Yesterday, Hardkernel launched ODROID-C4 Amlogic S905X3 SBC as an update to ODROID-C2 SBC launched in 2016. We’ve seen the board can compete with Raspberry Pi 4 4GB board thanks to benchmarks released by Hardkernel, but since those boards are so versatile, meaning they can be used in a variety of applications, it’s impossible to benchmark all use cases. One way to find out which board might be right for your application without going through benchmarks is to look at a list of features for each, and that’s exactly what we’ve done in this post. Let’s get straight to the Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB RAM) vs ODROID-C4 comparison table. Features/Specs Raspberry Pi 4B (4GB) ODROID-C4 Release date 24th June 2019 23rd April 2020 SoC Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 @ 1.5 GHz (overclockable to 2.0+ GHz) with NEON, FPU Amlogic S905X3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ 2.0 GHz with NEON, FPU, Armv8 Crypto […]
Panfrost Gets First 3D Renders on Bifrost GPU (Mali-G31) including Basic Texture Support
Collabora has been working on Panfrost open-source Arm Mali GPU driver for over a year. The drive aims to support both Midgard and Bifrost families. But so far, the company had mostly focused on Midgard (Mali-T6xx/T7xx) GPUs with for example experimental OpenGL ES 3.0 support announced last February. Collabora engineers, such as Alyssa Rosenzweig, have now started to work on Bifrost support, and some good progress has been made since they managed to have Panfrost render the first 3D graphics with basic texture support using a platform with an Arm Mali-G31 GPU. Alyssa notes that while Midgard and Bifrost have a similar command stream requiring a few changes, the Bifrost instruction set is completely different and required building a new compiler from scratch. This leads to changes to the Intermediate Representation (IR), 16-bit data support, a different register allocation mechanism due to adapt to irregular vector architectures, and the latter […]
$50 ODROID-C4 Raspberry Pi 4 Competitor Combines Amlogic S905X3 SoC with 4GB RAM
Hardkernel has just launched an update to its ODROID-C2 board, with ODROID-C4 SBC equipped with a 2.0 GHz Amlogic S905X3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor combined with up to 4GB RAM, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.0 video output, and the usual 40-pin I/O header. That makes it a worthy competitor to Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM, especially since it supports Ubuntu 20.04, CoreELEC, Android 9, and LineageOS operating systems, and comes with a proper heatsink for cooling for just $50 plus shipping. ODROID-C4 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ 2.0GHz with Arm Mali-G31MP2 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.0 and OpenCL 2.0 System Memory – 4GB DDR4 Storage 1x eMMC connector (8/16/32/64GB modules available) 1x Micro SD slot with support for DS/HS mode up to UHS-I SDR104 Video & Output – HDMI 2.0 port up to 4K@60Hz with HDR, CEC, EDID Audio – Digital […]
Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More…
When in 2018, Blu posted a guest post entitled “Baikal T1 MIPS Processor – The Last of the Mohicans?” I thought maybe it was too pessimistic with regard to the future of MIPS architecture. At the time, MIPS belonged to Imagination Technologies, but soon the company had its own financial problems and had to sell MIPS assets to Wave Computing. The latter eventually announced the launch of MIPS Open Initiative early last year, so there was some hope as interest might pick up to compete against RISC-V and Arm again. But in recent months, MIPS related news has not been so good. First, Wave Computing decided to end MIPS Open Initiative in November 2019, then Paul Burton and Ralf Baechle removed themselves from the Linux kernel MIPS maintainer list in February 2020, as their work with MIPS ended leaving Thomas Bogendoerfer as the only maintainer. But this month, things turned […]
AAEON Compact Fanless Embedded Box PC Features NVIDIA Jetson Xavier-NX or Nano SoM
NVIDIA Jetson Xavier-NX module was officially launched about a week ago, and at the time we noted several carrier boards and mini PCs were launched or announced from companies like D3 Engineering, Diamond Systems, and Connect Tech. We should expect many new Jetson Xavier-NX embedded mini PC announcements over the next few weeks and months, and AAEON has now announced two new similar compact fanless embedded box PCs namely Boxer-8221AI and BOXER-8251AI with the same designed but powered by respectively Jetson Nano and Jetson Xavier-NX modules. Both models should share the same specifications except for the module: SoM Boxer-8221AI – NVIDIA Jetson Nano with quad-core Arm Cortex-A57 processor @ 1.43 GHz, 128-core Maxwell GPU, 4GB LPDDR4, 16GB eMMC flash Boxer-8251AI – NVIDIA Jetson Xavier-NX with 6-core NVIDIA Carmel ARM v8.2 64-bit CPU, a 384-core NVIDIA Volta GPU with 48 Tensor Cores, 2x NVDLA deep learning accelerators (up to 21 TOPS […]
Sipeed MaixCube is a Fully Integrated AI Development Platform Powered by Kendryte K210 RISC-V SoC
Sipeed has made several boards and kits based on Kendryte K210 RISC-V processor for low-power AI workloads such as face detection or object recognition including Maixduino board and Grove AI HAT that ship with camera and display. The company has now come up with MaixCube all-in-one development platform that houses Sipeed M1 module, a display, a camera, and a battery into a plastic case that’s somewhat similar to MStack M5StickV but with a larger display, and variations in the form factor and features. Sipeed MaixCube specifications: SoC – Kendryte K210 dual-core 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 400 MHz (overclockable to 600 MHz) with FPU, 8MB SRAM, KPU AI accelerator, APU audio processor, and FFT accelerator Storage – 128 Mbit flash, MicroSD card slot Display – 1.3″ TFT screen with 240×240 resolution Camera – OV7740 sensor (VGA camera) Audio – Built-in microphone, external speakers support; ES8374 audio codec USB – 1x USB […]
Fanless Comet Lake mini PC Ships with Intel Core i7 Quad or Hexa-core Processor
Last week, we wrote about XCY X41 mini PC featuring a 10th generation Intel Core i7-10510U Comet Lake processor and cooled with an internal fan. We also pointed out there were other Comet Lake mini PCs on Aliexpress without looking into details yet. It was brought to our attention that Eglobal had a white-brand fanless Comet Lake mini PC equipped with the same Intel Core i7-10510U quad-core processor or a more powerful Core i7-10710U hexa-core processor. Eglobal “Noname” mini PC specifications: SoC (one or the other – 10th Gen SoCs shown only) Intel Core i7-10510U quad-core/octa-thread Comet Lake-U processor @ 1.10 GHz / 4.70GHz (Turbo single core) with 8MB cache, 24 EU Intel UHD Graphics 620; 15W TDP (TDP up: 25 W / TDP down: 10 W) Intel Core i7-10710U hexa-core/deca-thread Comet Lake-U processor @ 1.80 GHz / 4.90GHz (Turbo single core) with 12MB cache, 24 EU Intel UHD Graphics […]
Boardcon RK1808 SBC Targets Smart Audio & Computer Vision Applications
Rockchip RK1808 neural network processing unit was initially an IP Block inside RK3399Pro, but the company eventually launched RK1808 Cortex-A35 processor as a standalone solution now providing up to 3.0 TOPS for AI inferencing in modules, USB sticks, and development kits. Boardcon offers another option with EM1808, a Rockchip RK1808 SBC equipped with the processor. The board should be suitable for two main types of AI applications, namely smart audio applications thanks to four audio ports, speaker header, & an onboard 4-mic array, and computer vision with MIPI CSI & DSI interfaces. Boardcon EM1808 board is comprised of a baseboard and CPU module with the following overall specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK1808 dual Cortex-A35 processor up to 1.6GHz with 3.0 TOPS (for INT8) NPU, VPU supporting H.264 1080p60 decode, 1080p30 encode System Memory- 2GB LPDDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, MicroSD slot, M.2 NVMe SSD interface Display I/F – 26-pin […]