embedded News - Page 6 of 8 - CNX Software

November 15, 2019July 22, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Acromag COM Express Type 10 Mini-ITX Carrier Card Supports Four Acropack mini PCIe Modules

COM Express Mini ITX Atom-x5 Apollo Lake & mPCIe Modules

Acromag, a company based in Michigan and specialized in the industrial I/O market, has recently launched ACEX4041 COM Express Type 10 Mini-ITX carrier card which supports up to four of the company’s AcroPack mini-PCIe I/O modules. ACEX4041 COM Express Type 10 Mini-ITX Carrier Card The Mini-ITX form factor of the board enables it to interfaces four plug-in AcroPack I/O modules to an Intel Atom E3950 (Apollo Lake) CPU module with provisions for both M.2 and SATA SSD data storage and a variety of peripherals on-board. ACEX4041 specifications: SoM Compatibility Electrical and mechanical interface for industry-standard COM Express Type 10 Mini (55mm x 84mm) CPU modules with four PCIe lanes configured as an x4 port for optimal performance. Current CPU Option – Intel Atom E3950 quad-core, 1×4 PCIe configuration, 1.6/2.0GHz (Turbo) , 4GB RAM, 12W. PCIe Switch – 9-port 12-lane PCIe Gen 2 switch expands the single host PCIe x4 port […]

August 16, 2019August 16, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Wear Estimation for Devices with eMMC Flash Memory

flash wear leveling & garbage collection

CNXSoft: This is a guest post by Marcel Ziswiler, Platform Manager – Embedded Linux, Toradex and Leonardo Graboski Veiga, Technical Marketing Engineer, Toradex related to Marcel’s upcoming talk “Wear Estimation for Devices with eMMC Flash Memory” at the Embedded Linux Conference 2019 later this month. Flash memory has been an important topic in embedded systems for decades. It allows for drastic improvements to the size and robustness of electronic devices compared to other storage technologies. Other benefits of flash storage include a lack of moving parts and reduced power consumption. However, the challenges that come with flash memory are not as widely publicized in consumer electronics. Among them are limited durability and greater software complexity. As shown in Figure 1, flash memory is everywhere in our daily lives, ranging from devices used specifically to store data, such as thumb drives, SD cards and SSDs, to other consumer electronics that use […]

June 18, 2019October 4, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Launching Embedded Systems Jobs Board and Company Database

CNX Software writes news, reviews and tutorials about embedded systems, open source, or other topics useful to makers and companies, so we thought it might be useful to get a place where embedded systems companies can be listed and publish related jobs. For that reason, we’ve now designed and launched an embedded systems jobs board in order to help companies find employees or freelancers that can help them achieve their goals. Even if companies have no open positions right now, they are invited to add themselves to the list of companies as they may also be contacted by prospective customers if they wish too. Please, only relevant companies, as we reserve the right to delete entry’s for your spouse’s hair salon or bakery ;). Once a company is registered they can post jobs in one of five categories: Hardware, Software, Support & Documentation, Manufacturing, and Sales & Marketing. Let me […]

June 7, 2019December 5, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

iWave Systems Unveils iW-RainboW-G34M-SM i.MX 8M Mini/Nano System-on-Module

NXP nomenclature for their i.MX 8M processors can be a little confusing. First discovered in 2016, the original i.MX 8M processor family comes with one to four Arm Cortex-A53 cores, a real-time Cortex M4 core, targets multimedia application with FullHD or 4K decoding/encoding support and is manufactured using a 28nm process. NXP then announced i.MX 8M Mini processor family in February 2018 with a 14-nm FinFET processor allowing a higher maximum CPU frequency of 2.0 GHz, less video output interfaces (no HDMI, nor DisplayPort), and optional Full HD video encoder and decoder, .e.g no 4K. Finally, earlier this year, the company unveiled NXP i.MX 8M Nano further power-optimized with the same 14nm manufacturing process, but a lower frequency of 1.5 GHz, and a Cortex-M7 core replacing the Cortex-M4 core found in previous i.MX 8M processors. This allows i.MX 8M Nano SoC to have a 2W TDP, and achieve sub-watt power […]

January 11, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Obvious is an App Store for Embedded Devices

Mobile devices have gotten their own app stores for more than 10 years already, with Google Play for Android and Apple App Store for iPhones and iPads. Linux powered IoT devices – usually gateways – also got their own app stores with branded Ubuntu app stores relying on Ubuntu Snaps, although I’m not sure they are widely used. However, low power embedded devices usually based on microcontrollers did not get their own app store, and Obvious aims to fill this gap with the Obvious platform, an app store for embedded devices, which enabled after-sales features and upgrades. Obvious app store is currently in Beta and works exclusively with Nordic Semi based products at this stage. We don’t know an awful lot about the services, except it will enable a new revenue stream for providers of low power wireless IoT devices. Some benefits listed by the company include: Untapped resources – […]

August 21, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Embedded Base Boot Requirements (EBBR) Project Aims to Standardize Booting on Embedded Systems

Desktop and server systems relies on standardized interfaces between the bootloader and the OS like UEFI and ACPI, but for embedded systems the way the bootloader, often U-boot, handles the boot flow may vary greatly between targets. Arm and its partners already worked on this in the server space with the Server Base Architecture Specification (SBSA) , and more specifically the Server Base Boot Requirements (SBBR) within the specification that requires the use of both UEFI and ACPI on servers. Arm has now done something similar with the Embedded Base Boot Requirements (EBBR) project that targets specifically embedded systems, is based on a subset of UEFI, and works with either ACPI or device tree. EBBR specification once implemented in bootloaders like U-boot or Tianocore/EDK2 should allow a single version of an OS image to boot on multiple platforms without the per-platform customization required today.. In practical terms it means the […]

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

Axiomtek eBOX560-900-FL Ubuntu 16.04 Fanless Embedded Computer is Powered by NVIDIA Jetson TX2 Module

Axiomtek has unveiled eBOX560-900-FL fanless embedded computer equipped with an NVIDIA Jetson TX2 module, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a HDMI 2.0a port, an NVMe slot, etc. It also supports WiFi and LTE connectivity for gateway applications. The rugged computer runs Ubuntu 16.04, targets high performance AI workloads such as machine vision, deep learning, and edge computing, and comes with IP40 protection, vibration resistance, and -10 to 50°C temperature range support. Axiomtek eBOX560-900-FL specifications: SoM – NVIDIA Jetson TX2 module with SoC – NVIDIA TX2 hexa-core processor with 2x Denver cores, 4x Arm A57 cores, and a 256-CUDA core NVIDIA Pascal GPU System Memory – 8GB 128-bit LPDDR4 @ 1866 MHz Storage – 32GB eMMC flash Storage – 1x M.2 2280 M-Key slot w/ PCIe 2.0 x4 (supports M.2 NVMe SSD) Video Output – 1x HDMI 2.0 with 4K2K support Connectivity 2x 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet (NVIDIA + Intel I210-IT) 802.11ac WiFI […]

August 15, 2017August 15, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Aspencore 2017 Embedded Markets Study – Programming Languages, Operating Systems, MCU Vendors, and More

Aspencore media group asked readers of their EE Times and Embedded.com websites to fill out an online survey about their embedded system projects. They got 1,234 respondents mostly from North America (56.3%), followed by Europe (25.2%), and Asia (10.6%). This resulted in a 102-page market study which you can download here. I’ve extracted a few slides to have a look at some of the trends. C language is still the most used language in embedded systems, but other languages like C++, Python and even assembly language are gaining traction. Operating system is more spread with Linux being the most used via Embedded Linux distributions, Debian, and Ubuntu. FreeRTOS comes in second place, while Android registers fourth with 13%. Git has finally supplanted Subversion in 2017, with all other version control software losing ground. Switching to some hardware slides, 44% used a development board to start their embedded design with ST […]