Mediatek MT65XX Category - CNX Software

September 16, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Linux 6.11 Release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.11 is out with Linus Torvalds’ announcement on the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML): I’m once again on the road and not in my normal timezone, but it’s Sunday afternoon here in Vienna, and 6.11 is out. The last week was actually pretty quiet and calm, which is nice to see. The shortlog is below for anybody who wants to look at the details, but it really isn’t very many patches, and the patches are all pretty small. Nothing in particular stands out – the biggest patch in here is for Hyper-V Confidential Computing documentation. Anyway, with this, the merge window will obviously open tomorrow, and I already have 40+ pull requests pending. That said, exactly _because_ I’m on the road, it will probably be a fairly slow start to the merge window, since not only am I on my laptop, there’s OSS Europe starting tomorrow and then the […]

January 8, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linux 6.7 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.7, following Linux 6.6 LTS a little over two months ago: So we had a little bit more going on last week compared to the holiday week before that, but certainly not enough to make me think we’d want to delay this any further. End result: 6.7 is (in number of commits: over 17k non-merge commits, with 1k+ merges) one of the largest kernel releases we’ve ever had, but the extra rc8 week was purely due to timing with the holidays, not about any difficulties with the larger release. The main changes this last week were a few DRM updates (mainly fixes for new hw enablement in this version – both amd and nouveau), some more bcachefs fixes (and bcachefs is obviously new to 6.7 and one of the reasons for the large number of commits), and then a few random […]

December 7, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Add WiFi connectivity to older USB printers with Orange Pi 3G-IoT-A and UoWPrint print server

I previously used an inexpensive CHIP board as a Linux printer and scanner server for the Canon MP250 USB multi-function printer. It took a while to make it work with a long list of instructions and even then the scanner function was not working very reliably. ValdikSS’s UoWPrint driverless printing and scanning server aims to simplify the process for older USB printers and also supports AirPrint and Mopria standards over WiFi. The older Orange Pi 3G-IoT-A board was the hardware of choice for this project due to its ultra-low price. The resulting product enables users to convert their old USB printer (or MFP) into a WiFi printer/MFP and print and scan without drivers from Windows, macOS, and Linux, as well as mobile operating systems such as iOS/Android. ValdikSS told CNX Software he spent a considerable amount of time backporting patches required to run modern Debian 12 to the kernel 3.2.67 […]

November 7, 2023November 7, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

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 […]

August 28, 2023August 28, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linux 6.5 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.5 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): So nothing particularly odd or scary happened this last week, so there is no excuse to delay the 6.5 release. I still have this nagging feeling that a lot of people are on vacation and that things have been quiet partly due to that. But this release has been going smoothly, so that’s probably just me being paranoid. The biggest patches this last week were literally just to our selftests. The shortlog below is obviously not the 6.5 release log, it’s purely just the last week since rc7. Anyway, this obviously means that the merge window for 6.6 starts tomorrow. I already have ~20 pull requests pending and ready to go, but before we start the next merge frenzy, please give this final release one last round of testing, ok? Linus The earlier […]

February 25, 2023February 26, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

$99 Motorola Defy Satellite Link enables 2-way satellite communications on smartphones through 3GPP NTN technology

Motorola Defy Satellite Link is a Bluetooth device that can affordably bring 2-way satellite communication to any smartphone thanks to the latest 3GPP NTN (Non-Terrestrial Network) technology implemented in the MediaTek MT6825 connecting to the Bullitt Satellite Connect platform. Satellite phones and hotspot has been around for years through products such as the Iridium Go! Satellite Wi-Fi hotspot that goes for over $1,000 without a data plan, pricing that does not make it conducive to mass adoption. But silicon vendors and phone manufacturers have started to add more affordable 2-way satellite connectivity to smartphones, for example with the Snapdragon Satellite initiative, currently using Iridium, but with plans to switch to 5G NTN in due time. Motorola Defy Satellite Link key features and specifications: SoC – MediaTek M6825 chip compliant with 3GPP R17 NTN standard (bands: 23/255/256), support for Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit (GEO) constellations GNSS – GPS, Glonass, Galileo, Beidou Host […]

February 17, 2023February 17, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

MediaTek Dimensity 7200 Armv9 Cortex-A715/A510 processor targets mainstream 5G smartphones

Manufactured with a 4nm processor, the MediaTek Dimensity 7200 is an octa-core Armv9 processor designed for mainstream smartphones. with two Cortex-A715 cores, six Cortex-A510 cores, a Mali-G610 MC4 GPU, as well as 5G, WiFi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity. So far, I had only seen Armv9 SoCs with a mix of Cortex-A510 “LITTLE” cores, Cortex-A710/A715 “big” core, and Cortex-X2 or Cortex-X3 “flagship cores” as found in the Dimensity 9200 processor, but the Dimensity 7200 is one of the first Armv9 processors – one other being the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 – without a Cortex-X core in order to provide a more affordable solution. MediaTek Dimensity 7200 specifications: CPU 2x Arm Cortex-A715 up to 2.8GHz 6x Arm Cortex-A510 2MB L3 cache GPU – Arm Mali-G610 MC4 with MediaTek HyperEngine 5.0 APU – MediaTek APU 650 AI accelerator DPU/VPU – MediaTek MiraVision 765 engine for display and 4K HDR video decoding/encoding Memory […]

December 13, 2022February 20, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Linux 6.1 LTS release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 6.1, likely to be an LTS kernel, last Sunday: So here we are, a week late, but last week was nice and slow, and I’m much happier about the state of 6.1 than I was a couple of weeks ago when things didn’t seem to be slowing down. Of course, that means that now we have the merge window from hell, just before the holidays, with me having some pre-holiday travel coming up too. So while delaying things for a week was the right thing to do, it does make the timing for the 6.2 merge window awkward. That said, I’m happy to report that people seem to have taken that to heart, and I already have two dozen pull requests pending for tomorrow in my inbox. And hopefully I’ll get another batch overnight, so that I can try to really get as […]