April 2014 - Page 9 of 9 - CNX Software

April 1, 2014April 1, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

$99 MinnowBoard MAX Development Board Powered by Intel Bay Trail-I SoC

When Intel released the original MinnowBoard which was a step in the right direction, but there were some complains, as the company had chosen to use an older Intel processor, and the price was much higher than most high performance low cost ARM development boards. MinnowBoard MAX (aka Minnow2 Board) fixes all that, as it features the latest Intel Bay Trail-I (E3800 series) processor, and costs as low as $99 for the single core version, and $129 for the dual core version. Let’s jump directly to the specifications: SoC – 64-bit Intel Atom E3815 (single-core, 1.46 GHz) or Atom E3825 (dual-core, 1.33 GHz) both with integrated Intel HD Graphics coming with Open Source hardware-accelerated drivers for Linux OS System Memory – 1GB ($99 model) or 2GB ($129 model) DDR3 RAM Storage – 1x Micro SD card slot, 1x SATA2 3Gb/sec, 8 MB SPI Flash for firmware (UEFI) Video Output – micro […]

April 1, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linux Kernel 3.14 Release

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.14 yesterday: So we had a few fairly late changes that I could have done without, but the changelog from -rc8 is still pretty small, and I’m feeling pretty good about it all. If we did end up with any last-minute problems due to the final spurt of patches, they’ll be pretty specific, and it really didn’t make sense to me to delay the release without anything known pending. Much of the final spurt were either marked for stable or known regressions. So 3.14 is out there, and the merge window for 3.15 is thus open. Please do spend the time to test out 3.14, though, even if you might otherwise be in a hurry to send me your pending queue for the next release. Linus Kernel 3.13 brought a scalable block layer for high-performance SSDs, nftables, NFC payment support, squashfs performance […]

April 1, 2014April 1, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Official Android 4.4 Firmware for RK3188T HDMI TV Sticks Released

At the very end of last year, a beta Android 4.4.2 firmware for Rockchip RK3188 mini PCs was released, and yesterday, GeekBuying announced an official Android 4.4.2 firmware for Rockchip RK3188T (notice the T) mini PCs with AP6210 Wi-Fi modules,with bug fixes from the beta version. This should work with device such as MK908II and MK809III. There are at least two caveats however. First, I understand it will only work on RK3188T, not RK3188, and hopefully an official RK3188 mini PC firmware will be released soon, but since manufacturers may have changed from RK3188 to RK3188T for the same model during manufacturing, you have to make sure which version you are using. You can do so by installing CheckRK3188 app on your device, and check if you have the slower RK3188T SoC, or the older, but faster RK3188. The second issue is that Google Apps (Play store, gmail) are not pre-installed. You […]

April 1, 2014March 31, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Revolutionary ARM Cortex A104 Leverages the Human Brain and Assets, To Make Smartphones and Tablets Obsolete by 2020

The mobile devices we use everyday, such a smartphones and tablets, are all designed around one application processor that’s connected to memories, sensors, a display, some communication modules, and so on. But thanks to the work by ARM, and their Cortex A104, the way we do mobile computing maybe be dramatically transformed in a few years, and mobile devices may completely disappear from the market place. Who is this smartphone killer? Meet ARM Cortex A104 which can connect to the human brain via neurobionic interfaces, and leverage “assets” such as the eyes, ears, and vocal cords. A display won’t be needed as graphics will be rendered directly in the brain via ARM ImaginationTM Engine, which also handles traditional 2D/3D graphics processing. There will most likely be at least two display modes. If you close your eyes, the system will switch to immersive mode, where everything you see is rendered by […]