Firefly ROC-RK3588-RT is a Rockchip RK3588(J) SBC suitable for networking applications such as routers and firewalls thanks to one 2.5GbE port and two gigabit Ethernet ports and available in both commercial and industrial temperature grades. But the board is likely to be used for more complex workloads since it also comes with three video output interfaces (2x HDMI and USB-C DisplayPort), M.2 sockets for a SATA or NVMe SSD, a WiFi 6/Bluetooth 5.2 module, a 6 TOPS NPU embedded in the Rockchip processor, and a (non-standard) expansion connector with PCIe Gen 3 and other interfaces. Firefly ROC-RK3588-RT specifications: SoC (one or the other) Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor with CPU – 4x Cortex‑A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, 4x Cortex‑A55 core @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G610 MP4 “Odin” GPU @ 1.0 GHz Video decoder – 8Kp60 H.265, VP9, AVS2, 8Kp30 H.264 AVC/MVC, 4Kp60 AV1, 1080p60 MPEG-2/-1, VC-1, VP8 […]
MediaTek drops efficiency cores in Dimensity 9300 Cortex-X4/A720 mobile SoC
MediaTek Dimensity 9300 is a premium octa-core 5G mobile SoC with two clusters of four Cortex-X4 cores and four Cortex-A720 cores, but doing without any Cortex-A520 efficiency core, plus the latest Arm Mali-G720 GPU, and a MediaTek APU 790 neural processing unit (NPU) capable of support generative AI and large language models (LLM) with up to 33 billion parameters. Arm invented big.LITTLE and then DynamIQ technologies in order to mix cores with different power efficiency and performance characteristics in order to improve power consumption. Their latest launches included the Cortex-X4 premium core, Cortex-A720 performance/big core, and Cortex-A520 efficient/LITTLE core, but MediaTek decided to do without the Cortex-A520 in the Dimensity 9300 which strikes me as odd for a mobile SoC where power efficiency is important for a long battery life. MediaTek Dimensity 9300 specifications: Octa-core CPU with DynamIQ 4x Arm Cortex-X4 at up to 3.25GHz 4x Arm Cortex-A720 up to […]
Giveaway Week 2023 – VOIPAC iMX8M industrial development kit
The 10th edition of CNX Software giveaway week is on! We’ll have seven items to give away this time around: six items that I will send myself from my review samples and one from a company that will offer one of its own IoT development kits… We’ll start this year’s giveaway week with the VOIPAC iMX8M industrial development kit equipped with an “iMX8M Industrial Pro” system-on-module powered by an NXP i.MX 8M quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, fitted with 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, and a WiFi and Bluetooth module. The VOIPAC iMX8M industrial development kit is quite a feature-rich development board whose main purpose is to evaluate the company’s system-on-module for integration into final products. I tested it last summer showing how to get started with the Yocto BSP by building the image from scratch, booting from the eMMC flash or a microSD card, and testing several features such as networking, […]
Rockchip roadmap reveals RK3576 and RK3506 IoT processors, Linux 6.1 SDK
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 […]
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 gains upstream Linux support
Linaro has announced upstream Linux support for the newly released Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform also codenamed SM8650. The patchsets enable Android 14 AOSP to boot with mainline Linux on Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 hardware using Google SwiftShader CPU-based implementation of the Vulkan graphics API. While there is a lot of buzz around the announcement of the Snapdragon X Elite 12-core Arm processor for laptops in recent days, Qualcomm also introduced its latest premium processor with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Mobile Platform for mobile phones featuring a 3.3 GHz Cortex-X4 core, five Cortex A720 Performance cores, and two Cortex A520 efficiency cores, as well as support for generative AI through AI accelerators. The announcement was made on October 25, and Linaro released the patchsets to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) on the same day. Android devices are often stuck to an older Linux kernel for their entire […]
Sophgo SG2380 – A 2.5 GHz 16-core SiFive P670 RISC-V processor with a 20 TOPS AI accelerator
Sophgo SG2380 is an upcoming 2.5 GHz 16-core RISC-V processor based on SiFive Performance P670 cores and also equipped with a 20 TOPS AI accelerator using SiFive Intelligence X280 and Sophgo TPU that will find its way into a $120 desktop-class mini-ITX motherboard in H2 2024. The RISC-V processor also supports up to 64GB RAM, as well as UFS 3.2 and SATA 3.0 storage, comes with an Imagination GPU for 3D graphics and a VPU capable of 4Kp60 H.265, H.264, AV1, and VP9 video decoding, plenty of interfaces, and the system can manage locally deployed larger-scale LLMs like LLaMA-65B without the need for external NVIDIA or AMD accelerator cards. Sophgo SG2380 RISC-V SoC Sophgo SG2380 specifications: CPU 16-core SiFive P670 (RV64GCVH) 64-bit RISC-V processor @ up to 2.5GHz with RISC-V Vector v1.0, Vector Crypto Cluster configuration – 12x 2.5 GHz performance cores, 4x 1.6 GHz efficiency cores Full RISC-V RVA22 […]
microSD Express memory cards to support up to 2GB/s data transfers
SD Association (SDA) has announced the new SD 9.1 specification that doubles the speed of microSD Express memory card speed up to 2GB/s, defines four new SD Express Speed Classes to ensure guaranteed minimum sequential performance levels, and adds support for multi-stream access and related power and thermal management to assure the guaranteed performance. We first covered the microSD Express cards in 2019 as they were added to the SD 7.0 specification with promises of SSD performance through a PCIe 3.0 interface delivering up to 985MB/s. Over four years have passed since then, and I have yet to write about devices supporting the new standard, but the SD Association is not giving up with the introduction of the SD 9.1 specification that doubles the speed of the microSD Express cards, and full-size SD Express card can even reach close to 4GB/s. More specifically, the maximum speed achievable on microSD Express […]
SiFive announces Intelligence X390 NPU, Performance P870 RISC-V core
SiFive has announced two new high-performance IP blocks with the Intelligence X390 NPU and the Performance P870 RISC-V core that should find their way into SoC designed for Generative AI and ML applications. We had already covered the Performance P870 and its automotive sibling – the P870-A – from information in an earlier presentation, but the SiFive Intelligence X390 NPU is new to me and appears to be aimed at generative AI in data centers, although we will very soon be seeing companies implement generative AI at the edge in pretty powerful embedded devices. SiFive Performance P870 highlights: Full support for the RVA23 RISC-V profile specification and Vector 1.0 and Vector Crypto Six-wide, out-of-order 64-bit core Up to a 32-core cluster >12 SpecINT2k6/GHz, or a 50% peak single thread performance upgrade over the previous generation SiFive Performance P670 SiFive Features 2x 128b VLEN RVV Vector crypto and hypervisor extensions IOMMU […]