96boards News - Page 6 of 13 - CNX Software

June 14, 2018June 14, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Hikey 970 Documentation, HiAI DDK, Linux Firmware Images, and Support Forums

Hikey 970 board has impressive specifications with Huawei Kirin 970 SoC featuring an octa-core Arm Cortex A73/A53 processor and an Arm Mali-G72-MP12 GPU, coupled with 6GB LPDDR4x and 64GB UFS storage. It’s also one of the first broadly available developer platforms equipped with a Neural Processing Unit for artificial intelligence applications. However when it launched in April, Hikey 970 documentation was lacking, and despite the board is supposed to run both Android (AOSP) and Linux distributions such as Ubuntu or Debian, so far only AOSP is shown in the download section, with Linux distributions “coming soon”. But if you want to start as soon as possible there are still some good news. First, some documentation for the board has been released on Github, including getting started guides, hardware documentation (schematics, user manual, etc..), and some instructions to build AOSP from source code, and flash it to the UFS storage. If […]

May 17, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

96Boards GPS Mezzanine is the First Add-on Board part of 96boards Community Mezzanine Initiative (Group Buy)

96Boards hardware development platforms support add-on boards called Mezzanines, and you’ll find a bunch of them on 96Boards website. Most are designed and manufactured by companies, but in order to bring more (individual) open source hardware developers on-board, the 96Boards Community Mezzanine initiative was launched to bring industry representatives and community members together. The idea is to encourage people to submit their KiCad/Altium 96boards’ mezzanine designs to the github repository, and the manufacturing costs of the most popular designs can be lowered by offering them through GroupGets group buying platform. The first of those boards to be launched is 96Boards GPS Mezzanine with the following specifications for the R1 board: Adafruit Ultimate GPS Module PA6H_1103854 – 66 channel w/10 Hz updates MTK3339 chipset -165 dBm sensitivity External u.FL antenna connector Fix and PPS signals brought to down baseboard Expansion – USB UART breakout, breakout headers for I2C, SPI, GPIO, and […]

April 16, 2018April 24, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Hikey 970 Development Board is Now Up for Pre-order for $299.99

Four A.I. development boards compliant with 96Boards specifications were announced at Linaro Connect HK 2018 last month: HiKey 970, Ultra96, as well as ROCK960 PRO & Enterprise Edition. So for we only knew pricing for Ultra96 ($249), but I’ve now noticed Hikey 970 “Super Edge AI Computing Platform” is now up for pre-order for $299.99 on Lenovator website, with shipping planned for the end of April. [Update: Also found on Seeed Studio for the same price] Hikey 970 specifications: SoC – Huawei/Hisilicon Kirin 970 with 4x Cortex A73 @ 2.36GHz, 4x Cortex A53 @ 1.8GHz, Arm Mali G72-MP12 GPU, NPU (Neural Processing Unit) with 256MAC/cycle @ 960MHz System Memory – 6GB 1866MHz, 4 Channel LPDDR4x Storage – 64GB UFS storage, micro SD card slot, PCIe Gen3 on M.2 M key connector Video Output – HDMI 1.4 type A up to 1080p60 (TBC), 1x 4-lane MIPI DSI (via HS expansion connector) […]

March 21, 2018July 26, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Edge Server SynQuacer E-Series 24-Core Arm PC is Now Available for $1,250 with 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Geforce GT 710 Video Card

Right before Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017, GIGABYTE, Socionext and Linaro unveiled a development platform / PC based on Socionext SC2A11 24-core Arm Cortex A53 processor, and whose motherboard complies with 96Boards Enterprise Edition (EE) specifications. I called the platform GIGABYTE Synquacer at the time, because GIGABYTE helped with the design, and the platform was called Synquacer, even during the demo at Linaro Connect. George Grey, Linaro CEO, talked about Synquacer against during Linaro Connect HK 2018 opening keynote, notably to demo the platform combined with Gyrfalcon Light-speeur PCIe card delivering 93TOPS at relatively low power for artificial intelligence applications. I wanted to find out if there were now updates with regards to software support, availability, and pricing. While searching for the product page, I found out it was now called “Edge Server SynQuacer E-Series“, and while GIGABYTE designed the board, they will probably not use their brand for this […]

March 19, 2018March 28, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

96Boards Unveils Four A.I. Developer Platforms: HiKey 970, Ultra96, ROCK960 PRO & Enterprise Edition

Many new processors include a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) – aka Neural Network Accelerator (NNA) – in order to speed up talks associated with artificial intelligence, such as object or other patterns recognitions. With Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2018, 96Boards has just unveiled four development boards specifically designed for artificial intelligence solution with Hikey 970 powered by Hisilicon Kirin 970 processor, Ultra96 based on Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ ZU3EG ARM+ FPGA SoC, and ROCK960 PRO & Enterprise Edition featuring the upcoming Rockchip RK3399Pro processor. Hikey 970 Preliminary specifications: SoC – Kirin 970 with 4x Cortex A73 @ 2.36GHz, 4x Cortex A53 @ 1.8GHz, Arm Mali G72-MP12 GPU, NPU with 256MAC/cycle @ 960MHz System Memory – 6GB 1866MHz, 4 Channel LPDDR4x Storage -64GB UFS storage, micro SD card slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4 up to 1080p60 Camera – 4 lanes CSI + 2 lanes CSI Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, wireless module, […]

February 24, 2018June 18, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Qualcomm Snapdragon 820E Launched for the Embedded Market, DragonBoard 820c Board Selling for $199

Qualcomm Snapdragon processors are mainly used in smartphones manufactured in high volume, and in the past if you contacted the company to use their processor for your custom project with a target yearly production of a few thousands pieces, they’d just ignore you. This started to change in late 2016 with the launch of Snapdragon 410E and 600E processors based on mobile version of Snapdragon 410 and 600 processors minus the modem, but instead targeting the embedded space and the Internet of Things, which anybody could purchase easily through Arrow Electronics, and offering a 10-year life cycle. Those are good if you are satisfied with entry-level or mid-range processor, but the company has now announced the launch of Snapdragon 820E for customers requiring better performance for their application. Snapdragon 820E specifications appears to be moslty the same as Snapdragon 820 except for the lack of X12 cellular modem: CPU – 4x Qualcomm […]

January 13, 2018January 13, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

HiKey 960 Android Development Board Gets a 4GB RAM Version for $250

Hikey 960 development board is one of the most powerful Arm boards on the market thanks to Huawei/Hisilicon Kirin 960 octa-core processor with four ARM Cortex A73 cores, four Cortex A53 cores, and a Mali-G71 MP8 GPU, fast storage with 32GB UFS 2.1 flash, and 3GB LPDDR3 memory. Like the earlier Hikey (620) board, the board is also an official reference board for AOSP, so you should be able to run the latest Android version, and also play with sensors using Neonkey SensorHub 96Boards mezzanine board. If you are somehow limited by the 3GB RAM on the board, you can rejoice as Seeed Studio has just launched a 4GB RAM version selling for $249, or about $10 extra. Note that shipping is only scheduled for February 2, 2018, so those are pre-orders. The rest of the specifications for Hikey 960 4GB RAM version are unchanged: SoC – Huawei Kirin 960 […]

December 13, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Geniatech & Arrow Are Working on Tablet Docks for 96Boards Development Boards

Geniatech has been working on some interesting tablet docks specifically designed for 96boards compliant hardware platform. They showcased a prototype at Linaro Connect US 2017 with their “almost-96Boards-compliant” Developer Board IV based on Snapdragon 410E which adds an Ethernet port to 96Boards CE specifications.The model showcased comes with a 10.1″ FullHD touchscreen display, and should work with all 96Boards CE edition boards once launched. JinJun Fang, CEO of Geniatech, also mentioned they are discussing with Arrow Electronics, which will manage distributions, about other 7″ and 13″ models. The video – by Charbax – embedded below was filmed in September 2017, but AFAIK the 96Boards tablet docks have not launched yet, and Geniatech did not reply to request for information, so we’ll have to wait a little longer before launch. Mr Fang also mentioned a new Snapdragon 820 based board coming later-on, maybe Developer Board V? Via ARMdevices Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc […]