Compact fanless firewall appliance offers 6x 2.5GbE ports for $230 and up

Firewall appliance 6x 2.5GbE ports

KingNovy has introduced a small fanless firewall appliance powered by an Intel Celeron J4125 Gemini Lake Refresh processor, equipped with six 2.5GbE ports through Intel i225-V Rev 3 Ethernet controllers, and selling for as low as $230 for the barebone model. The system supports up to 32GB RAM, mSATA and 2.5-inch SATA storage, features HDMI output and four USB 3.0/2.0 ports, plus an RJ45 console port, and is said to work with pfSense 2.5.x, OPNsense 22.1, OpenWrt, ROS7, ESXI, Proxmox, CentOS, and more. Specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J4125 quad-core Gemini Lake Refresh processor @ 2.0 / 2.7 GHz (Turbo) / 2.4 GHz (Turbo all cores) with Intel UHD Graphics 600 @ 250/750 MHz; 10W TDP System Memory – Dual-channel Memory DDR4 (2400MHz) supporting up to 32GB RAM in total Storage – 1x mSATA socket, 2.5-inch SATA bay for SSD or HDD Video Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4K […]

Intel releases SDK for Cortex-M7 PSE found in Elkhart Lake processors

Intel PSE firmware SDK

Elkhart Lake processors integrate the Intel Programmable Services Engine (Intel PSE) offload engine for IoT workloads powered by an Arm Cortex-M7 microcontroller that handles real-time IO control using GPIO, I2C, and/or UART interfaces, and supports functions such as remote, out-of-band device management, network proxy, embedded controller, and sensor hub. Until now the firmware was only provided as a closed-source binary, and Coreboot developers published an open letter to open the source code for the PSE firmware last December, and it’s been successful with Intel releasing the Intel PSE SDK based on Zephyr OS. The SDK combines open-source components (code samples, services, etc…) released under a permissive Apache 2.0 license (“License A”), and closed-source libraries and tools released under an Intel license (“License B”) allowing the redistribution and use in binary form, without modification. You’ll find everything on Github including documentation explaining how to get started with the Zephyr SDK, the […]

PICO-TGU4-SEMI is a Tiger Lake mini PC for robotics and industrial IoT applications

Tiger Lake rugged mini PC

AAEON recently launched the PICO-TGU4-SEMI compact, rugged mini PC based on the company’s PICO-TGU4 Pico-ITX SBC powered by a choice of Intel Core i3/i5/i7 Tiger Lake UP3 processors, and designed for robotics and industrial IoT applications. The PICO-TGU4-SEMI embedded computer comes with up to 32GB RAM, SATA storage, support for SATA or NVMe SSD storage, HDMI output, 2.5GbE networking, two USB 3.2 ports, and more. PICO-TGU4-SEMI specifications: Tiger Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Core i7-1185G7E quad-core/8-thread processor @ 1.8GHz / 4.4GHz (Turbo) with Intel Iris Xe graphics; 15W TDP Intel Core i5-1145G7E quad-core/8-thread processor @1.5GHz /  to 4.1GHz (Turbo) with Intel Iris Xe graphics; 15W TDP Intel Core i3-1115G4E dual-core/4-thread processor @ 2.2GHz / 3.9GHz (Turbo) with Intel UHD graphics; 15W TDP Intel Celeron 6305E dual-core processor @ 1.8GHz with Intel UHD graphics; 15W TDP System Memory – Up to 32GB LPDDR4x 3200 MHz onboard memory with optional […]

Lakka 4.0 game emulator released with LibreELEC 10.0.2 and RetroArch 1.10.1

Lakka 4.0 release

Lakka 4.0 is the latest release of the game emulator based on LibreELEC 10.0.2 and RetroArch 1.10.1 frontend GUI for LibRetro game emulators cores. While Lakka was initially designed for Raspberry Pi boards in a way similar to RetroPie, it also works just fine on many other Arm platforms and PCs. Main changes to Lakka 4.0 compared to version 3.7: Build system based on LibreELEC 10.0.2 RetroArch updated to 1.10.1 Cores updated to their most recent versions superbroswar: added new libretro core sameduck: added new libretro core Mesa updated to 22.0.0 Mainline kernel updated to 5.10.103 (PC, Amlogic, Allwinner, NXP) Raspberry kernel updated to 5.10.95 Most arm devices switched to aarch64 Rockchip RK3288, RK3328 and RK3399 switched to mainline kernel 5.10.76 Added support for additional Allwinner and Amlogic devices (not tested on our side, as we do not own many of these devices) Nintendo Switch: complete rewrite of the port […]

Higole F7G Plus Review – An affordable rugged tablet tested with Ubuntu 20.04 & Windows 11

Higole F7G Plus rugged tablet review

Ruggedized industrial-use PCs are typically expensive so it is refreshing to see Higole F7G Plus, an Intel Gemini Lake Refresh tablet, being offered at an affordable price. Higole kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at functionality and performance running on Ubuntu and also its Windows performance. Hardware Overview The Higole F7G Plus is a 10.1 inch IPS touch screen rugged industrial fanless tablet that uses Intel’s 14 nm Gemini Lake Refresh N4120 processor which is a quad-core 4-thread 1.10 GHz Celeron processor boosting to 2.60 GHz with Intel’s UHD Graphics. Designwise, meeting the MIL-STD-810G standard which is the de facto ‘ruggedized’ standard for consumer products and covers whether the device can work in a broad range of environmental conditions including surviving dropping, is evidenced by the thick protective shell around the tablet. To ensure its IP67 Certification for waterproofing each of the ports are covered by detachable rubber […]

ECS Liva Z3 Celeron N4500 Jasper Lake mini PC becomes available for $195

Celeron N4500 mini PC

ECS Liva Z3 mini PC is now available with an Intel Celeron N4500 dual-core Jasper Lake processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash, and HDMI and mini DisplayPort 4K video output for $194.88 on Amazon. Both the Liva Z3 and Z3E mini PCs were introduced in December 2021 with a choice of Intel Pentium Silver N6000, or Celeron N5100/N4500 from the 11th generation Jasper Lake family, with the Liva Z3E  adding space for a 2.5-inch SATA drive and two RS-232 COM ports, but at this time, we could only find Liva Z3 with a Celeron N4500 for sale. ECS Liva Z3 specifications (for the model available on Amazon): SoC – Intel Celeron N4500 dual-core processor @ 1.1GHz / 2.8GHz (Burst frequency) with Intel UHD graphics; 6W TDP System Memory – 4GB DDR4 upgradable to up to 16GB via 2x SO-DIMM DDR4 socket Storage 64 GB eMMC 5.1 flash Support M.2 NVMe […]

3.5-inch Elkhart Lake SBC offers dual GbE, 4x M.2 sockets, 5G cellular support

AAEON GENE-EHL5 Elkhart Lake 3.5-inch SBC

AAEON GENE-EHL5 is a 3.5-inch Subcompact board based on Intel Atom x6000E Series, Pentium, and Celeron “Elkhart Lake” processors with four M.2 expansion slots for wireless connectivity (5G, WiFi, etc…) and NVMe modules, as well as two Gigabit Ethernet ports. The single board computer comes with one DDR4 SODIMM slot for up to 32GB IBECC memory, supports SATA and NVME storage, offers DisplayPort and HDMI, and eDP/LVDS video interface, as well as wide DC input from 9-36V, although there’s also a cost-down option for 12V DC input only. AAEON GENE-EHL5 specifications: Elkhart Lake SoC (one or the other) with Intel UHD graphics Intel Atom x6425RE quad-core processor @ 1.90 GHz; 12W TDP Intel Atom x6425E quad-core processor @ 2.00 GHz / 3.00 GHz (Turbo); 12W TDP Intel Atom x6211E dual-core processor @ 1.30 GHz / 3.00 GHz; 6W TDP Intel Pentium J6426 quad-core processor @ 2.00 GHz / 3.00 GHz; […]

Intel launches Alder Lake P-Series and U-Series mobile hybrid processors

Intel-Alder Lake P-Series and U-Series block diagram

Intel first unveiled the most powerful Alder Lake H-Series last year before the launch in January, and also introduced Alder Lake-S desktop IoT processors and Alder Lake U-Series and P-Series mobile IoT SoCs in early January. But now the company has announced the launch of the Alder Lake P-Series (28W) and U-Series (9W and 15 PBP) 12th generation mobile processors designed for “thin-and-light” laptops which should become available around March 2022. The block diagram of the 28W P-Series and 15W U-Series (source: product brief from Intel) shows both offer the same interfaces including eDP 1.4b, HDMI 2.0b, 2x PCIe Gen4, 12x PCIe Gen3, 2x SATA… and the same 50x25x12mm BGA package. But the 9W U-Series comes in a cost-optimized 28.5x19x11mm BGA package that does without SATA interfaces, a lower number of PCIe Gen3 interfaces (10 vs 12), USB 2.0 interfaces (6 vs 10), Thunderbolt 4 interfaces (2 vs 4), and […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC