arm

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on PragmatIC Manufactures Ultra Thin and Flexible Plastic Electronics Circuit, Plastic ARM Cortex M0 MCU Coming Soon

PragmatIC Manufactures Ultra Thin and Flexible Plastic Electronics Circuit, Plastic ARM Cortex M0 MCU Coming Soon

Electronics manufacturing now relies on silicon wafers, and it works great for many applications. However, some other applications require or benefit from a cheaper price, thinner circuits, and flexibility, and PragmatIC addresses all those three issues with technology to print electronics circuits on plastic sheets. The technology is said to costs less than 1/10th cost of silicon, with the circuit printed on 10 μm thick flexible plastic “wagers” with support for 10 layers. Circuit starts from basic gates up to ARM Cortex M0/M0+ chip as shown above. Simpler circuits are currently sold for as low as $0.01, but the area for Cortex M0 MCU is 1cm2, and a bit too big for commercial applications, so they plan on shrinking the process to make it commercial viable. ARM is an investor in the company, and PragmatIC is ramping production capacity with the ability to manufacture on billion plastic chips/circuits in 2018. […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on Realtek RTL8710BN ARM Cortex M4 WiFi MCU, MJIOT-AMB-03 Module & Board, and Ameba 4.0a SDK

Realtek RTL8710BN ARM Cortex M4 WiFi MCU, MJIOT-AMB-03 Module & Board, and Ameba 4.0a SDK

We’ve already covered Realtek Ameba ARM Cortex M3 WiSoC several times with their RTL8710AF, RTL8711AM and RT8195AM solutions, but the company has now a new “Ameba Z series” relying on an ARM Cortex M4 core starting with RTL8711BN MCU. RTL8710BN specifications as listed on Realtek website: CPU – ARM Cortex-M4(F) up to 125MHz with FPU (TBC) Memory – 256KB embedded SRAM Storage – 512KB embedded ROM, external flash interface; XIP (eXecut In Place) support Wi-Fi 2.4GHz 1T1R 802.11b/g/n up to 150Mbps; 20MHz and 40MHz WEP, WPA, WPA2, WPS support Security engine – MD5, SHA-1, SHA2-256, DES, 3DES, AES Peripheral Interfaces SDIO Slave 2x UART SPI interface (Master/Slave) 2x I2C interface ADC for voltage management 5x PWM Up to 17x GPIOs Package – QFN-32; 5 x 5 mm AFAIK, other Ameba MCUs do not support XIP, but RTL8710BN and this lowers memory requirements since code can be executed from storage. MJIOT-AMB-03 module […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments on Meet Zynqberry, a Xilinx Zynq FPGA Board with Raspberry Pi 2/3 Form Factor

Meet Zynqberry, a Xilinx Zynq FPGA Board with Raspberry Pi 2/3 Form Factor

Earlier this year, I wrote about Trenz Electronic’s Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ system-on-module, but I’ve just found out I missed another interesting product from the company. The ZynqBerry is a board powered by Zilinx Zync Z-7007S or Z-7010 ARM + FPGA SoC with Raspberry Pi 2/3 form factor. ZynqBerry specifications: SoC Xilinx Zynq XC7Z007S-1CLG225C (Z-7007S) single core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore up to 766MHz + FPGA with 23K logic cells Xilinx Zynq XC7Z010-1CLG225C (Z-7010) dual core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore up to 866 MHz + FPGA with 28K logic cells System Memory – 128 or 512 MB DDR3L Storage – 16 MB Flash SPI flash + micro SD card slot Video Output – HDMI, MIPI DSI interface Audio Output – HDMI, 3.5mm audio jack (PWM audio only) Connectivity – 100 MBit Ethernet via (LAN9514 USB Hub with Ethernet USB – 4x USB 2.0 host ports Camera – MIPI CSI-2 interface Expansion – 40-pin Raspberry […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on Christmann RECS|Box Atlas Quad Apalis Microserver Evaluation Kit Supports Four Toradex Apalis SoM

Christmann RECS|Box Atlas Quad Apalis Microserver Evaluation Kit Supports Four Toradex Apalis SoM

System-on-modules are normally used in low volume embedded systems, but they can also be used in microservers, for example to upgrade capacity as needed. Christmann informationstechnik + medien GmbH has developed a microserver evaluation kit taking up to 4 Toradex Apalis SoMs for example based on Nvidia Tegra K1 processor, and also offers full rack systems with up to 72 modules. Christmann RECS|Box Atlas Quad Apalis specifications: Modules – 4x Slots for Apalis SoM Connectivity – 1 GBit/s Compute Ethernet, 1 GBit/s Management Ethernet Video Output – 1x HDMI USB – 3x USB host ports, 1x micro USB port Misc – 5 Status LEDs for USB, communication, and serial console, 4x fan connectors, KWM switch, 5x temperature sensors, 6x current sensors, 1x voltage monitor, fan speed monitoring Power Supply – 12V via a 4-pin jack Dimensions – 300 x 145 x 68 mm The evaluation kit includes an Atlas board […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on Linux 4.11 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architecture

Linux 4.11 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architecture

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.11: So after that extra week with an rc8, things were pretty calm, and I’m much happier releasing a final 4.11 now. We still had various smaller fixes the last week, but nothing that made me go “hmm..”. Shortlog appended for people who want to peruse the details, but it’s a mix all over, with about half being drivers (networking dominates, but some sound fixlets too), with the rest being some arch updates, generic networking, and filesystem (nfs[d]) fixes. But it’s all really small, which is what I like to see the last week of the release cycle. And with this, the merge window is obviously open. I already have two pull request for 4.12 in my inbox, I expect that overnight I’ll get a lot more. Linux 4.10 added Virtual GPU support, perf c2c’ tool, improved writeback management, a faster initial WiFi connection […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on $14 LinkIt 7697 Bluetooth 4.2 LE and WiFi IoT Board is Powered by Mediatek MT7697 ARM Cortex-M4 MCU

$14 LinkIt 7697 Bluetooth 4.2 LE and WiFi IoT Board is Powered by Mediatek MT7697 ARM Cortex-M4 MCU

Mediatek Labs has launched a new IoT development, which on the surface looks similar to LinkIt Smart 7688 board, but the internal design is quite different as the MIPS processor and Linux OS, have been replaced by Mediatek MT7697 ARM Cortex-M4 processor running FreeRTOS, and beside WiFi, also includes support for Bluetooth 4.2 LE. LinkIt 7697 board specifications: Wireless SoC – Mediatek MT7697 ARM Cortex M4F MCU @ 192 MHz with 352KB RAM, 4MB flash, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2 LE and a PMU Expansion – 2x 14-pin header with 18x GPIO, 2x UART, 1x I2C, 1x SPI, 18x PWM, 4x EINT, 4x ADC (0 to 2.5V), 1x IrDA, 1x I2S Debugging – 1x SWD, CP2102 UART to USB chipset Misc – Reset and user buttons; power and user LEDs Power Supply – 5V via micro USB port Dimensions – 48 x 26 mm The board can be programmed with […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on ARM Introduces Mali-C71 ISP (Image Signal Processor) for Automotive Applications

ARM Introduces Mali-C71 ISP (Image Signal Processor) for Automotive Applications

A camera in an embedded system is normally connected to an ISP (image signal processing) block inside an SoC to handle the data coming from the sensor, and with recent cars now requiring more and more cameras for car DVRs, car parking systems, and self-driving vehicles, ARM has now unveiled Mali-C71 ISP specifically designed for automotive applications with support for 4 real-time cameras and 16 camera streams with a single pipeline. ARM explains that you can’t simply use smartphone cameras in automobile, as automotive requirements in terms of clarity and reliability are much more stringent. For example, Mali-C71 supports UWDR (Ultra-wide dynamic range) up to 24 stops, against 15 stops for the best DSLR cameras, which removes noise and process multiple exposures from the camera, and allows the processor/computer vision engine to detect objects such as a pedestrian, while others systems may not detect it. The image is also much […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments on Flint OS is a Chromium OS Build for Raspberry Pi & Firefly-RK3288 Boards

Flint OS is a Chromium OS Build for Raspberry Pi & Firefly-RK3288 Boards

Chromium OS for SBC aimed to bring Chromium operating systems to low cost development boards such as the Raspberry Pi 3 board, but the website is now down, and the developer announced he had stopped working on it several months ago due the hardware limitations of the Raspberry Pi 3 board. But others decided it was still worth the effort, and created Flint Innovation company (based in UK/China) to develop Flint OS, a build of Chromium OS with optimizations for Raspberry Pi 3 and Firefly-RK3288 boards with more boards likely coming soon. The developers also provide an x86 image, but after asking more details, it turns out they only changed the boot splash screen for now on the x86 image, with most of the early work done on Raspberry Pi board: At this moment our public Flint OS releases are still pretty much vanilla Chromium OS (we changed the boot […]