Linux 6.8 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.8 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.8 on the Linux kernel mailing list: So it took a bit longer for the commit counts to come down this release than I tend to prefer, but a lot of that seemed to be about various selftest updates (networking in particular) rather than any actual real sign of problems. And the last two weeks have been pretty quiet, so I feel there’s no real reason to delay 6.8. We always have some straggling work, and we’ll end up having some of it pushed to stable rather than hold up the new code. Nothing worrisome enough to keep the regular release schedule from happening. As usual, the shortlog below is just for the last week since rc7, the overall changes in 6.8 are obviously much much bigger. This is not the historically big release that 6.7 was – we seem to […]

LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max – Rockchip RV1106 powered boards with 10/100M Ethernet and camera support

LuckFox Pico Pro and Pro Max Rockchip RV1106 Powred Dev Board

The LuckFox LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max are two new Rockchip RV1106-powered development boards that offer a Linux-based development platform for IoT applications. The boards feature 10/100M Ethernet, up to 256MB DDR2 memory, and a 0.5TOPS NPU for AI tasks. With support for Buildroot and Ubuntu 22.04, this board can be used for smart homes, remote monitoring, and other AI-enhanced projects. Last year, we covered the LuckFox Core3566, a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 alternative, and the LuckFox Pico with its RV1103 SoC which has a similar form factor and similar features to these new modules. But the new modules are built around the RV1106 SoC which features an Arm Cortex-A7 processor (up to 1.2GHz),  a RISC-V co-processor, a 0.5 TOPS NPU for AI tasks, and a 4M @ 30fps ISP for high-quality image processing. LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max Specifications SoC – Rockchip RV1106G2 CPU – Arm Cortex […]

EmbedFire LubanCat 4 card computer – A Rockchip RK3588S dev board with a mini PCIe socket for WiFi or 4G LTE

youyeetoo Lubancat 4 RK3588S Based Raspberry Pi Size SBC

Launched by Yehuo Electronic EmbedFire LubanCat 4 card computer or LubanCat 4 in short, is a Rockchip RK3588S SBC that packs quite a lot of features in an 85x56mm form factor with Ethernet, USB, mini PCIe, HDMI 2.1, SIM & microSD card holder, and more. The board comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC flash. It comes with a Gigabit Ethernet port, five USB ports (including one USB-C), a built-in microphone, multiple audio inputs and outputs, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible expansion header, and supports HDMI input through an adapter connected to a MIPI CSI port. EmbedFire LubanCat 4 card computer specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S CPU – Octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.2-2.4 GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 1.8 GHz GPU –  Arm Mali-G610 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2,  OpenCL 2.2, and Vulkan 1.2 support VPU – 8Kp60 video decoder […]

JellyFin adds support for Rockchip RK3588 MPP hardware acceleration

Jellyfin RK3588

Jellyfin open-source media server has recently added support for Rockchip RK3588 MPP hardware acceleration, which means the software supports video hardware decoding and encoding, hardware scalers, and other features. The GitHub request lists the following changes: Add full HWA transcoding pipeline for Rockchip RKMPP HW decoder (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, H264, HEVC, VP8, VP9, AV1) HW encoder (H264, HEVC) up to 1080p @ 480fps / 4k @ 120fps on RK3588 HW scaler, format conversion, and subtitle burn-in HW HDR-to-SDR tone-mapping (requires OpenCL, RK3588 only) The OpenCL runtime can be downloaded and installed from libmali-valhall-g610-g13p0-x11-wayland-gbm_1.9-1_arm64.deb Support lossless AFBC (Arm frame buffer compression) to save memory bandwidth and improve FPS Support async RGA filter and MPP encoder If indeed decoding and encoding can be performed simultaneously, that would mean video transcoding can be offloaded to the Rockchip RK3588’s VPU. The changes has been tested with Linux 5.10 and Linux 6.1, but do not […]

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 […]

Rockchip roadmap reveals RK3576 and RK3506 IoT processors, Linux 6.1 SDK

Rockchip Roadmap 2024

The Rockchip RK3588 processor may remain the most powerful processor from the company for a while as an updated Rockchip IoT processor roadmap reveals the new RK3576 octa-core SoC and RK3506 tri-core Cortex-A7 chip, as well as a Linux 6.1 SDK to be released in Q4 2023. With the limited information we have, the Rockchip RK3576 looks to be a cost-down version of the RK3588 processor with eight cores, a 6 TOPS NPU, a 4K video codec, as well as PCIe and USB-C interfaces. Strangely the Rockchip RK3582 that should serve a similar purpose is not showing up in the roadmap. [Update: The RK3576 is indeed a lower-cost SoC but features four Cortex-A72 and four Cortex-A53 cores instead as per the comparison table reproduced below: That also means we now have the RK3576 specifications (some obtained from another document too): CPU Octa-core Arm processor with 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2 […]

Linux 6.5 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.5 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.5 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): So nothing particularly odd or scary happened this last week, so there is no excuse to delay the 6.5 release. I still have this nagging feeling that a lot of people are on vacation and that things have been quiet partly due to that. But this release has been going smoothly, so that’s probably just me being paranoid. The biggest patches this last week were literally just to our selftests. The shortlog below is obviously not the 6.5 release log, it’s purely just the last week since rc7. Anyway, this obviously means that the merge window for 6.6 starts tomorrow. I already have ~20 pull requests pending and ready to go, but before we start the next merge frenzy, please give this final release one last round of testing, ok? Linus The earlier […]

8K 50MP camera module targets NVIDIA Jetson, Raspberry Pi, and RK3588 boards (Crowdfunding)

50MP camera Raspberry Pi 4

RBTS.co’s C50M camera module is equipped with the same 8K 50MP Samsung ISOCELL GN2 image sensor found in the upcoming Google Pixel 8 Pro smartphone but targets the maker market with support for NVIDIA Jetson, Raspberry Pi, and Rockchip RK3588 boards. With high-resolution and quick focusing ability, this camera sensor is designed for drones, machine vision, and industrial automation applications such as automated optical inspection and preventive maintenance, and the large 1.4μm pixels of the Samsung ISOCELL GN2 sensor are said to make the camera work well in low-light conditions. C50M camera module specifications: Effective Resolution – 8,160 x 6,144 (50MP) Pixel Size – 1.4μm (2.8μm with 12.5MP binning) Optical Format – 1/1.12″ sensor Color Filter – Dual Tetrapixel RGB Bayer Pattern Frame Rate – 30fps @ 50MP, 120fps @ 4K and 480fps @ FHD ADC Accuracy – 10-bits Chroma – Tetra Auto Focus – Dual Pixel Pro (PDAF); range: […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case