It’s already day 4 of CNX Software Giveaway Week 2023 and today, we’ll be giving away GL.iNet GL-S200 Thread Border router kit that also includes three USB or battery-powered Thread development boards to experiment with various Thread topologies. The GL-S200 router comes with a Qualcomm QCA9531 MIPS router processor running a fork of OpenWrt and provides two Fast Ethernet WAN/LAN ports, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 4 802.11b/g/n up to 150 Mbps, and support for Thread (via an 802.15.4 radio) and Bluetooth 5.0. The development boards are based on the Nordic Semi nRF52840 microcontroller and each features a potentiometer+button, a PIR sensor, and two RGB LEDs. I reviewed the GL-S200 Thread Border router kit using the router’s dashboard interface and demo firmware provided for the three development boards. This enabled me to test star topology and mesh networking, and play around with demo scripts and code samples to display sensor and potentiometer […]
MeLE Overclock4C is an ultrathin pocket-sized mini PC powered by an Intel Processor N95 CPU
Mele Overclock4C is an Intel Processor N95 Alder Lake-N mini PC with an ultrathin (21mm) design which, as its name implies, supports “overclocking”, although what it really means here is the ability to increase the PL1 and PL2 power limits in the BIOS/UEFI in order to increase performance without actually changing the top frequency of the processor… It’s the same idea and virtually the same design as the MeLE Overclock3C which boosts the TDP of the Celeron N5095 Jasper Lake processor up to 18W instead of the 15W default. Here the TDP of the Processor N95 is likely boosted up to 20 Watts (as per Intel Ark) delivering a 33% performance improvement over the Celeron N5095. The Overclock4C is available with 16GB or 32GB DDR4, a 256GB eMMC flash, and a 256GB SSD. MeLE Overclock4C specifications: SoC – Intel Processor N95 quad-core Alder Lake N-series processor @ up to 3.4 […]
Toradex Titan Evaluation Kit features NXP i.MX 95 AI processor for IoT, industrial, and automotive applications
[Update September 12, 2024: The NXP i.MX 95 Titan Evaluation Kit (EVK) has been renamed to the “i.MX 95 Verdin Evaluation Kit”] Toradex Titan Evaluation Kit features the NXP i.MX 95 Cortex-A55/M33/M7 heterogenous AI processor introduced at the beginning of the year with an NXP eIQ Neutron Neural Network Accelerator (NPU) for automotive, industrial, and IoT applications. The design is comprised of a carrier board and a SO-DIMM system-on-module with the NXP i.MX 95 SoC, up to 16GB LPPDR5 memory, up to 128GB eMMC flash storage, a WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 wireless module, a gigabit Ethernet controller, a PMIC, and a few other components. The carrier board also comes with 10GbE and Gigabit Ethernet ports, HDMI video output, a few USB ports, and various expansion connectors and headers. Toradex Titan evaluation kit specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 95 with Up to 6x Arm Cortex-A55 application cores clocked at 2.0 […]
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 […]
ZimaCube 6+1-bay NAS offers 2.5GbE, PCIe slots, with either Intel Processor N100 or Core i5-1235U SoC (Crowdfunding)
IceWhale Technology, the company behind the line of ZimaBoard x86 SBCs, has now introduced the ZimaCube (Pro) 6+1-bay NAS equipped with either an Intel Processor N100 Alder Lake-N processor or a more powerful Intel Core i5-1235U Alder Lake-P CPU with additional 2.5GbE ports, PCIe expansion slots, and M.2 sockets. Both models support up to six 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA drives, support for M.2 NVMe SSDs, offer 2.5GbE networking, six USB ports, and one or more PCIe expansion with either PCIe Gen3 (Processor N100) or PCIe Gen4 (Core i5-1235U) enabling the addition of a graphics card, high-speed network cards, and more. ZimaCube (Pro) specifications: SoC ZimaCube – Intel Processor N100 quad-core Alder Lake-N processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel HD graphics @ up to 750 MHz; TDP: 6W ZimaCube Pro – Intel Core i5-1235U 10-core/12-thread Alder Lake U-Series processor with 2x Performance cores @ 1.3/4.4GHz, […]
GEEKOM A5 AMD Ryzen 7 5800H mini PC offered for just $327.99 (Sponsored)
GEEKOM A5 is a mini PC powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor combined with 32GB RAM and a 512GB SSD whose suggested retail price is $499.99, but is now offered for just $327.99 on Amazon with a $50 “page coupon” plus an extra 16% discount with the coupon CSA516OFF. The mini PC also supports up to four 4K displays via two HDMI 2.0 outputs and two USB-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2) ports, 2.5Gbps Ethernet and WiFi 6 networking, and features three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, one USB 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. GEEKOM A5 specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen 7 5800H 8-core/16-thread processor up to 3.2 GHz / 4.4 GHz (Turbo) with 16MB cache, AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics; TDP: 35W System Memory – 32GB RAM via dual-channel DDR4-3200 SODIMM Storage 512GB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3×4 NVMe SSD, upgradable to 2TB NVMe or […]
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, […]
Raspberry Pi 5 review – Part 2: Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, benchmarks, power consumption, and more
A few days ago I finally went through the Raspberry Pi 5 kit I received last September going through all the items and booting it with Raspberry Pi OS bookworm. I’ve now had time to perform more tests to check out the performance with benchmarks and test various features on the Raspberry Pi 5. So I’ll report my experience in the second part of the review and compare the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC to the Raspberry Pi 4 and some other Arm Linux SBCs.
System information in Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm
Last time around, I installed the Raspberry Pi 5 in its official case, but for most of the testing, I decided to go back to the bare board fitted with its active cooler since it’s the best cooling option as we’ll see further in the review.