Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft), Author at CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

May 5, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

VIA Embedded Store Launches for Embedded ARM & x86 Boards and Systems

Most of the time for boards and systems targeting industrial or embedded applications, companies will not provide pricing information, and if you want a sample for evaluation, or want to order a few for a project requiring limited quantities, you’ll need to contact sales, talk about your project, volume, schedule, etc… But for VIA Embedded boards and systems, you won’t need to go through this loop anymore, as the company has just launched VIA Embedded Store where you can buy boards such as VAB-820 pico-ITX board or a rugged system such as AMOS-820 directly online without questions asked. I’ve gone through most of the checkout procedure and you can proceed as a guest or by registering, and they’ll just ask billing and shipping information, shipping method, and payment method selection (Only Paypal at this time). It’s a simple as that, no need to fill some “I’m not a terrorist” forms […]

May 4, 2014May 5, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

XBMC 13 “Gotham” Released

After month of development, alpha releases, beta releases, RC releases, XBMC 13 “Gotham” is finally out. This is the first official release that supports hardware video decoding for ARM and x86 based Android 4.0+ devices. Support is not available for 100% of devices, as for instance, AllWinner A1X/A20 and Amlogic SoCs do not support the standard Android StrageFright or MediaCodec APIs, but most others should. There’s one XBMC Android version for ARM, one for x86. Android hardware video decoding is obviously not the only feature or improvement brought about by XBMC 13. Here are the key ones: Raspberry Pi and Android speed improvements – Overall system performance improvements, but optimizations are said to be particularly noticeable when opening and browsing libraries, loading images and starting videos. Stereoscopic 3D Rendering – SBS, TAB, anaglyph, and interlaced are supported. XBMC cannot yet support 3D blurays and cannot provide hardware acceleration for FullSBS/TAB […]

May 3, 2014May 3, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Nvidia Tegra K1 CPU/FPU Performance is Comparable to Intel Celeron “Bay Trail-D” J1900 SoC

Nvidia Jetson TK1 development board powered by Nvidia Tegra K1 quad core ARM Cortex A15 processor and a 192-core Kepler GPU has started shipping, and some people have already received theirs, including Michael Larabel (Phoronix) who ran some benchmarks on the board that comes pre-loaded with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. We already had some benchmarks comparing Tegra K1 to ARM peers on Android, but it’s the first time Linux benchmarks are available. The benchmarks seems to only involve CPU and FPU, and probably not the GPU at this point, but the results are still interesting, and Michael also pointed links comparing Nvidia Tegra K1 development board performance to some Intel Core i5 based PCs, as well as a platform based on an Intel Celeron J1900, a quad core processor part of Bay Trail Desktop family. The later is most interesting as we compare systems with similar power requirements. Nvidia Tegra K1 […]

May 2, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

PcDuino8 Board Will be Powered by AllWinner A80 SoC

Many have been waiting for A80 OptimusBoard development board powered by AllWinner A80 octa-core big.LITTLE SoC to come to market. It could be another board will be targeting the DIY crowd, as LinkSprite and AllWinner have announced a strategic partnership to work on PcDuino8 board also based on the upcoming eight core SoC. The board picture above appears to be exactly the same as PcDuino3 with AllWinner A20, except they’ve replaced it with A80. This is really odd by itself, and since AllWinner A80 does not support SATA, an extra USB to SATA IC would be required. The lack of USB3 port is also surprising. So I’m assuming the board above is simply a photo edited in Photoshop. We could then further assume the board is not ready, and they are simply waiting for the PCB, which will they debug in May, before shipping the board by the end of […]

May 1, 2014March 17, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 40 Comments

List of Chinese Online Stores and Shopping Guide

Most of the time I feature products that are sold on Chinese online stores, because it’s either the only way, or the cheaper way to purchase the products. However, it’s not always easy to decide which Chinese e-retailer to select, and to avoid potential pitfalls with the sellers, and/or at home when you receive the products and get charged all sort of taxes. In this post, I’ll go through a list of Chinese online stores, the ones I personally use, and others, and then provide a guide with a series of tips and recommendations to hopefully help you shop with minimal worries. I’ll only cover retail stores, and skip wholesale sites such as Alibaba. Two types of stores Before I get the list of stores, it’s important to consider there are two types of stores: E-retailers (B2C) – In this case, you buy directly from the retailer which collects payment, […]

April 30, 2014April 30, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Meet Arduissimo, a Multi-core Arduino Board with a 16-core Xilinx Spartan FPGA (Crowdfunding)

Arduissimo a MultiCore Arduino project based on an FPGA Arduino Board powered by Xilinx Spartan LX6. It supports virtual peripherals, and allows you to configure PWMs, I2Cs, SPIs, and more on any of the 124 General Purpose IOs available through the board. Arduissimo specifications: FPGA – Xilinx Spartan-6 LX16 CSG326 -2 System Memory SDRAM Interface 1 – 1x 256MBit, 4x 64MBit, 166MHz SDRAM Interface 2 – 1x 64MBit, 166MHz Storage – EEprom for configuration file + micro SD card slot (4 pins connected to FPGA) USB – High Speed USB, FTDI HS2232HL (13 pins for “245 fifo sync” connected to the FPGA) 124 IOs: 4 IOs – 2.54mm header (e.g. Raspberry Pi) 72 IOs: Arduino Mega footprint (44 IOs shared with uPlug) 92 IOs: 8 uPlug connector slots (44 IOs shared with Arduino Mega) 50MHz oscillator Misc – Reset switch, 1x yellow LED, 4x bumpers Dimensions – 98.5 mm x […]

April 30, 2014April 30, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Dimple NFC Sticker Adds Four Hardware Buttons to Your Android Device (Crowdfunding)

If you’d like to add one button to your Android smartphone, you could use pressy. But what if you wanted or needed more. Dimple may provide a solution if your Android smartphone or tablet supports NFC. It is a thin NFC sticker, about 0.5mm thick, that you can attach to the back of your device to add 4 hardware buttons. The sticker is compatible with devices running Android 4.0 and above, not made out of metal, and with NFC support. This means HTC One M7 and M8 smartphone are not compatible due to their metallic bodies. Using the NFC sticker appears to be extra simple. Once you’ve sticked your Dimple to the back of your device (or your case), simply install Dimple.io app to configure the buttons to do what you want to: launch your favorite apps, take a picture, turn on & off the flash light, call your mum, […]

April 30, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

AMD Unveils Low Power Mobile “Mullins” APUs for Tablets and Hybrid Laptops

AMD has announced its 3rd-generation Mainstream and Low Power Mobile Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), codenamed codenamed “Beema” and “Mullins,” respectively, featuring four x86 Puma+ CPU, AMD Radeon graphics, and a platform security processor (PSP) with an ARM Cortex-A5 core for ARM TrustZone security. Beema APUs have a TDP between 9W and 15W, whereas Mullins APUs all have less than 5W TDP (2.8W SDP). So I’ll only cover cover Mullins processors in this post, as they may offer an alternative to Intel Bay Trail-T processors. There are now 3 more APUs part of AMD’s tablets and 2-in-1 solutions: A10 Micro-6700T, A4 Micro-6400T, and E1 Micro-6200T. They are highlighted in green in the table below, and compared to previous generations: Model Radeon Brand CPU Clock Speed (Max/Base) CPU Cores on Die TDP Total L2 Cache GPU Clock Speed (Max/Base) DDR SDRMA Max Memory Speed A10 Micro–6700T Radeon R6 2.2 GHz 4 4.5W 2MB […]