pcDuino3 Development Board Features AllWinner A20 SoC, Arduino Headers

The first pcDuino board powered by AllWinner A10 has been available for about a year, later last year pcDuino V2 was released with a built-in Wi-Fi modules and mechanically and software compatible Arduino headers, and now pcDuino3 has been announced in a form factor similar to pcDuino V2 board but replacing AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 SoC with AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A7, and improving overall specs such as faster Ethernet, the addition of a SATA port, and LiPo support. pcDuino3 specifications: SoC – AllWinner A20 dual core ARM Cortex A7 @ 1.0 GHz, with Mali 400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DRAM Storage – 4GB NAND Flash, SATA connector, and microSD card slot (up to 32GB) Video Output – HDMI 1.4 with HDCP support, LVDS header Audio Out –  3.5mm analog audio interface, I2S stereo digital audio interface Connectivity – WiFi, 10/100M Ethernet USB – 1x USB host, 1x […]

Linaro 14.03 Release with Linux Kernel 3.14 and Android 4.4.2

Linaro 14.03 has just been released with Linux Kernel 3.14-rc7 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.33 (LSK), and Android 4.4.2. This month, I could not find any major changes or updates, but work has been performed on big.LITTLE, Samsung Arndale / Arndale-octa, HiSilicon K3V2 and D01 boards and Broadcom Capri hardware, as well as ARMv8 models. Here are the highlights of this release: Linaro Stable Kernel (LSK) 3.10.33-2014.03 big.LITTLE support – ARM MP patch set, IKS (ARMv7 only). Interactive scheduler enhancements ARMv8 features – CPU frequency scaling, CPU topology, CPU suspend Power efficient workqueue support Android v3.10 patch set from AOSP GATOR ARMv8 4xA57 4xA53 FVP (Fixed Virtual Platform) and Versatile Express TC2 support Linux Linaro 3.14-rc7-2014.03 GATOR version 5.17 Android topic (linaro-android-3.14-merge) updated to get the recent code from AOSP uprobes v7 (new version) Updated big-LITTLE-pmu topic from ARM LT (Landing team) Updated basic Capri board support from Broadcom LT (bcm590xx […]

ECS LIVA is a Complete Sub $200 mini PC based on Intel Bay Trail-M SoC

Many low cost Intel mini PCs sold on the market do not include storage and memory, and you have to add them yourself. On the contrary, ECS LIVA desktop computer powered by an Intel Bay Trail-M processor will work out of the box as it comes with 32GB eMMC and 2GB DDR3L, both soldered on board, and will sell for less $200 once it becomes available. Here are the currently available specifications of this small x86 computer: SoC – Unspecified Intel Bay Trail-M SoC. It should be on of the N2800, N2900 or N3500 series. System Memory – 2GB DDR3L Storage – 32GB eMMC Video Output – 1x HDMI, 1x VGA Audio – 2-ch audio combo jack (Realtek ALC282) Connectivity 1x Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek RTL8111G) IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 (AzureWave AW-NB136NF 2) USB – 1x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0 Expansion – M.2 interface (NGFF) Thermal – […]

ITEAD Studio IBOX AllWinner A20 mini PC Review

ITEAD Studio IBOX is an AllWinner A20 based mini PC currently running Android or Linux distributions currently featured on Indiegogo. I’ve already written about IBOX in a separate post, where you can get all the specifications, but the company has also sent me a unit (engineering sample) for review. Since the system is still in development, and it’s mostly a development platform, I won’t do a review with video testing, system performance, etc… as usual, but rather show the progress and current issues in terms of hardware and software, and I’ll also mention documentation, and shortly try Android 4.2 (pre-installed) and the Debian 7.0 image released by the company. IBOX Unboxing Pictures I’ve received the device in a cartoon box containing the device itself and a 9V/2A power supply. If you are or become a backer on Indiegogo you’ll also receive an add-on board providing access to a SATA connector,  […]

Giayee P105 is a Wall-Mountable Rockchip based Android / Ubuntu mini PC with a VGA Output

There are plenty of Android TV Boxes or HDMI TV dongles based on Rockchip RK3066 or RK3188. What makes Giayee P105 computer different is that they completely got rid of the HDMI port and replaced it with a VGA port, and the mini PC, and they also added mount option to attach the device to a wall or the back of your monitor. There are two versions of Giayee P105: P105-D with a dual core RK3168 SoC, and P105-Q with RK3188 quad core processor. Giayee P105 Specifications: SoC P105-D – Rockchip RK3168 dual core ARM Cortex A9 @ 1.2GHz with PowerVR SGX540 GPU P105-Q – Rockchip RK3188 quad core ARM Cortex A9 @ 1.6GHz with Mali-400 MP4 GPU @ up to  600MHz System Memory – 1 to 2GB DDR3 Storage – 1 to 32G NAND Flash Video Output – VGA – Resolution: 800×600 up to 1920×1080 Audio I/O – 1x Audio […]

Huawei D01 Server Board Features 16 ARM Cortex A15 Cores with up to 64 GB RAM, 3 SATA, 2 GbE Ports

During Linaro 14.02 release, I noticed a Huawei D01 board with 16 ARM Cortex A15 core, but details were lacking. Charbax was a Linaro Connect Asia earlier this month, and he could film the board in action, and interview the development team about this server board, and software development. Huawei D01 specifications: Processor HiSilicon SoC with16 x ARM Cortex-A15 CPU Core @ max. 1.5GHz (up to 84000 DMIPS) Support for CPU configuration as AMP/SMP Configurable Big or Little endian. Default: Little endian System Memory – 2x 64bit DDR3 DRAM Dual Inline Memory up to 1600 MHz, Module(DIMM) sockets:(2)&(3) . Default capacity: 8GB, upgradeable to 64GB Storage – 2x 1Gb NOR Flash, 2x 512MB NAND Flash, 3x SATA III for 2.5″ hard drives or SSD, 1x SD card Connectivity – 2x 10/100/1000Mbit/s Gigabit Ethernet ports, 1x 10/100Mbit/s FE port Other Peripheral Interfaces 2x USB 2.0 Host ports 2x UART, 4x I2C, […]

Selecting the Best Adobe Flash Player in Linux for x86 and ARM

I’ve had countless and recurrent crashes caused by Adobe flash plugin either in Firefox and Chromium, mainly while playing videos from YouTube or other online video services that still mostly use flash, instead of HTML5. Adobe flash death is certain, but up to now it has been soooo slow, so I doubt that thing will truly die any time soon, and unfortunately it will probably be with us for many years to come. To work around the issue, I started by enabling Youtube HTML5 player, and try to play embedded videos inside YouTube instead of the orignal website. I still had crashes from time to time, and this method did not help with other video services. So I decided to check out what I could do to fix the issue. When you go to http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ you can check your flash version, and Adobe will also list the player version for […]

Dedicated Hosting Services on ARM Development Boards (Cubieboard2, Raspberry Pi, ODROID…)

At least two companies have recently launched hosting services using dedicated ARM servers based on low cost development boards: NanoXion with its NX-BOX service powered by PiBox (Raspberry Pi) and CubieBox (Cubieboard 2) microservers, and miniNodes with servers based on Cubieboard2 first, then ODROID development boards, and possibly AllWinner OptimusBoard once/if it becomes available. The PiBox will feature a Raspberry Pi Model B with 512 MB RAM, and 16GB Class 10 UHS-1 microSD card by Samsung, and the dual core Cubiebox comes with 1GB RAM and a Crucial M500 SATA III 120GB SSD. Both NX-BOXes run Linux Debian Server NX distribution, support instant remote reboot, with guaranteed 10 Mbps connectivity for IPv4 & IPv6, and unlimited bandwidth. The boards are all hosted in France. The company expects their ARM servers to be used as private cloud servers, backup servers, private chat servers, web servers, mail servers, DNS Servers, monitoring servers, and […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC