risc-v News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

January 20, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.13 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.13 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: So nothing horrible or unexpected happened last week, so I’ve tagged and pushed out the final 6.13 release. It’s mostly some final driver fixes (gpu and networking dominating – normal), with some doc updates too. And various little stuff all over. The shortlog is appended for people who want to see the details (and, as always, it’s just the shortlog for the last week, the full 6.13 log is obviously much too big). With this, the merge window for 6.14 will obviously open tomorrow. I already have two dozen pull requests pending – thank you, you know who you are. Linus Release about two months ago, Linux 6.12 – the new LTS version – brought us real-time “PREEMPT_RT” support that had always required out-of-tree patchsets until now, the completion of the EEVDF (Earliest Eligible […]

January 16, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Imagination exits the RISC-V CPU market

Imagination Technologies has decided to exit the RISC-V CPU market to redirect its resources to the development of its GPU and AI products. This was reported by eeNews Europe following an interview with the company: Imagination exited its standalone line of CPUs to increase our investment in graphics, AI and compute at the edge which we believe is transformational for our business […] We remain committed to the RISC-V ecosystem and believe this change to our business allows us to partner more easily with the wider ecosystem as providers of the GPU of choice for RISC-V The company announced its entry into RISC-V IP core in 2021 with the introduction of the Catapult 32-bit and 64-bit RISC-V CPU cores, followed by the 32-bit RTXM-2200 real-time core in 2022, and the cost-optimized APXM-6200 RISC-V core was introduced last year. But all those RISC-V CPU cores are gone and won’t be found […]

January 15, 2025January 15, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Siflower SF21H8898 is a quad-core 64-bit RISC-V SoC for industrial gateways, routers, and controllers

Siflower SF21H8898 SoC features a quad-core 64-bit RISC-V processor clocked at up to 1.25 GHz and a network processing unit (NPU) for handling traffic and is designed for industrial-grade gateways, controllers, and routers. The chip supports up to 2GB DDR3, DDR3L, or DDR4 memory, offers QSGMII (quad GbE), SGMII/HSGMII (GbE/2.5GbE), and RGMII (GbE) networking interfaces, and USB 2.0, PCIE 2.0, SPI, UART, I2C, and PWM interfaces. Siflower SF21H8898 specifications: CPU – Quad-core 64-bit RISC-V processor at up to 1.25 GHz Cache 32KB L1 I-Cache and 32KB L1 D-Cache per core Shared 256 KB L2 cache Memory – Up to 2GB 16-bit DDR3/3L up to 2133Mbps or DDR4 up to 2666Mbps Storage – NAND and NOR SPI flash support Networking 1x QSGMII interface (Serdes 5Gbps rate) for 4x external Gigabit Ethernet PHYs 1x SGMII/HSGMII interface (Serdes1.25/3.125Gbps rate) supporting Gigabit and 2.5Gbps modes 1x RGMII interface for Gigabit Ethernet 1x MDIO interface […]

January 14, 2025January 13, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Morse Micro MM8108 WiFi HaLow SoC supports up to 43.33 Mbps transfer rate, improves range and power efficiency

Morse Micro MM8108 is a new WiFi HaLow (802.11ah) SoC with a throughput of up to 43.33 Mbps, and improved range and power efficiency compared to its predecessor the Morse Micro MM6108 introduced in 2022 and supporting up to 32.3 Mbps transfer rate. The new chip is also smaller at just 5x5mm in a BGA package instead of 6x6mm in a QFN48 package for the MM6108/MM6104, adds a USB 2.0 host interface besides SDIO 2.0 and SPI, as well as a MIPI RFFE (Radio Frequency Front-End) for integration and interoperability with multi-radio systems. Morse Micro MM8108 specifications: 32-bit RISC-V Host Applications Processor (HAP) Single-Chip IEEE802.11ah Wi-Fi HaLow transceiver for low-power, long-reach IoT applications Worldwide Sub-1 GHz frequency bands (850MHz to 950MHz) On-chip 26 dBm power amplifier with support for external FEM (Front End Module) option 1/2/4/8 MHz channel bandwidth for up to 43.3 Mbps data rate using 256-QAM modulation at […]

January 7, 2025January 6, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

FOSDEM 2025 schedule – Embedded, Open Hardware, RISC-V, Edge AI, and more

FOSDEM 2025 will take place on February 1-2 with over 8000 developers meeting in Brussels to discuss open-source software & hardware projects. The free-to-attend (and participate) “Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting” grows every year, and in 2025 there will be 968 speakers, 930 events, and 74 tracks. Like every year since FOSDEM 2015 which had (only) 551 events, I’ll create a virtual schedule with sessions most relevant to the topics covered on CNX Software from the “Embedded, Mobile and Automotive” and “Open Hardware and CAD/CAM” devrooms, but also other devrooms including “RISC-V”, “FOSS Mobile Devices”, “Low-level AI Engineering and Hacking”, among others. FOSDEM 2025 Day 1 – Saturday 1 10:30 – 11:10 – RISC-V Hardware – Where are we? by Emil Renner Berthing I’ll talk about the current landscape of available RISC-V hardware powerful enough to run Linux and hopefully give a better overview of what to […]

December 31, 2024January 2, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

CNX Software’s 2024 Year in review, website statistics, and what to expect in 2025

That’s it! 2024 is almost over, and it’s time to reflect on what happened during the year. So I’ll look at the highlights of 2024, share some CNX Software website traffic statistics, and speculate on what may be ahead of us in 2025. Looking back at 2024 Raspberry Pi was super active this year with 22 product launches that included boards and modules like the Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB RAM, Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and Pico 2 W, Raspberry Pi CM5, expansion modules like the Raspberry Pi AI camera, AI HAT+, and M.2 HAT+, new accessories such as the Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 and the Raspberry Pi Monitor, and the new Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC among others. As usual, there was also plenty of announcement of accessories from third parties, and some boards with the new Raspberry Pi RP2350 Arm/RISC-V microcontroller. There weren’t any ground-breaking Arm processors […]

December 26, 2024 by Sayantan Nandy - No Comments

Sonata v1.0 RISC-V platform combines AMD Artix-7 FPGA and Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU, features CHERIoT technology for secure embedded systems

lowRISC has released Sonata v1.0, a stable platform developed under the Sunburst project. Designed for embedded systems engineers, Sonata supports CHERIoT technology, enabling features like compartmentalization and enhanced memory safety. It provides a reliable foundation for building secure embedded systems. CHERIoT is a security-focused technology built on lowRISC’s RISC-V Ibex core, based on CHERI research from the University of Cambridge and SRI International. It addresses memory safety issues like buffer overflows and use-after-free errors using CHERI’s capability-based architecture. The CHERIoT capability format includes permissions for memory access, object types for compartmentalization, and bounds to restrict accessible memory regions. These features enable scalable and efficient compartmentalization, making it suitable for securely running untrusted software in embedded systems. Sonata v1.0 leverages this architecture to isolate components like network stacks and kernels within the CHERIoT RTOS. The lowRISC Sonata v1.0 specifications: FPGA – AMD Xilinx Artix-7 (XC7A35T-1CSG324C) CPU – AMD MicroBlaze soft-core based on […]

December 24, 2024December 26, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Sipeed NanoKVM-PCIe is an inexpensive KVM over IP solution with optional WiFi 6 and PoE support

Sipeed NanoKVM-PCIe is a variation of the NanoKVM KVM-over-IP solution introduced last summer, but instead of being a tiny Cube with USB-C power, the new model can be powered through the PCIe slot from the host (as well as USB-C) and adds optional WiFi 6 and PoE functionality. While it’s not based on the LicheePi Nano SBC like the NanoKVM, it relies on the same SOPHGO SG2002 RISC-V/Arm/8051 SoC and offers many of the same ports in a different form factor including 10/100Mbps Ethernet, two USB-C ports one for HID, the other for power, a small OLED information display, and an HDMI input port supporting up to 1080p60. NanoKVM-PCIe specifications: SoC – SOPHGO SG2002 Main core – 1GHz 64-bit RISC-V C906 or Arm Cortex-A53 core (the latter is likely not used here) Minor core – 700MHz 64-bit RISC-V C906 core Low-power core – 25 to 300MHz 8051 MCU core VPU […]