Renesas MCU Category - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

March 13, 2025 by Debashis Das - No Comments

Renesas RZ/V2N low-power AI MPU integrates up to 15 TOPS AI power, Mali-C55 ISP, dual MIPI camera support

Renesas has recently introduced the RZ/V2N low-power Arm Cortex-A55/M33 microprocessor designed for machine learning (ML) and computer vision applications. It features the company’s DRP-AI3 coprocessor, delivering up to 15 TOPS of INT8 “pruned” compute performance at 10 TOPS/W efficiency, making it a lower-power alternative to the RZ/V2H. Built for mid-range AI workloads, it includes four Arm Cortex-A55 cores (1.8GHz), a Cortex-M33 sub-CPU (200MHz), an optional 4K image signal processor, H.264/H.265 hardware codecs, an optional Mali-G31 GPU, and a dual-channel four-lane MIPI CSI-2 interface. The chip is around 38% smaller than the RZ/V2H MPU and operates without active cooling. The RZ/V2N is suitable for applications like endpoint vision AI, robotics, and industrial automation. Renesas RZ/V2N specifications CPU Application Processor – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ 1.8 GHz (0.9V) / 1.1 GHz (0.8V) L1 cache – 32KB I-cache (with parity) + 32KB D-cache (with ECC) per core L3 cache – 1MB (with ECC, […]

February 21, 2025February 21, 2025 by Debashis Das - No Comments

Renesas RA4L1 ultra-low-power MCU family offers 168 µA/MHz operation, dual-bank flash, capacitive touch

Renesas has recently introduced the RA4L1 ultra-low-power Arm Cortex-M33 MCU family along with two evaluation/development boards. This new lineup consists of 14 ultra-low-power devices based on an 80 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 processor with TrustZone support and designed for metering, IoT sensing, smart locks, digital cameras, and human-machine interface (HMI) applications. The RA4L1 MCU family offers high power efficiency at 168 µA/MHz while active and a standby current of 1.70 µA while retaining SRAM. Additionally, they support segment LCD, capacitive touch, USB-FS, CAN FD, low-power UART, multiple serial interfaces (SPI, QSPI, I2C, I3C, SSI), ADC, DAC, real-time clock, and security features like the RSIP security engine with TRNG, AES, ECC, and Hash. Renesas RA4L1 microcontroller Renesas RA4L1 specifications MCU core Arm Cortex-M33 core (Armv8-M) Up to 80 MHz operating frequency Arm Memory Protection Unit (MPU) 8 secure regions (MPU_S) 8 non-secure regions (MPU_NS) CoreSight ETM-M33 Dual SysTick timers (secure & non-secure) […]

February 2, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit Review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.10 and the importance of power limits

Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit Ubuntu 24.10 Review

I’ve already reviewed the Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit with Windows 11 Home, and today, I’ll report my experience with Linux on the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V mini PC using Ubuntu 24.10 operating system. I would usually review systems with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS OS, but considering the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V SoC is so new, I installed Ubuntu 24.10 when I tested whether disabling VT-d (IOMMU) would improve Intel Arc GPU performance (it does to some extent), and it turns out it was a good decision because Ubuntu 24.04 requires lots of fixes and workarounds to work the Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit, at least until Ubuntu 24.04.2 is released later this month with a more recent kernel. Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit – Ubuntu 24.10 system information My Ubuntu 24.10 installed has both Linux 6.11 (default) and Linux 6.13 kernels, but I did most […]

January 29, 2025March 3, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 36 Comments

Radxa Orion O6 Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Debian 12 installation, and first benchmarks

Radxa sent me a sample of the Orion O6 mini-ITX motherboard for review. The system is powered by an CIX P1 (CD8180) 12-core Armv9 processor, equipped with 16GB RAM, and offers features like 5GbE, HDMI and DisplayPort, a PCIe Gen4 x16 slot, and more. It’s one of the most anticipated boards of the first part of 2025 since it’s powerful, offers a good performance/value ratio, and eventually promises to boot any ISO Arm64 image through an open-source BIOS / EDKII bootloader. I’ll start this review with an unboxing, NVMe SSD and WiFi module installation, and a short tutorial showing how to install Debian 12 operating systems before getting some system information and running a few benchmarks. In a few weeks, I’ll publish a more detailed review with features testing and more benchmarks to see what works and what doesn’t at this very early stage. Radxa Orion O6 unboxing I received […]

January 20, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Disabling VT-d improves Intel Arc GPU Linux performance on Meteor Lake and newer SoCs

Improve Intel Arc GPU performance Linux VT-d disabled

In this post, I’ll check whether disabling VT-d virtualization support may improve the performance of the Intel Arc GPU in recent Meteor Lake or Lunar Lake SoC using a Khadas Mind Maker Kit with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU with Intel Arc 140V graphics running Ubuntu 24.10. A few days ago, I read a post on Phoronix about Intel publishing tips to improve the performance of Intel GPUs in Linux: Keep the system updated with the latest kernel and Mesa versions. Ensure SoC firmware is up-to-date. These firmware updates currently require installing the Windows graphics driver; firmware updates via fwupd are in progress. Use Wayland where possible, as it supports additional modifiers for better performance. For MTL (Meteor Lake) and newer integrated GPUs, disable VT-d if virtualization is not needed. For discrete GPUs: Enable ReBAR_ Enable ASPM_ I was especially curious about the line about disabling VT-d virtualization […]

January 15, 2025January 19, 2025 by Paisit Wongsongsarn - 7 Comments

SONOFF MINI-D Review – A Matter-enabled dry contact WiFi switch tested with eWeLink, Home Assistant, and Apple Home

SONOFF sent us a sample of the MINI-D Wi-Fi smart switch with a dry contact design for review. If you’re familiar with the larger SONOFF 4CH Pro model, which features four channels, the MINI-D operates similarly but is smaller in size and comes with the latest software features. The principle of a dry contact is that the relay contacts are not directly connected to the device’s power supply circuit. Instead, the contacts are isolated and require an external power source to supply power to the load. Make it flexible to use the SONOFF Mini-D in various scenarios such as controlling garage doors, thermostats, or high-current electrical devices through a contactor, like water pumps. It can also manage low-power DC devices such as solenoid valves or small electric motors (<8W). Because the power supplied to the MINI-D and the power passed through its relay can come from different sources, it offers […]

January 5, 2025February 2, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Khadas Mind Maker Kit review – Part 2: Windows 11 Home on an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V AI mini PC

I’ve already gone through the specifications and an unboxing of the “Khadas Mind 2 AI Maker Kit” powered by an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V “Lunar Lake” processor delivering up to 115 TOPS of AI performance and equipped with 32GB LPDDR5X RAM and a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD in the first part of the review. I’ve now spent time with the mini PC/developer kit which is now simply called “Khadas Mind Maker Kit”, and I will report my experience with the Windows 11 Home 24H2 operating system in the second part of the review testing features, running benchmarks including an AI benchmark, evaluating networking and storage performance, testing the thermal design while under stress, and taking measurements for fan noise and power consumption. It looks like some AI features may finally be usable on Windows, but I’ll test that in a separate post since everything is new and Microsoft Copilot+, […]

December 10, 2024December 9, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Arduino Core for Zephyr beta released – Let’s give it a try!

Last July, Arduino announced plans to switch from the soon-to-be deprecated Arm Mbed to Zephyr RTOS, and the company has now outed the first beta release of “Arduino Core for Zephyr OS” for a range of boards. From the user’s perspective, this should not change anything. However, there are massive changes under the hood and Arduino sketches are built and executed differently with the Arduino Core for Zephyr. Some highlights of the new Zephyr-based Arduino core implementation include: Dynamic sketch loading – Sketches are compiled as ELF files and dynamically loaded by a precompiled Zephyr-based firmware. Zephyr subsystems support threading, inter-process communication, and real-time scheduling. Fast compiling and smaller binaries since a thin layer of user code and libraries are compiled, while the rest of the ZephyrOS is already binary. You can get started straightaway with the code and instructions on GitHub. You’ll need Arduino 2.x.x for this to work. […]