arm News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

February 8, 2025February 8, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

OpenWrt 24.10 released with Linux 6.6, TLS 1.3 by default, and 1970 supported devices

OpenWrt 24.10 open-source lightweight Linux operating system for routers has just been released. It’s been upgraded to Linux 6.6 from Linux 5.15 in OpenWrt 2023.05, supports TLS 1.3 by default, improves support for WiFi 6 (802.11ax), and adds initial support for WiFi 7 (802.11be). After over one year of work since the release of OpenWrt 23.05, OpenWrt 24.10 adds over 5400 commits, and the total number of supported devices is now close to 2,000 at 1,970. It’s also the first stable release supporting OpenWrt One, the router directly designed by OpenWrt developers in collaboration with Banana Pi. OpenWrt 24.10 highlights: TLS 1.3 support in default images with MbedTLS 3.6 Activate POSIX Access Control Lists and file system security attributes for all file systems on devices with big flash sizes. Needed by docker. Note this is not enabled for all targets with the small_flash feature flag, including ath79/tiny, bcm47xx/legacy, lantiq/ase, lantiq/xrx200_legacy, […]

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 13, 2025January 11, 2025 by Tomisin Olujinmi - No Comments

NXP MCX L14x and MCX L25x ultra-low-power Cortex-M33 MCUs target energy harvesting and battery-powered devices

NXP Semiconductors has launched the MCX L series of ultra-low-power Arm Cortex-M33 MCUs with the MCX L14x and MCX L25x SKUs. The new series offers similar peripherals as the rest of the MCX portfolio but uses a new “power management architecture that supports always-on, battery-powered applications” The MCX L series uses a dual domain architecture, with “real-time processing and ultra-low-power sensing functions in a single device.” The Arm Cortex-M33 core supports real-time processing functions while the Arm Cortex-M0+ core offers always-on operation in the ultra-low-power sense domain. The new microcontrollers reportedly use three times less power than their predecessors. The ultra-low-power series is targeted at energy-constrained applications, powered by a battery, ultracapacitor, or power harvesting circuit. These include building control, industrial sensing, smoke and fire alarms, flow meters, smart appliances, and motion detectors. NXP MCX L14x and L25x specifications: CPU Main core: Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller @ up to 96 MHz […]

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

Qualcomm Snapdragon X octa-core Arm SoC to power $600+ mainstream AI PCs with Copilot+ support

Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon X octa-core Arm SoC at CES 2025 designed for mainstream AI PCs with Copilot+, which should start at $600 and up. This follows the announcements of the high-end 4.3GHz Snapdragon X Elite 12-core SoC in 2023, and the Snapdragon X Plus 10-/8-core processors last year, and should make AI PCs affordable to a wider range of consumers. The new Snapdragon X is clocked at up to 3.0 GHz, still features a 45 TOPS Hexagon NPU, supports NVMe storage, up to 64GB LPDDR5, up to 2560 x 1440 built-in displays, up to three external displays at 4Kp60, and a single camera up to 36MP resolution. Systems based on the new octa-core processor can support WiFi 7, WiFi 6E, and/or 5G LTE connectivity. Qualcomm Snapdragon X (X1-26-100) specifications: CPU – Octa-core 64-bit Armv8 Oryon processor clocked at up to 3.0 GHz (2976 MHz) with 30MB cache GPU […]

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 31, 2024December 30, 2024 by Tomisin Olujinmi - 12 Comments

MNT Reform Next is an open-source, RK3588-powered modular 12.5-inch laptop (Crowdfunding)

The MNT Reform Next brings the Rockchip RK3588 processor to the modular laptop series. It retains the open-hardware nature of the older MNT Reform and introduces a lighter and more modular design, complete with a much faster processor. The MNT Reform Next separates the three port boards from the main motherboard, allowing for greater customization and modification than its predecessors. The standard processor module (RCORE) can be swapped with other modules such as the Raspberry Pi CM4, as well as NXP i.MX 8M Plus, NXP LayerScape 1028A, and AMD Kintex-7 FPGA modules. Like the classic MNT Reform and the MNT Pocket Reform, the enclosure for the Reform Next is milled from anodized, bead-blasted aluminum. Apart from being repairable and customizable, the RK3588 modular laptop is powerful enough to be a daily driver for browsing, writing, programming, gaming, graphics design, sound creation, and video editing. MNT Reform Next specifications: SoM SoC […]

December 29, 2024 by Debashis Das - No Comments

Firefly’s CSB1-N10 series AI cluster servers can deliver up to 1000 TOPS of AI power with Rockchip or NVIDIA Jetson Modules

Firefly has recently introduced the CSB1-N10 series AI cluster servers designed for applications such as natural language processing, robotics, and image generation. These 1U rack-mounted servers are ideal for data centers, private servers, and edge deployments. The servers have multiple computing nodes, featuring either energy-efficient processors (Rockchip RK3588, RK3576, or SOPHON BM1688) or high-performance NVIDIA Jetson modules (Orin Nano, Orin NX). With 60 to 1000 TOPS AI power, the CSB1-N10 servers can handle the demands of large AI models, including language models like Gemma-2B and Llama3, as well as visual models like EfficientVIT and Stable Diffusion. CSB1-N10 series specifications All CSB1-N10 AI servers have the same interfaces, and the only differences are the CPU, memory, storage, multimedia, AI capabilities, and related software support. So it’s likely Firefly has made Rockchip system-on-modules compatible with NVIDIA Jetson SO-DIMM form factor, and indeed we previously noted that Firefly designed Core-1688JD4, Core-3576JD4, or Core-3588JD4 […]

December 26, 2024 by Debashis Das - No Comments

Synaptics SYN20708 low-power IoT SoC features Bluetooth, Zigbee, Thread, Matter, and advanced coexistence

SYN20708 Dual Core Bluetooth & IEEE 802.15.4 SoC

Synaptics has recently introduced the SYN20708 low-power IoT SoC designed to handle simultaneous Bluetooth 5.4 Classic/Low Energy and IEEE 802.15.4 radios with Zigbee, Thread, and Matter protocols. The SoC integrates power and low-noise amplifiers and two separate radios enable simultaneous multiprotocol operations. The SoC is based on a 160 MHz Arm Cortex-M4 processor with user-accessible OTP memory for configuration. Built using a 16-nm FinFET process, it has very low power consumption, and advanced features like high-accuracy distance measurement (HADM), angle-of-arrival (AoA), and angle-of-departure (AoD). These features with versatile antenna support make this SoC suitable for industrial, consumer, and IoT applications. Synaptics SYN20708 specifications CPU – Arm Cortex-M4 processor @ 160 MHz Memory/Storage 544 KB System RAM 1664 KB Code RAM 1640 KB ROM 256 bytes OTP Connectivity Dual-radio Bluetooth 5.4 Bluetooth Classic, Bluetooth Low Energy Supports Bluetooth 6.0 features like HADM (high accuracy distance measurement) Bluetooth Class 1 and Class […]