mips News - Page 14 of 19 - CNX Software

December 5, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

MIPS Creator CI20 Development Board is Now Available for $65

When Imagination Technologies first announced their developer program for MIPS Creator CI20 board, they did not disclose the price, but based on the specifications I estimated that a decent price would be $70 o $80. The company has now announced broad availability of the board, which can be pre-ordered for just $65 or 50 GBP depending on the continent you live in, with shipping scheduled for the end of January 2015. This development board is based on Ingenic JZ4780 dual core MIPS processor with 1GB DDR3, 8GB flash, and features an HDMI output up to 1080p, Audio in and out, a Fast Ethernet RJ45 port, a Wireless module with Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi, an IR receiver, and expansion headers. Several projects have already been ported by developers who got their free board a few months, ago including XBMC/Kodi, several games such as Spiral Episode 1, and beside Android 4.4 and […]

November 13, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Ingenic Unveils Newton2 Platform for Wearables with M200 Dual Core SoC

Ingenic Newton is a development platform for wearables powered by Ingenic JZ4775, an application processor mostly used in tablets. Many companies are now making SoCs speficially designed for wearables with a powerful application core, and a low power core serving as a sensor hub, an Ingenic M200 SoC found in the new Ingenic Newton2 platform, uses the sample principle by combinging a MIPS XBurst processor @ 1.2GHz with a low power MIPS XBurst core @ 300MHz combined with low power GPU and VPU. Ingenic Newton2 specifications: SoC – Ingenic M200 dual core processor with MIPS XBurst @ 1.2 GHz, MIPS XBurst @ 300 MHz, 2D/3D GPU, and VPU supporting H.264, VP8, MPEG-1/2/4, VC-1, and RV9 up to 720p30 System Memory – 512 MB LPPDR2 (Samsung eMCP) Storage – 4GB eMMC (Samsung eMCP) Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.1 (Broadcom BCM43438) + connector for GPS Sensors – Gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer […]

October 21, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

PowerVR SDK v3.4 Supports WebGL, 64-Bit Android 5.0 Lollipop, and MIPS Linux

Imagination Technolgies has just released PowerVR SDK v3.4 including the latest compilers for PowerVR Series6 and Series6XT GPUs to PVRShaderEditor, several performance optimization, a new WebGL SDK, 64-bit support for Android 5.0 Lollipop, and Linux support for MIPS based processors. The company has revamped the user interfaces of their tools, and made the following key changes: PVRTrace, a tool to capture and analyze OpenGL ES and EGL API calls, now supports OpenGL ES 3.1, compressed trace files, and they’ve reduce the software memory usage PVRTune, a performance analysis tool, now features new counters, and “significant” performance optimizations. PVRShaderEditor, a light-weight shader editing too, adds the latest compilers for PowerVR Series6 (FP32 and FP16) and Series6XT GPUs, as well as GLSL disassembler output. PVRTexTool, a utility for compressing textures, adds plugin support for Autodesk 3DSMax and Maya (2015 versions), and improves ETC decompression by up to 20% faster per surface. Imagination also […]

October 9, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Linux 3.17 Released

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.17 on Sunday: So the past week was fairly calm, and so I have no qualms about releasing 3.17 on the normal schedule (as opposed to the optimistic “maybe I can release it one week early” schedule that was not to be). However, I now have travel coming up – something I hoped to avoid when I was hoping for releasing early. Which means that while 3.17 is out, I’m not going to be merging stuff very actively next week, and the week after that is LinuxCon EU… What that means is that depending on how you want to see it, the 3.18 merge window will either be three weeks, or alternatively just have a rather slow start. I don’t mind getting pull requests starting now (in fact, I have a couple already pending in my inbox), but I likely won’t start processing […]

September 3, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Imagination Technologies Unveils MIPS I6400 64-Bit Warrior Core

Imagination technologies has just announced their MIPS I6400 64-bit core for applications including embedded, mobile, digital consumer, advanced communications, networking and storage. MIPS I-class I6400 CPU family features a 64-bit architecture, hardware virtualization, multi-threading, multi-core and multi-cluster coherent processing, and MIPS32 code will run on MIPS64. The key features of these MIPS64 cores are listed as follows: Efficient, scalable 64-bit performance – The company claims MIPS I6400 achieves over 50% higher CoreMark performance and 30% higher DMIPS compared to “leading competitors in its class”. Hardware multi-threading – Supports up to four hardware threads per core, and simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) technology leads to higher utilization and CPU efficiency. Preliminary benchmarking shows that adding a second thread leads to performance increases of 40-50% on benchmarks such as SPECint and EEMBC’s CoreMark, with less than a 10% cluster area increase. Hardware virtualization – Includes support for up to 15 secure/non-secure guests. Next-generation security […]

August 28, 2014February 22, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

MIPS Creator CI20 Development Board Formally Announced, Free to Selected Developers

Earlier this month, I discovered MIPS Creator CI20 development board based on Ingenic JZ4780 dual core MIPS processor thanks to one of my reader. Imagination Technologies has now launched the board, which will run Debian 7 first, soon support Android 4.4 and others Linux distributions, and the company places their MIPS board as a competitor to the popular ARM based boards such as the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone Black. This is the first board part of Prpl initiative for open source Linux and Android software for the MIPS architecture. As a reminder, I’ll list the hardware specifications again: SoC – Ingenic JZ4780 dual core MIPS32 processor @ 1.2 GHz with Imagination PowerVR SGX540 GPU. 32kI + 32kD per core, 512K shared L2. System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB NOR flash, 1x SD card slot, 1x SD card slot via expansion Video Output – HDMI up to 1080p Audio […]

August 25, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

$25 GL.iNet 6416A is an Hackable OpenWRT Router with Easy UART and GPIO Access

There are plenty of low cost routers supporting OpenWRT, but GL.iNet 6416A has several advantages compared to devices like TP-Link WR703N. Both are based on Atheros AR9931, but GL.iNet router has more memory and storage (64MB RAM + 16MB Flash vs 32MB RAM + 4MB Flash), two Ethernet ports instead of just one, and 6 GPIOs, the serial pins, and power signals (5V, 3.3V and GND) are all easily accessible via though holes or headers. Gl.iNet 6416A can be purchased for about $25 on DealExtreme or Amazon US, and it used to be listed on eBay, but is now out of stock. Gl/iNET 6416A specifications: Wi-Fi SoC – Atheros AR9331 MIPS processor @ 400 MHz System Memory – 64MB RAM Storage – 16MB Flash Connectivity – 2x 10/100 Mbit Ethernet ports, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-FI up to 150Mbps USB – 1x USB 2.0 port, 1x micro USB port for power Debugging […]

June 5, 2014June 14, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Ineda Systems Dhanush WPU is a MIPS based SoC Specifically Designed for Wearables

What’s a WPU? It stands for Wearable Processor Unit, and as you may guess it’s a processor specifically designed to be used in wearables such as smartwatches or fitness trackers. Currently, many wearables are based on application processors that are used in smartphones (e.g. Galaxy Gear), and lower-end versions are based on standard low power MCUs (e.g. Pebble), but none of them are actually based on SoC specifically designed for wearables, and analysts are asserting that new types of SoC are definitely needed if companies are to provide wearables with the battery life and features consumers want. Ineda Systems Dhanush WPU is not the first Wearable SoC announced, as for instance AllWinner mentioned their WX quad-core SoC for Wearables should become available in Q4 2014 in their roadmap, and Mediatek vaguely unveiled their Aster SoC at CES 2014, but it’s the first that I know of where we’ve got most of the […]