LEDE 17.01.0 “Reboot” Router Operating System Released

LEDE (Linux Embedded Development Environment) is a fork of OpenWrt after some disagreements between developers, and while there are talks about merging OpenWrt and LEDE development, this is not done yet, and LEDE 17.01 has been released a few days ago. Some of notable LEDE 17.01 changes include: Linux kernel updated to version 4.4.50 (from 3.18 in Chaos Calmer) Update to dnsmasq 2.76, busybox 1.25.1, mbedtls 2.4.0, openssl 1.0.2k Improved Security Features Improved Networking Support Added new targets: apm821xx (AppliedMicro APM821xx) arc770 (Synopsys DesignWare ARC 770D) archs38 (Synopsys DesignWare ARC HS38) armvirt (QEMU ARM Virtual Machine) ipq806x (Qualcomm Atheros IPQ806X) layerscape (NXP Layerscape) zynq (Xilinx Zynq 7000 SoCs) Reorganized x86 target – Drop dedicated Xen DomU target, merged with x86/generic * Enable AES-NI support Build system improvements Image Builder / SDK – Rework library bundling to allow for better portability between different Linux distributions, added support for building kernel modules […]

HeliX2-COMExpress Module Powered by Applied Micro HeliX 2 ARMv8 Processor Supports up to 32GB RAM, 10GbE Ethernet, SATA 3, and PCie

Theobroma Systems has introduced a new COM Express module, named HeliX2-COMExpress, powered by Applied Micro HeliX 2 ARMv8 server SoC and probing 10GBe, SATA, and PCIe connectivity, as well as SO-DIMM slots for up to  32GB RAM for embedded industrial applications.   HeliX2-COMExpress specifications: Processor – Applied Micro APM887104-H2 “HeliX 2” with 2 to 4 ARMv8 cores up to 2.0GHz,  32KB L1 I-cache and 32KB L1 D-Cache (per core) with parity-protection, shared 256KB L2 cache (per pair of cores) with ECC protection, and 2MB L3 cache with ECC protection System Memory – 2x 204-pin SO-DIMM slot for up to 32GB DDR3 @ 1600MHz Storage – Serial ATA SATA Gen 3 (integrated), up to 16MBit SPI NOR flash on-module, up to 128GB eMMC flash on-module Connectivity 1x 10 Gigabit-Ethernet (XAUI) 1x 1000Base-T with on-module 10/100/1000 PHY 1x RGMII Gigabit Ethernet 2x SGMII Gigabit Ethernet USB – 3x USB 2.0 (one dual-role […]

Linaro 15.04 Release with Linux 4.0 and Android 5.1

Linaro 15.04 has been released with Linux 4.0 (baseline), Linux 3.10.74 and 3.14.39 (LSK), and Android 5.1.1. Other noticeable changes include support for the new DragonBoard 410c 96boards compliant board, the addition of A80 Optimusboard (Allwinner A80) to Android Kitkat build, Hisilicon D01 support added to the Debian installer, and support for Ubuntu ARM64 Gnome rootfs. Highlights of the release: Linux Linaro 4.0-2015.04 updated linaro-android topic: aosp/android-3.18 branch has been merged GATOR topic: version 5.20.1 updated integration-linaro-vexpress64 topic by ARM LT (FVP Base and Foundation models, and Juno support) updated topic from Qualcomm LT (IFC6410 and DB410c boards support): Resource Power Manager (RPM) – MSM Shared Memory Driver (SMD) driver quite some changes under drivers/gpu/drm/ related to adv7511 and adv7533 support ASoC support for QCOM platforms external Connector Class (extcon) support (used for USB VBUS and ID detection) Linaro builds of AOSP 15.04 baseline updated to android-5.1.1_r1 updated Nexus 10 […]

HPC Performance & Power Usage Comparison – Intel Xeon E3 vs Intel Atom C2720 vs Applied Micro X-Gene 1 vs IBM Power 8

Last year, the CERN published a paper comparing Applied Micro X-Gene (64-bit ARM) vs Intel Xeon (64-bit x86) Performance and Power Usage, and they’ve now added IBM Power 8 and Intel Atom Avoton C2750 processor to the mix in a new presentation entitled “A look beyond x86: OpenPOWER & AArch64“. So four systems based on Intel Xeon E3-1285L, Intel Atom C2750, Applied Micro X-Gene 1, and IBM Power 8 were compared, all running Fedora 21, except the HP Moonshot 1500 ARM plarform running Ubuntu 14.04 and an older kernel. All four systems use gcc 4.9.2, and Racktivity intelligent PDUs were used for power measurement. I’ll just share some of their results, you can read the presentation, or go through the benchmark results to find out more. HEP-SPEC06 is a new High Energy Physics (HEP) benchmark for measuring CPU performance developed by the HEPiX Benchmarking Working Group, and here it’s not […]

Gigabyte MP30-AR0 is an ARM Server Motherboard Powered by Applied Micro X-Gene 1 SoC

So far, it’s been pretty hard to buy ARM server motherboards for individuals, as most, if not all, products were reserved to corporate entities, but with Gigabyte MP30-AR0 server motherboard featuring the first generation Applied Micro X-Gene 64-bit ARM processor this might be about to change. [Update: As mentioned in comments I was probably wrong here, since the motherboard is listed on the Gigabyte’s B2B website, and not its B2C website]. MP30-AR0 specifications: Processor – AppliedMicro X-Gene 1 processor with 8 ARMv8 cores up to 2.4GHz (TDP 45W) System Memory – 8 x DIMM slots, Single, dual rank UDIMM modules @ 1333/1600 NHz supported (up to 16GB) Storage – 4x SATA III 6Gb/s ports + 1x SD card slot Connectivity – 2x 10GbE SFP+ LAN ports (integrated), 2x GbE LAN ports (Marvell 88E1512), 1x 10/100/1000 management LAN Graphics – Video Integrated in Aspeed AST2400. 2D Video Graphic Adapter with PCIe […]

Applied Micro XC-1 Server Development Board (Mustang) is Now Available to Developers for $895

64-bit ARM server boards such as Applied Micro XC-1 Mustang and AMD Opteron A1100 development kit have been available since the beginning of the year, but only to selected companies, and at a price of several thousand dollars per board. Applied Micro is now offering their X-Gene based XC-1 development board to individual developers for $895, or about ~40% discount to the $1495 company now have to pay for the board. It may also be available from distributors (part number: EV-883208-X1-PRB-1). XC-1 board (codenamed Mustang) technical specifications: SoC – Applied Micro X-GeneAPM883208-X1 8-core ARM 64-bit @ 1.6 GHz System Memory – 2x DDR3 UDIMM memory slots up fitted with 2x 4GB sticks (8 GB), upgradable to 16GB Storage – 1x 128Mbit SPI NOR Flash for booting, 1x SATA 3 ports, SD card slot, 1024Kb and 256Kb I2C EEPROM Connectivity – 2x Gigagit port (SGMII), 10 GbE SFP+ cage, 1x Gigabit […]

Applied Micro X-Gene (64-bit ARM) vs Intel Xeon (64-bit x86) Performance and Power Usage

A group of researcher at CERN have evaluated Applied Micro X-Gene 1 64-bit ARM XC-1 development board against Intel Xeon E5-2650 and Xeon Phi SE10/7120 systems, and one of them, David Abdurachmanov, presented their findings at ACAT’ 14 conference (Advanced Computing and Analysis Techniques) by listing some of the issues they had to port their software to 64-bit ARM, and performance efficiency of the three systems for data processing of High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments like those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where performance-per-watt is important, as computing systems may scale to several hundred thousands cores. Intel Xeon Phi platform based on Many Integrated Cores (MIC) computer architecture was launched the HPC market, and contrary to the table above features 61 physical cores. Applied X-Gene 1 (40nm process) was used instead of X-Gene 2 built on 28-nm process which was not available at the time. The ARM platform ran […]

Linux 3.17 Released

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.17 on Sunday: So the past week was fairly calm, and so I have no qualms about releasing 3.17 on the normal schedule (as opposed to the optimistic “maybe I can release it one week early” schedule that was not to be). However, I now have travel coming up – something I hoped to avoid when I was hoping for releasing early. Which means that while 3.17 is out, I’m not going to be merging stuff very actively next week, and the week after that is LinuxCon EU… What that means is that depending on how you want to see it, the 3.18 merge window will either be three weeks, or alternatively just have a rather slow start. I don’t mind getting pull requests starting now (in fact, I have a couple already pending in my inbox), but I likely won’t start processing […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC