CNX Software’s 2024 Year in review, website statistics, and what to expect in 2025

That’s it! 2024 is almost over, and it’s time to reflect on what happened during the year. So I’ll look at the highlights of 2024, share some CNX Software website traffic statistics, and speculate on what may be ahead of us in 2025.

Looking back at 2024

Raspberry Pi was super active this year with 22 product launches that included boards and modules like the Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB RAM,  Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and Pico 2 W, Raspberry Pi CM5, expansion modules like the Raspberry Pi AI camera, AI HAT+, and M.2 HAT+, new accessories such as the Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 and the Raspberry Pi Monitor, and the new Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC among others. As usual, there was also plenty of announcement of accessories from third parties, and some boards with the new Raspberry Pi RP2350 Arm/RISC-V microcontroller.

There weren’t any ground-breaking Arm processors (for SBCs) launched this year, but there were some interesting announcements with the most interesting being the CIX P1 12-core Armv9 SoC with a 30 TOPS AI accelerator to be found in Radxa Orion O6 SBC, at least on this side of the Internet… Other notable Arm SoCs unveiled/teased in 2024 include Rockchip RK3688 Armv9.3 SoC with a 16 TOPS NPU (but light on details) and Allwinner A733 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 SoC, plus the upcoming Allwinner A838 Cortex-A78/A55 SoC which are both a refreshing change to the 32-bit Cortex-A7 SoCs introduced by the company in recent years… The Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 CPU was found in some TV boxes, but there was nothing beyond that.

The RISC-V ecosystem continues its slow and steady progress, and we were able to test some platforms with a RISC-V applications processor like the Sipeed Console 4A mini laptop (Debian 12, January 2024) and MILK-V Jupiter mini-ITX motherboard (Bianbu/Ubuntu, August 2024). Sadly, our reviews also showed software support for RISC-V platforms was still very much a work in progress, and RISC-V Linux hardware is currently not suitable for most people, albeit headless applications might be OK. We still covered plenty of RISC-V news with new SoCs like the Microchip PIC64HX1000 MPU, ESWIN EIC7700X quad-core RISC-V SoC with 19.95 TOPS NPU found in SiFive’s HiFive Premier P550 mini-DTX motherboard, and SpacemIT K1 octa-core 64-bit SoC found in a range of devices, as well as various products from single board computers to laptops, AI cameras, KVM-over-IP solutions, and more. Canonical was also involved and released Ubuntu images for RISC-V hardware, although often with partial support.

Intel Alder Lake-N processors continued to the popular in 2024 in mini PCs, SBCs, and network appliances, and we did get an unofficial launch for Alder Lake-N Refresh/Twin Lake processors namely Processor N150, Processor N250, and Core i3-N355/N350 found in mini PCs like Beelink EQ14 and ASUS NUC 14 Essential. We kept reviewing various Intel and AMD systems, mostly mini PCs, up to the such as the Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker devkit with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V “Lunar Lake” CPU (Work-in-progress),  GEEKOM GT1 Mega powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H Meteor Lake SoC,  or the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS-based GEEKOM A8. AMD also introduced the AMD Ryzen Embedded 8000 Series for industrial AI applications.

Besides the Raspberry Pi 5 2GB RAM mentioned above, there were plenty of other single board computers introduced in 2024. Rockchip boards were still at the top of the “release charts” with Orange Pi 5 Ultra, Boardcon Compact3588S, Pine64 Quartz64 Zero, Radxa ROCK 5C, Hardkernel ODROID-M2, and many others. Some notable non-Rockchip SBCs include the BeagleY-AI SBC with Texas Instruments AM67A SoC, some credit card-sized Intel N97/N100 SBCs (Radxa X4, AAEON UP 710S), various Banana Pi boards with exotic SoCs, Particle Tachyon credit card-sized SBC powered by a Qualcomm QCM6490 AI SoC and support for 5G cellular and WiFi 6 connectivity, Hardkernel ODROID-H4+ for NAS applications, and more. We also covered plenty of industrial SBCs and motherboards based on Intel, NXP, Renesas STM32, and other processors.

On the microcontroller front, Espressif ESP32-P4 RISC-V MCU official launch was one of the highlights, although the number of boards is still limited because mass production is/was not in full swing just yet. We also had news about the company’s ESP32-C5 beta board with dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) WiFi, but it looks like it will only be launched next year. WCH introduced the CH32V002 32-bit RISC-V MCU as an upgrade to the popular CH32V003 with more SRAM (4KB) and a wider 2V to 5V DC supply voltage, as well as the CH32V006 with more I/Os, memory (8KB), and storage (62KB).  We also covered news microcontrollers from GigaDevice, Renesas, STMicro, and others.

LPWAN products continued to be dominated by LoRaWAN or NB-IoT products, but we also saw a few more LTE Cat1.bis, 5G NTN, and DECT NR+ wireless solutions, plus some more modules and hardware for WiFi HaLow (802.11ah). On the Smart Home front, Matter continues to mature with more products and the release of the specification 1.3 and 1.4, and Home Assistant appears to be getting more and more popular.

Top 10 posts in 2024

I used Google Analytics data to sort the 10 most popular posts of 2024 on CNX Software using pageviews as a metric. Here are the top ten posts of the year in reverse order:

1. HackBat – DIY open-source hardware Flipper Zero alternative features Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU, ESP8266 WiFi module, RF transceiver… – May 2024 – Flipper Zero was a fairly popular topic this year, and people were interested in learning more about this DIY open-source hardware alternative.
2. ArduinoSimulator is an open-source Arduino Simulator that runs in your web browser – January 2024 – While hardware is cheap these days, simulators are still useful for education, and the ArduinoSimulator caught the attention of readers in a way similar to what Wokwi did last year.
3. TinyWatch S3 is an open-source, customizable smartwatch powered by ESP32-S3 SoC – July 2024 – ESP32 smartwatches had a following in recent years, and the TinyWatch S3 was another one of those, especially since it’s open-source and easily customizable.
4. $20+ NanoKVM is a tiny low-power RISC-V KVM over IP solution – July 2024 – An ultra-cheap KVM over IP solution based on RISC-V? What more can you ask?
5. Intel Processor N95 vs N97 vs N100 vs Core i3-N305 benchmarks comparison – May 2024 – Intel Alder Lake-N processors were still popular in mini PCs and SBCs this year, so it made sense to compare benchmarks between various models now that we had reviewed multiple hardware platforms based on the low-cost Intel processors.
6. CapibaraZero firmware enables low-cost Flipper Zero alternatives based on ESP32-S3 hardware – December 2024 – One more Flipper Zero topic, but software/firmware focused, as the CapibaraZero open-source firmware can run on ESP32-S3 hardware platform with the LilyGO T-Embed CC1101 being a prime target device.
7. Raspberry Pi 5 vs Intel N100 mini PC comparison – Features, Benchmarks, and Price – April 2024 – The Raspberry Pi 5 is powerful enough to compete against Intel Alder lake-N processors, and systems based on the latter are cheap enough (once accessories are taken into account) to compete on price against the Pi 5, so a comparison was in order. What’s the best? It depends on your use case as always.
8. Linamp – A Raspberry Pi 4-based audio box with Winamp look and feel – August 2024 – A mix of nostalgia and Raspberry Pi hardware, the Linamp is a hardware player based on Raspberry Pi 4 that looks like the popular Winamp interface.
9. Convert your tablet or smartphone into a touchscreen display for your PC, motherboard, etc… with the AURGA Viewer – May 2024 – This is probably the biggest surprise in the top ten, but I suppose many people must have a bunch of older smartphones an tablets at home and they were interested in knowing how they could recycle those into touchscreen displays.
10. The M1 device is a Flipper Zero alternative with a faster STM32H5 microcontroller and Wi-Fi connectivity (Crowdfunding) – February 2024 – Canada’s attempted ban of the original Flipper Zero likely promoted the wireless hacking tool, while people were also looking for alternatives just in case. The M1 offers just that and features a more powerful STM32H5 MCU and WiFi, so Internet users were curious about it. Sadly it has yet to ship as of today (December 31, 2024).

The most popular topics on CNX Software were Flipper Zero (3 articles), recycling old mobile devices as displays, plus a few ESP32, Raspberry Pi, Intel Alder Lake-N, RISC-V, and Arduino topics. Comparisons tend to do well, but in-depth reviews are read by fewer people, and the most popular one was Kumpee’s “Review of Elecrow’s 3.5-inch and 7.0-inch ESP32 display modules using Arduino programming” (the 25th top post of 2024).

CNX Software 2024 traffic stats

We published 1079 articles in 2024 including that one, which compares to 874 posts in 2023. The higher number was made possible by Tomisin and Debashis who joined us at the end of last year, and Sayantan in August 2024. Thai reviewers also got to help with reviews in English and Thai and Kajornsap published several robotics, 3D printer, and laser engraver reviews, Paisit worked on Smart Home reviews, Arnon worked on Arm SBCs, Kumpee published reviews on a range of topics, and  Suthinee – our Thai editor – kept on working on mini PC reviews, and a few ones with displays. The goal was to get more traffic with the additional articles, but sadly it did not exactly work that way with the traffic only up very slightly for the full year. It also went down somewhat after a Google Search update in August 2024 that reduced Google Search traffic by over 30 percent.

Let’s dig into the data with the provenance of CNX Software visitors in 2024 both in terms of countries and cities.

The United States is still on top followed by India and the United Kingdom in second and third, displacing China (now sixth) and Germany (now fourth).  The top city is still London, but Bengaluru (Bangalore) moved to second, and New York dropped to third.

The Americas overtook Europe this year, but the traffic is spread all over the world, with Asia a not-so-distant third.

The Chrome browser still dominates the competition with Safari a distant second, and Firefox in third position like last year. Android, Windows, and iOS remain the top three OS of the website’s visitors, and Linux remained in fourth.

The share of mobile traffic increased again in 2024 with 60.97% of users, while desktop dropped to 35.68% against 42.5%. Tablets got about 3%, and smart TVs just 0.06% of the traffic. It’s quite possible the delta between desktop and mobile is not as wide as reported by Google Analytics, since more people may have blockers on desktop.

What to expect in 2025

On the last day of 2023, I was expecting to see the first RISC-V Android devices hit the market in 2024, but it turns out I was a little too optimistic… Now I’m more in the camp for that to happen in 2026. What did happen in 2024 is the launch of several RISC-V SBCs and motherboards, and I expect that to continue hopefully with improved software support. Raspberry Pi won’t launch a new Pi 6 board this year with almost 100% certainty, but I’m pretty sure they will have new products on offer (although maybe not quite as many of the 22 launched in 2024), likely starting with a Raspberry Pi 5 16GB RAM since the CM5 already comes with 16GB RAM. I was expecting an RP microcontroller with ML acceleration in 2024, so maybe it will happen in 2025.

There should be some newsworthy Arm processors launched in 2025 including Rockchip RK3688 Armv9 SoC (or potentially in 2026), Allwinner A733/A736/A737 Arm Cortex-A78/A55 SoCs, and CIX P1 12-core Armv9 processor, so the future looks much more exiting on that front than on 2023 New Year’s eve. NXP i.MX 94 and i.MX 95 system should also finally become available in 2025.

There may be some movement on the mini PC market with Alder Lake-N systems having dominated the low-end of the market, and the news cycle here on CNX Software, for the last two years. The Twin Lake mini PCs already launched in 2024, and should continue in 2025, as those are just Alder Lake-N Refresh processors with a limited boost in CPU and GPU frequency. In the last couple of weeks, I noticed some talk about the Wildcat Lake family as the successor of the Alder Lake-N family, but there’s so little information, that it’s unclear whether it will be a 2025 or 2026 story. What we should see more of are AI mini PCs from Intel and AMD like the Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit, which we’ll review during the year if we manage to get samples.

Espressif should finally launch the ESP32-C5 dual-band WiFi 6 and Bluetooth MCU in 2025, which took longer than expected since the ESP32-C5 beta board documentation was made available in March 2024. I’d also expect more Smart Home solutions compatible with the Matter protocol, WiFi 7 will likely become mainstream since prices have come down, and 10GbE networking adoption may improve too, but I’m not so sure about 5GbE.

That will be all from me this year. As usual, I’m joined with some review samples from the past year to wish everybody a healthy, prosperous, and Happy New Year 2025!

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