Graphics Category - Page 2 of 28 - CNX Software

November 2, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Alibaba T-Head TH1520 user manuals released

Further Alibaba T-Head TH1520 quad-core RISC-V processor documentation has been released with nine user manuals covering video and audio processing, peripheral interfaces, memory interfaces, system registers, and the built-in NPU for video acceleration. We first noted the TH1520 RISC-V SoC in the expensive web3-focused ROMA laptop in October 2022, but since then there have been some very interesting developments with the release of Sipeed’s Lichee Pi 4A SBC and various other platforms based on the LM4A system-on-module plus the BeagleBoard.org’s BeagleV Ahead. Both boards also have preliminary support in mainline Linux with the Lichee Pi 4A making it to Linux 6.5, and the BeagleV Ahead was added to the just-released Linux 6.6 kernel. However I had not noticed documentation for the processor was not released publicly until now as both Sipeed and Beagleboard.org have now made available nine user manuals in English, and the Sipeed link has the Chinese versions […]

October 26, 2023October 26, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite – A 4.3 GHz 12-core Arm AI processor for next gen PCs and laptops

Qualcomm has now provided Arm chips for mobile PCs (aka laptops) for several years, but apart from a 20-hour battery life, the performance and price of Snapdragon laptops have often been disappointing. The Snapdragon X Elite aims to change that at least on the performance front. The new Qualcomm 12-core 64-bit Arm processor is clocked at up to 3.8 GHz boosting to up to 4.3 GHz, and is said to deliver up to twice the CPU performance against the competition (Intel/AMD/Apple) or provides the same level of performance at a third of the power consumption. The SoC will also be able to run on-device generative AI with over 13B parameters thanks to 75 TOPS of AI performance and support the latest wireless connectivity technologies such as 5G and WiFi 7 through external chips from the company. Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite specifications: CPU – 12-core 64-bit Armv8 Oryon processor clocked at […]

October 22, 2023 by Kumpee Teeravech - 4 Comments

Review of MaTouch ESP32-S3 Rotary IPS Display with a 2.1-inch round touchscreen display

Matouch ESP32-S3 rotary display - graphic screen no.2

The product we are reviewing today is the “MaTouch ESP32-S3 Rotary IPS Display with Touch 2.1” ST7701″ from Makerfabs which offers an alternative to the MaTouch_ESP32-S3 4-inch Display Demo Kit that we reviewed a few months ago. Just like the earlier model, the new kit is equipped with an ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8, featuring 16MB of flash memory and 8MB of PSRAM. This device supports both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 wireless communication and offers connectivity options through I2C and UART ports for interfacing with external devices. The display features a round IPS panel with a resolution of 480×480 pixels, capacitive touch capability, and LVGL library support. Additionally, it includes a mechanical rotary encoder and supports press operations. MaTouch ESP32-S3 Rotary IPS Display specifications Controller: ESP32-S3-WROOM-1, PCB Antenna, 16MB Flash, 8MB PSRAM, ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8 Wireless: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 LCD: 2.1-inch High Lightness IPS,65K color LCD Driver: ST7701S FPS: > 70 Resolution: 480×480 LCD interface: […]

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

Arm: “Panfrost is now the GPU driver for the Linux community”

Arm is now saying that “in effect, Panfrost is now the GPU driver for the Linux community” after having extended and expanded the collaboration with Collabora for the development of the open-source Panfrost driver for Arm Mali GPUs, following their first official collaboration in the fall of 2020. Arm goes even as far as to claim that “through the Arm and Collabora partnership, device manufacturers can confidently choose SoCs containing a Mali GPU regardless of the software operating system (OS) and graphics middleware… delivering a high-quality open-source Linux implementation which can be used in their products”. Collabora confirmed the new partnership saying Arm will be instrumental in getting Vulkan support in Panfrost alongside the existing OpenGL and OpenGL ES implementations. Going forward that means SBC vendors will have no excuse for not getting 3D graphics acceleration working on Linux with Panfrost when using an Arm SoC with a recent Mali […]

May 24, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Imagination IMG CXM is a small GPU with HDR support for TV boxes, wearables, and Smart Home appliances

Imagination IMG CXM is a power-efficient embedded GPU family with HDR support user interfaces, thus enabling OEMs to provide users the enriching visual experience they have come to expect but at a lower cost and with more design flexibility. The new CXM GPUs also deliver close to 50% performance density improvement over IMG BXM consumer GPUs, offer support for 10-bit RGBA/YUV to deliver a HDR graphical user interface with less visible banding, and integrate well with Imagination RISC-V CPUs. Three CXM GPUs are available: The CXM-2-64 with 2 pixels per clock (PPC) and 64 FLOPS per clock is the smallest GPU with native support for HDR The CXM-4-64 with 4 pixels per clock (PPC) and 64 FLOPS per clock targets mainstream products The CXM-4-128 with 4 pixels per clock (PPC) and 128 FLOPS per clock targets is better suited to “premium DTV solutions” All share the following features: 10-bit RGBA/YUV […]

May 17, 2023May 18, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

$25 Renesas “HMI Board” features RA6M3 microcontroller for RT-Thread & LVGL development

The Renesas HMI board is a Renesas RA6M3 Cortex-M4F development board with a 4.3-inch LCD developed in collaboration with the teams behind the RT-Thread RTOS project and LVGL open-source graphics library. Besides a color display for HMI (Human Machine Interface), the board also features a microSD card for data storage, Ethernet and WiFi connectivity, Arduino headers and PMOD connectors for expansion, a microphone and a speaker, a CAN bus terminal block, and two USB-C ports for debugging and power. Renesas HMI board specifications: MCU – Renesas RA6M3 (R7FA6M3AH3CFB) Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 120MHz with 2MB Flash, 640KB RAM, TFT controller, 2D accelerator, and JPEG decoder. Storage – MicroSD card slot Display – 4.3-inch LCD (RGB 888) Audio – Microphone and speaker Networking Low-profile 10/100M Ethernet RJ45 port RW007 SPI WiFi module by Shanghai Ruiside Electronic Technology USB – 2x USB Type-C ports Serial – 2-pin CAN bus terminal block Expansion […]

May 2, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

AMD Radeon PCIe graphics card tested with a Rockchip RK3588 SBC (Radxa Rock 5B)

AMD Radeon PCIe graphics card Rockchip RK3588 SBC

When Rockchip first introduced the Rockchip RK3399 processor with a PCIe interface people initially hoped they could connect graphics card, but those hopes were quickly squashed due to a 32MB addressing limit. However, the PCIe implementation on the newer Rockchip RK3588 processor does not have such a limitation, and last November, Radxa teased a demo with an AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 PCIe graphics card connected to the Rock 5B SBC running the glxgears demo on the Radeon GPU. I couldn’t find any instructions to reproduce this setup, but this got Jasbir interested, and he tried to do a test of his own with the Radxa Rock 5B connected to an AMD Radeon R7 520 (XFX R7 250 low-profile) through an “M.2 Key M Extender Cable to PCIE x16 Graphics Card Riser Adapter” ($14 plus taxes on Aliexpress) and powered by an LR1007 120W 12VDC ATX board. The experiment was […]

April 24, 2023April 24, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.3 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.3 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): It’s been a calm release this time around, and the last week was really no different. So here we are, right on schedule, with the 6.3 release out and ready for your enjoyment. That doesn’t mean that something nasty couldn’t have been lurking all these weeks, of course, but let’s just take things at face value and hope it all means that everything is fine, and it really was a nice controlled release cycle. It happens. This also obviously means the merge window for 6.4 will open tomorrow. I already have two dozen pull requests waiting for me to start doing my pulls, and I appreciate it. I expect I’ll have even more when I wake up tomorrow. But in the meantime, let’s enjoy (and test) the 6.3 release. As always, the shortlog […]