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December 20, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Linaro 13.12 Release with Linux Kernel 3.13, Android 4.4, and Ubuntu Saucy Salamander

Due to the end of year celebration, Linaro release is a little earlier at this time, and Linaro 13.12 has already been released with Linux Kernel 3.13-rc3 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.24 (LSK), Android 4.4, and Ubuntu Linaro 13.12, which for the first time is based on Ubuntu 13.10 Saucy Salamander. Other interesting development include an initial arm64 Ubuntu saucy rootfs (that one?), work to support octa-core 4x Cortex A53, 4x Cortex A57 SoCs, an Android 4.4 KitKat LEB for the Galaxy Nexus, and ARMv8 LSK and Nexus7_2013-AOSP builds have been setup and Android can be now built using llvm-clang toolchain with the related patches submitted to upstream. On a related note, there are also some Midway and Highbank engineering build images for Calxeda server processors, which may not be that useful going forward, as unfortunately the company has just closed door after running out of cash. Here are the highlights of this […]

December 18, 2013December 18, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Fedora 20 “Heisenbug” Release Makes ARM a Primary Architecture

Fedora has been supporting ARM architecture for a while now, but it was only as a secondary architecture without official support. With the recent Fedora 20 release, nicknamed “Heisenbug”, the ARM architecture, more exactly ARMv7 hard float and greater, is promoted to a primary architecture meaning ARMv7 will have the same status as x86 and x86_64 architectures with packages officially build and supported by the Fedora community. What it does not mean however, due to the nature of ARM architecture, is that you can simply download an ISO to install on any ARM platforms, like you would do on an Intel or AMD computer. It’s a little more complicated than that, as it is platform specific, but instructions are available for the Beaglebone Black, Compulab Trimslice, the Wandboard, Calxeda Energycore Midway and Highbank, and Versatile Express in QEMU. You can download images with MATE, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, SOAS desktops, as […]

November 21, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Boston Viridis 2.0 and AAEON CRS-200S-2R ARM Based Servers Powered by Calxeda Quad core Cortex A15 SoC

Calxeda unveiled its new ECX-2000 Server-on-a-Chip (SoC) at ARM Techcon 2013. Calxeda new chipset features 4 cortex A15 cores, support up to 16GB RAM, and thanks to the move from Cortex A9 to Cortex A15 supports hardware virtualization. I’ve stumbled across two new servers powered by ECX-2000: Boston Viridis 2.0 and AAEON-CRS-200S-2R. Let’s have a look Boston Viridis 2.0 The successor of Boston Viridis powered by Calxeda ECX-1000 quad core Cortex A9 SoC, Viridis 2.0 features six ECX-2000 cards, with each card hosting two four-core SoCs @ 1.8GHz, and consuming as little as 6 watts of power. The server runs Ubuntu 13.10 operating systems, and OpenStack Havana platform, and would typically be used for cloud computing, distributed storage, and virtualization. Viridis 2.0 is a 4U ARM microserver that, and the company claims this can allow up to 1000+ servers in a rack, or about 1.5PB of data storage per rack. […]

November 5, 2013November 5, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

ARM Based Servers and Servers-on-a-Chip (SoCs) at ARM Techcon 2013

ARM Techcon 2013 took place on October 29 – 31, 2013, in Santa Clara, and several companies announced servers, or chips for server based on ARM technology. None of those are for home used, but for now ARM based servers target enterprise and cloud data. Yet end users may them indirectly when they access social networks such as Facebook, or other online services such as Paypal. Calxeda ECX-2000 SoC After their ECX-1000 quad core Cortex A9 Server-on-chip, Calxeda has announced ECX-2000 SoC featuring four Cortex A15 cores. The new SoC provides about twice the performance, 3 times the memory bandwidth, and 4 times the memory capacity (up to 16GB RAM) of the earlier chip. One of the key advantage of Cortex A15 over Cortex A9 is hardware virtualization that allows support for KVM and Xen hypervisors. ECX-2000 is supported in Canonical Ubuntu Linux 13.10 and can run Havana Openstack. Other […]

August 30, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro 13.08 Release With Linux Kernel 3.11 and Android 4.3

Linaro 13.08 has been released with Linux Kernel 3.11-rc6 (stating), Kernel 3.10.9 (LSK – beta), and Android 4.3. This month is the first release based on Android 4.3, which was only pushed to AOSP at the end of last month. I can also see work on new SoCs/hardware this month with Texas Instruments Keystone II ARM Cortex A15+DSP SoC and Fujitsu AA9 board (Which processor?, I could not find out). A lot of work also appears to have gone in OpenEmbedded, further optimizations have gone into NEON optimized AES encryption in OpenSSL, and more. It’s also the first time I can see a Ubuntu Raring engineering build image for HighBank (Calxeda Energycore). Here are the highlights of this release: Android Engineering Android stack was tuned to achieve 100% CTS pass result on Android 4.3 Analyzing the UEFI EDK II boot loader for Android completed, implementation of fastboot application and USB […]

June 6, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Calxeda Showcases Aaeon and Foxconn ARM Servers at Computex 2013

ARM started to get involved in servers in 2011 with the announcements of Calxeda Energy Core, Marvell, and Applied Micro X-Gene Servers-on-a-Chip, and in 2012, products made by companies such as HP and Mitac started to appears. We’ve got to see some more ARM based servers this year thanks to Charbax, who filmed some Aaeon and Foxconn servers powered by Calxeda EnergyCore quad core ARM Cortex A9 SoC at Computex 2013. The first server is Aaeon Indus 1U cloud storage appliance: 1U Chassis 2x Calxeda Energycore nodes 10x 3.5″ HDD 2x 10 GbE uplinks and 4x 10GbE chassis-to-chassis interconnects Foxconn server shown at Computex has slightly higher specs: 4U chassis 12 Calxeda Energycore nodes 60x 3.5″ HDD for up to 240TB storage 4x 10 GbE uplinks and 6x 10 GbE chassis-to-chassis interconnects for 100 GbE total bandwidth There’s also a Gigabyte server, but I could get details. Server based on […]

November 7, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

openSUSE 12.2 for ARM is Now Available for Beagleboard, Pandaboard, Efixa MX and More

The first stable release of openSUSE for ARM has just been announced. openSUSE 12.2 for ARM is officially available for the Beagleboard, Beagleboard xM, Pandaboard, Pandaboard ES, Versatile Express (QEMU) and the rootfs can be mounted with chroot, but “best effort’ ports have been made for Calxeda Highbank server, i.MX53 Loco development board, CuBox computer, Origen Board and Efika MX smart top. Work is also apparently being done on a Raspberry Pi port which should be available for the next release. openSUSE developers explains that almost all of openSUSE builds runs on these platforms (about 5000 packages). Visit “OpenSUSE on your ARM board” for download links and instructions for a specific ARM board. More details are available on the wiki page. openSUSE has limited resources for ARM development, so If you’d like to help with development (e.g. fixing builds), visit ARM distribution howto page to find out how to get […]

July 10, 2012July 10, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Boston Ships Viridis ARM Server Based on Calxeda EnergyCore Cortex A9 SoC

At the end of 2011, Boston, a British IT company, announced plans for an ARM server based on Calxeda Quad Core Cortex A9 Server-on-Chip, and now the company recently announced they started to ship the server (called Viridis) to their first customers. We now have further details about the server including the key features: Ten times the performance at the same power in the same space Cut energy and space by 90% Easily scalable to thousands of nodes 48 SoC devices delivered across 12 Calxeda EnergyCard modules Each EnergyCore SoC contains an ARM quadcore processing unit, providing a total of 192 cores per 2U enclosure Low power consumption: <300W with each SoC consuming between 0.5 to 5W depending on the load. Up to 24 SATA HDDs or SSD devices Up to 192GB of RAM per 2U enclosure A Calxeda EnergyCard (pictured below) features 4 Calxeda EnergyCore ECX-1000 SoC which can […]