 358H Panther Lake AI mini PC features 40-pin GPIO header, RS232/RS485 COM ports

AAEON UP Xtreme PTL Edge is an upcoming Panther Lake AI Mini PC powered by either an Intel Core Ultra 5 338H or Core Ultra X7 358H with up to 180 TOPS of AI performance, and offering industrial features such as a 40-pin GPIO header, two RS-232/422/485 COM ports, and a wide 19 to 36V DC input range. Other highlights include support for up to 128GB DDR5 SO-DIMM memory, up to four 8K displays through two HDMI 2.1 ports and two DisplayPort 2.1 video outputs, two USB4 Type-C ports, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, dual 2.5GbE, optional WiFi and Bluetooth, and more. UP Xtreme PTL Edge specifications: Intel Core Ultra Series 3 Panther Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Core Ultra X7 Processor 358H CPU – 16-core (4P + 8E + 4LPE) @ 1.9/1.5/1.5 GHz Base frequency, 4.8/3.5/3.5 GHz Turbo frequency Cache – 18 MB Intel Smart Cache GPU […]

January 7, 2026January 8, 2026 by Debashis Das - No Comments

Quectel SP895BD-AP AIoT module features Qualcomm Dragonwing Q-8750 SoC with 80 TOPS NPU

Just yesterday, we wrote about the Qualcomm Dragonwing Q‑7790 and Q‑8750 AIoT SoCs, and on the same day, Quectel launched the SP895BD-AP smart AIoT module based on the Dragonwing Q-8750. It is designed for high-performance IoT applications, including video conferencing, 8K computing power boards, and smart retail terminals, running on Android 15 or Linux. Earlier in November, we saw Qualcomm introduce the Dragonwing IQ-X series of SoCs for industrial PCs running Windows. The Q-8750 in the Quectel SP895BD-AP seems to be a variant of the high-end version, with an 8-core Oryon CPU (up to 2x 4.32 GHz + 6x 3.53 GHz) and an Adreno Series 8 GPU. It supports 8K video encoding and decoding with three ISPs for up to 3×48MP camera inputs, or a single camera input of 108MP. The module comes in a compact LGA package and supports standard interfaces like MIPI DSI/CSI, PCIe, USB, I2S, UART, I²C, […]

January 6, 2026January 6, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Qualcomm Dragonwing Q‑7790 and Q‑8750 AIoT SoCs target AI-enhanced drones, cameras, TVs and media hubs

Qualcomm has made a range of announcements at CES 2026, and notably introduced the Dragonwing Q‑7790 and Q‑8750 processors supporting on‑device AI for drones, smart cameras & industrial vision, AI TVs/media hubs, and video collaboration systems. The mid-range Dragonwing Q-7790 targets both consumer and industrial IoT devices, and offers up to 24 TOPS of on-device AI, 4K video outputs and camera inputs, and AV1 hardware video decode. The higher-end Dragonwing Q-8750 is designed for more advanced IoT applications, delivers up to 77 TOPS (dense) for real-time inference and up to 11B LLMs, handles 8K displays and 8K cameras, and supports up to 12 physical cameras for drones, media hubs, and multi-angle vision systems. Dragonwing Q-7790 Dragonwing Q-7790 (CQ7790M/CQ7790S) specifications: CPU – Octa-core Kryo processor up to 2.8 GHz 1x Gold+ core @ 2.8 GHz 4x Gold cores @ 2.4 GHz 3x Silver cores @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Qualcomm Adreno […]

December 5, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Rikomagic DS08 – A Rockchip RK3588-powered 8K digital signage player with RTC and watchdog support

Rikomagic DS08 is a Rockchip RK3588-powered Android 13 digital signage player with 8K and 4K HDMI video outputs, RTC and watchdog support, and support for portrait and landscape orientation. It looks to be an update to the Rockchip RK3288-powered Rikikomagic DS02 introduced in 2020. The new model appears to have the same enclosure, but with a slightly different port layout, and much better specifications. Besides an octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 SoC, the system ships with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB eMMC flash, and features a Gigabit Ethernet port, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity, optional 4G LTE, and a few USB ports. Rikomagic DS08 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588 CPU – Octa-core 64-bit Armv8 SoC with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ 2.4GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G610 MP4 with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.2, Vulkan 1.1 NPU – Up to 6 TOPS, supports INT4/INT8/INT16, compatible […]

September 7, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Beelink EQi13 Pro Review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.04 on an Intel Core i5-13500H mini PC

Beelink EQi13 Pro mini PC review Ubuntu 24.04

We’ve already checked out the hardware of the Beelink EQi13 Pro in the first part of the review, and followed up with a detailed review of the Intel Core i5-13500H mini PC running Windows 11 Pro. We’ve now taken the time to test the Beelink EQi13 Pro with Ubuntu 24.04 to find out how well (or not) it performs on Linux. We will specifically report our experience testing features, running benchmarks, checking out the SSD and USB ports, evaluating Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 6 networking performance, and finally stress testing the mini PC, before measuring the fan noise and power consumption of the mini PC under Linux. Ubuntu 24.04 installation Since the plan is to install Ubuntu 24.04 LTS alongside Windows 11 in a dual-boot configuration, we shrank the Windows 11 partition to about half its size before inserting a USB drive prepared with the Ubuntu 24.04 ISO to start […]