NXP launches MCX A14x and MCX A15x Arm Cortex-M33 MCUs along with FRDM-MCXA153 development board

FRDM-MCXA153 MCX development board

NXP has just announced the launch of the MCX A series Arm Cortex-M33 microcontrollers with the MCX A14x running up to 48 MHz and the MCX A15x running up to 96 MHz. The devices support up to 128KB flash and 32KB SRAM, offer I2C, I3C, and SPI sensor interfaces, and integrate support for BLDC/PMSM motor control. NXP first unveiled the NXP MCX general-purpose Arm MCU family with 30 times faster machine learning at Embedded World 2022, but at the time we had limited information although four series were planned with the MCX N Advanced series up to 250 MHz, the MCX A essential series up to 96 MHz, the MCX W Wireless series with Bluetooth LE, and the MCX L Low-power series. The MCX A series has just been launched, and the high-end MCX N also has its own product page with the N94x and N54x variants. We’ll focus on […]

Vivante NPU (found in Amlogic A311D) gets its open-source driver upstreamed to Mesa

Vivante NPU open source

The Teflon project is an open-source TensorFlow Lite delegate that currently supports VeriSilicon Vivante NPU and aims to support several other AI accelerators over time. The project has recently been upstreamed to Mesa meaning AI inference with open-source software will work out of the box in supported hardware once Mesa 24.1 is released in May 2024. Teflon relies on the Etnaviv open-source driver better known for working with Vivante GPUs found, for instance, in NXP i.MX processors, but Tomeu Vizoso also worked on implementing Vivante NPU support since May 2022 thanks to a sponsorship from Libre Computer and documented the development progress on this blog. The VeriSilicon Vivante “VIPNano-QI.7120” 5 TOPS NPU is found in the Amlogic A311D processor, and Tomeu tested Teflon with the Etnaviv NPU drive on both the Libre Computer AML-A311D-CC Alta and Khadas VIM3 single board computers with decent performance although still slower than with the […]

Debian 12 and Linux upstreaming for the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC

Debian Snapdragon Elite X SoC

When Qualcomm launched the powerful 4.2 GHz Snapdragon X Elite 12-core Arm SoC for “mobile PCs” (better known as laptops), I was surprised they showed benchmarks for both Windows and Linux as in the past, the company focused on Windows only for this type of processor. But at the time we were only shown Geekbench 6.2 results in Linux, so it was not clear what was supported at the time. But a recent post by Abel Vesa, Linaro engineer, explains a fully working Debian 12 image with GPU rendering and WiFi connectivity was ready right before launch and work is now being done to upstream the code to Linux mainline. In this post, he shares the Linux upstreaming plan and provides instructions to install Debian 12 on an official Snapdragon X Elite reference design. Upstreaming will be done in two parts, starting with support for the following: Qualcomm Oryon CPUs Clocks, […]

iW-RainboW-G58M is a compact module based on the Intel Agilex 5 SoC FPGA series

iW-RainboW-G58M Agilex 5 Dev Kit Top View

iWave Systems, an embedded systems solutions company based in India, has announced the launch of the iW-RainboW-G58M system-on-module (SoM). The module is based on Intel’s Agilex 5 SoC FPGA E-series family, a lineup of affordable, midrange FPGAs for intelligent edge and embedded applications. The Agilex 5 E-series is optimized to deliver better performance-per-watt than its predecessors at a smaller form factor. They feature an asymmetric applications processor system comprising two Arm Cortex-A76 cores and two Cortex-A55 cores for optimized performance and power efficiency. The Arm cores in the Agilex 5 SoC FGPA family are more powerful than the Cortex-A53 cores in the Intel Agilex 7 and 9 products, but those have faster high-speed interfaces and more logic elements. The Agilex 5 SoM is suitable for development in fields like wireless communications, video/broadcast, and industrial test and measurement sectors. The last iWave module we covered, the iW-RainboW-G55M, was based on a […]

Linux 6.7 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.7 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.7, following Linux 6.6 LTS a little over two months ago: So we had a little bit more going on last week compared to the holiday week before that, but certainly not enough to make me think we’d want to delay this any further. End result: 6.7 is (in number of commits: over 17k non-merge commits, with 1k+ merges) one of the largest kernel releases we’ve ever had, but the extra rc8 week was purely due to timing with the holidays, not about any difficulties with the larger release. The main changes this last week were a few DRM updates (mainly fixes for new hw enablement in this version – both amd and nouveau), some more bcachefs fixes (and bcachefs is obviously new to 6.7 and one of the reasons for the large number of commits), and then a few random […]

2023 Year in review – Top 10 posts, statistics, and what to expect in 2024

CNX Software Happy New Year 2024

It’s the last day and last article of the year, so we will look at some highlights of 2023, some traffic statistics on the CNX Software website, and speculate what interesting developments may happen in 2024. Looking back at 2023 The semiconductor shortage that had happened since 2020 started to fade away in early 2023, and supplies for most electronics components and devices seem to be adequate at this time, so that was a bright spot this year, and hopefully, it will stay that way in 2024 despite geopolitical tensions. We did not have any super exciting new Arm application processors from Rockchip, Amlogic, or Allwinner announced this year, although the Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 CPU started to show up in some 8K TV boxes. The launch of the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC with a Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor was probably the main highlight for Arm on this side […]

This New X-Fly drone mimics a bird’s flight (Crowdfunding)

x fly the drone designed to soar like a bird

Aeronautical engineer Edwin Van Ruymbeke has introduced X-Fly, a drone that emulates the flight pattern of a bird. The drone communicates via Bluetooth using the STM32WB15CC microcontroller, has a range of 100 meters, and can fly for 8-12 minutes with a swappable battery system. The company mentions that they have collaborated with the French military to develop the flapping wings mechanism, which incorporates gyroscopes and g-sensors, ensuring a stable flight. The drone can be controlled with a smartphone app or an attachable optical joystick and It’s also durable against crashes, has a quick-swap battery system, and improved wing mechanics for longer flights. We’ve previously covered drones such as the Qualcomm Flight RB5-based drone Kudrone Nano Drone and some drone kits like Qualcomm Flight Pro. Feel free to explore these if you’re interested. Key Features and Specification of X-Fly Drone: Control Board – The PCB features an STM32WB15CC Bluetooth microcontroller, motor […]

Raspberry Breadstick – A RP2040-based development board in a quirky form factor

Raspberry Breadstick on a breadboard

The Raspberry Breadstick is a breadstick-shaped development board that is designed for ease of use. Unlike other development boards, the Breadstick is built to fit directly on your breadboard and interface with the other electronic components in your project without the need for lengthy jumper wires. It serves to deliver a prototype that is neat, straightforward, and easy to troubleshoot. It is based on Raspberry Pi’s debut microcontroller, the RP2040, which is the same MCU chip that powers the Raspberry Pi Pico and several other boards. We recently covered the Waveshare RP2040-PiZero that comes in the Pi Zero’s form factor. The RP2040 is cheap and supports C/C++, MicroPython, and CircuitPython. The Breadstick has other interesting features such as a lineup of 24 addressable RGB LEDs with fast refresh rates, a 6-axis inertial measurement unit for collecting acceleration and rotation data, as well as 16MB of external flash storage for your […]