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September 4, 2019September 4, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

Khadas VIM3L SBC up for pre-order for $50 and up, VIM1 & VIM2 Price Reduced

Shenzhen Wesion recently unveiled Khadas VIM3L SBC designed for HTPC / media center use cases. The board is based on Khadas VIM3 PCB but replaces the powerful Amlogic A311D processor by Amlogic S905D3 processor that should be just as good for video playback, but enable much cheaper hardware. Khadas VIM3L Pre-orders The board is not quite available yet, but the company has started to take pre-orders for Khadas VIM3L at discounted prices either as a bare board with Android 9.0 pre-installed ($49.99), or as a CoreELEC HTPC kit with enclosure, heatsink, WiFi antennas, and IR remote control ($69.99). Both feature Amlogic S905D3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor coupled with 2GB LPDDR4(X) RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, and support 4Kp60 video output and playback with HDR support. Prices will increase with time as follows: September 3-16 (Early Bird) – $49.99 and $69.99 for the board and HTPC kit respectively September 17 – October 7 […]

July 14, 2019August 4, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

ODROID-H2 Review – Part 2: Ubuntu 19.04

After many months of delays due to Intel not mass-producing Gemini Lake processors, Hardkernel started selling ODROID-H2 again, more exactly ODROID-H2 Rev. B, and the end of last month, and the company sent me a full kit for evaluation. You can check out ODROID-H Rev. B with Type 3 case and the assembly instructions in the first part of the review. I’ve now had time to play with the board using the pre-installed Ubuntu 19.04 operating systems so I’ll report my experience in this second part. Note that ODROID-H2 does not rely on a custom version of Ubuntu, and instead you can download and flash Ubuntu 18.04 or 19.04 ISO directly from Ubuntu website. First Boot and System Information I had already connected two SATA drives inside the enclosure, one SSD and one HDD, but before booting the device I connected an HDMI cable, one Ethernet cable, USB keyboard & […]

June 28, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

DisplayPort 2.0 to Support 16K Displays thanks to its 80 Gbps Bandwidth

4K monitors and TVs are now very common, and 8K displays, media players and camera are just coming to market and there’s still pretty expensive and content is basically nonexistent. 8K displays must be quite large or viewers must sit really close to get any benefit over 4K, but some people think 16K displays will be a thing in the not-to-distant future. Announced in 2016, DisplayPort 1.4 took care of 8K 60Hz output thanks to a 32.4 Gbps link bandwidth and compression, but the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has now announced DisplayPort 2.0 standard with support for one 16K display at up to 60 Hz, or two 4K displays at up to 144 Hz with HDR thanks to a 80 Gbps link bandwidth / 77.4 Gbps payload bandwidth. DisplayPort 2.0 will work with either native DP connectors or USB Type-C connectors with DisplayPort Alt Mode for video and audio. […]

June 26, 2019June 26, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 26 Comments

4K Video Playback on Raspberry Pi 4 with LibreELEC (Alpha)

In my short Raspberry Pi 4 review, I tested 4K video output and playback in Raspbian, and sadly neither are working properly, with video output stuck to 1080p60 even after selecting 4K HDMI in the settings and yes, I double checked for “hdmi_enable_4k=1” in config.txt, while H.265 video playback is still clearly using software decode in both VLC and omxplayer. However, LibreELEC team announced support for Raspberry Pi 4 in LibreELEC 9.2 Alpha1 release based on Kodi 18.3 and Linux 4.19.x. So I downloaded LibreELEC-RPi4.arm-9.1.001.img.gz and flash it to a microSD card with balenaEtcher. The good news is that I could manually set the resolution to 3840×2160 and confirm it works with my TV, but the refresh is limited to 30 Hz maximum. Other refresh rates currently available include 23.98 Hz, 24 Hz, 25 Hz, and 29.97 Hz. The hardware is capable if 4K 60Hz, so it’s just a question […]

June 24, 2019June 30, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 63 Comments

Raspberry Pi 4 Benchmarks & Mini Review

Raspberry Pi 4 has just been released with many improvements over Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ including a faster processor, a proper Gigabit Ethernet port, USB 3.0 interfaces, and 4K video support. That’s the theory, but how does it work in practice? I can now let you know as I’ve received a Raspberry Pi 4 sample courtesy of Cytron, and ran some tests and benchmarks on the very latest boards from the Raspberry Pi foundation. System Info Before starting with the benchmarks, let’s go through some basic system info:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /etc/issue
Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 \n \l

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 4.19.46-v7l+ #866 SMP Fri Jun 7 18:00:39 BST 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root        13G  4.7G  7.4G  39% /
devtmpfs        334M     0  334M   0% /dev
tmpfs           463M     0  463M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           463M  6.4M  456M   2% /run
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           463M     0  463M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p6  253M   40M  213M  16% /boot
tmpfs            93M     0   93M   0% /run/user/1000
/dev/sda4       200G  175G   24G  89% /media/pi/USB3_BTRFS
/dev/sda2       241G  181G   48G  80% /media/pi/USB3_EXT4
/dev/sda1       245G  182G   63G  75% /media/pi/USB3_NTFS

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo 
processor	: 0
model name	: ARMv7 Processor rev 3 (v7l)
BogoMIPS	: 270.00
Features	: half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt vfpd32 lpae evtstrm crc32 
CPU implementer	: 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant	: 0x0
CPU part	: 0xd08
CPU revision	: 3

....
processor	: 3
model name	: ARMv7 Processor rev 3 (v7l)
BogoMIPS	: 270.00
Features	: half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt vfpd32 lpae evtstrm crc32 
CPU implementer	: 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant	: 0x0
CPU part	: 0xd08
CPU revision	: 3

Hardware	: BCM2835
Revision	: a03111
Serial		: 00000000ea51204b

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /etc/issue

Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 \n \l

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ uname -a

Linux raspberrypi 4.19.46-v7l+ #866 SMP Fri Jun 7 18:00:39 BST 2019 armv7l GNU/Linux

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

/dev/root 13G 4.7G 7.4G 39% /

devtmpfs 334M 0 334M 0% /dev

tmpfs 463M 0 463M 0% /dev/shm

tmpfs 463M 6.4M 456M 2% /run

tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock

tmpfs 463M 0 463M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup

/dev/mmcblk0p6 253M 40M 213M 16% /boot

tmpfs 93M 0 93M 0% /run/user/1000

/dev/sda4 200G 175G 24G 89% /media/pi/USB3_BTRFS

/dev/sda2 241G 181G 48G 80% /media/pi/USB3_EXT4

/dev/sda1 245G 182G 63G 75% /media/pi/USB3_NTFS

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor : 0

model name : ARMv7 Processor rev 3 (v7l)

BogoMIPS : 270.00

Features : half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt vfpd32 lpae evtstrm crc32

CPU implementer : 0x41

CPU architecture: 7

CPU variant : 0x0

CPU part : 0xd08

CPU revision : 3

....

processor : 3

model name : ARMv7 Processor rev 3 (v7l)

BogoMIPS : 270.00

Features : half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt vfpd32 lpae evtstrm crc32

CPU implementer : 0x41

CPU architecture: 7

CPU variant : 0x0

CPU part : 0xd08

CPU revision : 3

Hardware : BCM2835

Revision : a03111

Serial : 00000000ea51204b

$ inxi -Fc0
System:
  Host: raspberrypi Kernel: 4.19.46-v7l+ armv7l bits: 32 Console: tty 1 
  Distro: Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:
  Type: ARM Device System: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.1 details: BCM2835 
  rev: a03111 serial: 00000000ea51204b 
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: ARMv7 v7l variant: cortex-a72 bits: 32 
  type: MCP 
  Speed: 1500 MHz min/max: 600/1500 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1500 2: 1500 
  3: 1500 4: 1500 
Graphics:
  Device-1: bcm2835-vc4 driver: vc4_drm v: N/A 
  Device-2: bcm2835-hdmi driver: N/A 
  Display: tty server: X.org 1.20.4 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev 
  tty: 80x24 
  Message: Advanced graphics data unavailable in console. Try -G --display 
Audio:
  Device-1: bcm2835-audio driver: bcm2835_audio 
  Device-2: bcm2835-hdmi driver: N/A 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.46-v7l+ 
Network:
  Message: No ARM data found for this feature. 
  IF-ID-1: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full 
  mac: dc:a6:32:00:9e:9c 
  IF-ID-2: wlan0 state: up mac: dc:a6:32:00:9e:9d 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 946.35 GiB used: 540.58 GiB (57.1%) 
  ID-1: /dev/mmcblk0 vendor: SanDisk model: SL16G size: 14.84 GiB 
  ID-2: /dev/sda type: USB vendor: Seagate model: Expansion size: 931.51 GiB 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 12.68 GiB used: 4.71 GiB (37.1%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/mmcblk0p7 
  ID-2: /boot size: 252.0 MiB used: 39.3 MiB (15.6%) fs: vfat 
  dev: /dev/mmcblk0p6 
Sensors:
  Message: No sensors data was found. Is sensors configured? 
Info:
  Processes: 179 Uptime: 4h 37m Memory: 1000.5 MiB used: 324.1 MiB (32.4%) 
  gpu: 76.0 MiB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.32

$ inxi -Fc0

System:

Host: raspberrypi Kernel: 4.19.46-v7l+ armv7l bits: 32 Console: tty 1

Distro: Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)

Machine:

Type: ARM Device System: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.1 details: BCM2835

rev: a03111 serial: 00000000ea51204b

CPU:

Topology: Quad Core model: ARMv7 v7l variant: cortex-a72 bits: 32

type: MCP

Speed: 1500 MHz min/max: 600/1500 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1500 2: 1500

3: 1500 4: 1500

Graphics:

Device-1: bcm2835-vc4 driver: vc4_drm v: N/A

Device-2: bcm2835-hdmi driver: N/A

Display: tty server: X.org 1.20.4 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev

tty: 80x24

Message: Advanced graphics data unavailable in console. Try -G --display

Audio:

Device-1: bcm2835-audio driver: bcm2835_audio

Device-2: bcm2835-hdmi driver: N/A

Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.46-v7l+

Network:

Message: No ARM data found for this feature.

IF-ID-1: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full

mac: dc:a6:32:00:9e:9c

IF-ID-2: wlan0 state: up mac: dc:a6:32:00:9e:9d

Drives:

Local Storage: total: 946.35 GiB used: 540.58 GiB (57.1%)

ID-1: /dev/mmcblk0 vendor: SanDisk model: SL16G size: 14.84 GiB

ID-2: /dev/sda type: USB vendor: Seagate model: Expansion size: 931.51 GiB

Partition:

ID-1: / size: 12.68 GiB used: 4.71 GiB (37.1%) fs: ext4

dev: /dev/mmcblk0p7

ID-2: /boot size: 252.0 MiB used: 39.3 MiB (15.6%) fs: vfat

dev: /dev/mmcblk0p6

Sensors:

Message: No sensors data was found. Is sensors configured?

Info:

Processes: 179 Uptime: 4h 37m Memory: 1000.5 MiB used: 324.1 MiB (32.4%)

gpu: 76.0 MiB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.32

For reference, you’ll find Raspberry Pi 4 Linux boot log here. Phoronix benchmarks Let’s go ahead and install the latest version of Phoronix benchmarks:

sudo apt install php-cli php-gd php-xml php-zip 
wget http://phoronix-test-suite.com/releases/repo/pts.debian/files/phoronix-test-suite_8.8.1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i phoronix-test-suite_8.8.1_all.deb

sudo apt install php-cli php-gd php-xml php-zip

wget http://phoronix-test-suite.com/releases/repo/pts.debian/files/phoronix-test-suite_8.8.1_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i phoronix-test-suite_8.8.1_all.deb

Now let’s run the test to compare the performance of Raspberry Pi 4 model B to some other Arm Linux boards including Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.

phoronix-test-suite benchmark 1709271-TY-1704029RI26

1	phoronix-test-suite benchmark 1709271-TY-1704029RI26

For reference, my office has an […]

June 24, 2019June 25, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 140 Comments

Raspberry Pi 4 Features Broadcom BCM2711 Processor, Up to 4GB RAM

Long expected, the Raspberry Pi 4 model B has finally launched, and it should not disappoint with a much more powerful Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 processor clocked at up to 1.5 GHz, 1 to 4GB LPDDR4, 4K H.265 video decoding and output support, a proper Gigabit Ethernet port, as well as USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports. Raspberry Pi 4 comes with all those extra features, but the form factor remains the same, and importantly the price is still $35 for the version with 1GB RAM, making Raspberry Pi alternatives suddenly much less interesting. Raspberry Pi 4 specifications: SoC – Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARMv8) @ 1.5GHz with VideoCore VI GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics System Memory – 1GB, 2GB or 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – microSD card slot Video Output & Display I/F 2x micro HDMI ports up to 4Kp60 (Currently 1080p60 max. in dual-display configuration, although 2x 4Kp30 is […]

May 29, 2019May 29, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

MediaTek 5G SoC to Feature Arm Cortex-A77 Processor & Mali-G77 GPU

It did not take long this time. Just a couple of days after Arm announced their latest Cortex-A77 CPU and Mali-G77 GPU IP blocks, MediaTek unveiled an upcoming 5G processor based on their Helio M70 modem, an unspecified number of Arm Cortex-A77 cores, a Mali-G77 GPU, all manufactured using a 7nm FinFET process. The company did not bother finding a name for the processor nor provided details specifications before the announcement, but here’s what we know about the first MediaTek 5G SoC: CPU- Arm Cortex-A77 cores GPU- Arm Mali-G77 NPU – APU 3.0 with support for advanced AI applications including imaging Video – 4K60 video encode and decode Camera – 80MP ISP Cellular Connectivity – Helio M70 5G modem with peak 4.7 Gbps download using sub-6GHz bands, support for standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) 5G networks Process – TSMC’s 7nm FinFET Samples will be available in Q4 2019, and commercial […]

May 26, 2019May 26, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Allwinner V316 Processor is made for Low-Cost “True” 4K 30 FPS Cameras

Allwinner V-Series processors target camera applications, especially sports and action cameras, and we’ve already coverd Allwinner V3 single core Arm Cortex-A7 processor for 1080p60 / 4K15 cameras, as well as Allwinner V5 quad core Cortex-A7 processor for 4K30 cameras enhanced with artificial intelligence capabilities. Allwinner has showcased and/or unveiled more Cortex-A7 processors at CES Asia 2019 such as Allwinner R328 for voice applications, or Allwinner T7 for automotive dashboards, as well as a new camera processor called Allwinner V316 with two Arm Cortex-A7 cores, apparently the same 4K @ 30 fps H.265/H.264 encoder as in V5, but without AI engine architecture. Allwinner V316 key features and preliminary specifications: CPU – Dual core Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz ISP – HawkView 6.0 image processor with 2D/3D intelligent noise reduction, frame width dynamic synthesis, sharpening enhancement, specific color enhancement and other image pre-processing techniques Video – 4K Smart H.264/H.265 video encoder […]