ODROID-H4 – A Compact Alder Lake N-Series SBC with up to dual 2.5GbE and four SATA III ports

ODROID-H4 Ultra SBC

Hardkernel has just launched an upgrade to their ODROID-H3/H3+ Jasper Lake SBC, with the ODROID-H4, ODROID-H4+, and ODROID-H4 Ultra boards powered by Intel Processor N97 or Intel Core i3-N305 Alder Lake N-Series processors. The ODROID-H4 family supports up to 48GB DDR5-4800 memory and NVMe SSD storage, comes with up to two 2.5GbE, four SATA III ports, three 4K capable video output ports (HDMI and DisplayPort), a range of USB ports, and a 24-pin GPIO header. ODROID-H4 specifications compared to previous generation ODROID-H2+ and ODROID-H3 boards. The GPIO header offers the following interfaces for all models except for the ODROID-H2+: 2x I2C, 3x USB 2.0, 1x UART, 1x HDMI-CEC, ext. power button. The H2+ header has similar interfaces, but only one USB 2.0 and two UART. Some may note the maximum RAM capacity numbers differ from the data on Intel Ark, but the latter is not usually correct, and Hardkernel have […]

ODROID-M1S review – Part 2: Ubuntu 20.04 benchmarks and features testing

ODROID M1S Review Ubuntu 20.04

Over one month has passed since our unboxing and quick Ubuntu 20.04 testing of the ODROID-M1S SBC and we’ve now had time to test more features and run benchmarks using the official Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS release from Hardkernel. One user mentioned Ubuntu 22.04 is supported, but that’s supported by a third party and we used the official image for testing.

Our test results will show the performance and supported features of the Rockchip RK3566-powered ODROID-M1S SBC when running Ubuntu 20.04. Read on to find out how well the board works.

ODROID-M1S benchmarks

Let’s start benchmarking the ODROID-M1S with Thomas Kaiser’s sbc-bench.sh script:

Linux 6.7 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.7 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.7, following Linux 6.6 LTS a little over two months ago: So we had a little bit more going on last week compared to the holiday week before that, but certainly not enough to make me think we’d want to delay this any further. End result: 6.7 is (in number of commits: over 17k non-merge commits, with 1k+ merges) one of the largest kernel releases we’ve ever had, but the extra rc8 week was purely due to timing with the holidays, not about any difficulties with the larger release. The main changes this last week were a few DRM updates (mainly fixes for new hw enablement in this version – both amd and nouveau), some more bcachefs fixes (and bcachefs is obviously new to 6.7 and one of the reasons for the large number of commits), and then a few random […]

2023 Year in review – Top 10 posts, statistics, and what to expect in 2024

CNX Software Happy New Year 2024

It’s the last day and last article of the year, so we will look at some highlights of 2023, some traffic statistics on the CNX Software website, and speculate what interesting developments may happen in 2024. Looking back at 2023 The semiconductor shortage that had happened since 2020 started to fade away in early 2023, and supplies for most electronics components and devices seem to be adequate at this time, so that was a bright spot this year, and hopefully, it will stay that way in 2024 despite geopolitical tensions. We did not have any super exciting new Arm application processors from Rockchip, Amlogic, or Allwinner announced this year, although the Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 CPU started to show up in some 8K TV boxes. The launch of the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC with a Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor was probably the main highlight for Arm on this side […]

ODROID-M1S review – Part 1: Ubuntu 20.04, Vu8S touchscreen display, UPS Kit, and WiFi Module 5BK

ODROID-M1S review with UPS module and V8uS module

Hardkernel ODROID-M1S single board board was recently launched to celebrate the company’s 15th anniversary. While the ODROID-M1 board was introduced with the Rockchip RK3568 SoC last year, the new ODROID-M1S board is smaller and cheaper starting at just $49 and comes with a Rockchip RK3566 SoC. Hardkernel sent us a sample of the ODROID-M1S board for review with 8GB of memory and 64GB of storage as well as accessories. Let’s unpack the box before trying it out with Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop and testing each accessory. ODROID-M1S unboxing with ODROID-Vu8S display, UPS kit, and WiFi dongle The review package we received from Hardkernel included the ORDROID-M1S SBC in its plastic enclosure, the VU8S 8-inch touchscreen display, a UPS board, and a dual-band WiFi 5 USB dongle. The UPS module comes without a battery, so we had to find an 18650 battery to use it. As we’ll see further below, the UPS […]

ODROID-M1S is a smaller, cheaper, and more efficient Rockchip RK3566 SBC with additional GPIOs

ODROID M1S RK3566 SBC

Designed for Hardkernel’s 15th anniversary, the ODROID-M1S is a smaller, cheaper ($49 and up), and more efficient single computer board compared to the ODROID-M1 single board computer introduced last year with a Rockchip RK3568 SoC. The new ODROID-M1S SBC features a Rockchip RK3566 SoC which is similar to the RK3568, but with fewer peripheral interfaces, 4GB or 8GB LPDDR4 memory, a 64GB eMMC flash solder on the board (instead of an eMMC flash connector), HDMI 2.0 and MIPI DSI video interfaces, gigabit Ethernet, a few USB ports, and two GPIO headers. It does lose a few features compared to the ODROID-M1, as its memory is clocked at a lower speed, the M.2 socket only supports PCIe 2.1, the SPI flash and SATA port are gone, and so is the MIPI CSI camera connector. The power supply has also changed from a 12V DC jack to a 5V USB-C port. ODROID-M1S […]

Linux 6.3 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.3 release

Linux Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.3 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): It’s been a calm release this time around, and the last week was really no different. So here we are, right on schedule, with the 6.3 release out and ready for your enjoyment. That doesn’t mean that something nasty couldn’t have been lurking all these weeks, of course, but let’s just take things at face value and hope it all means that everything is fine, and it really was a nice controlled release cycle. It happens. This also obviously means the merge window for 6.4 will open tomorrow. I already have two dozen pull requests waiting for me to start doing my pulls, and I appreciate it. I expect I’ll have even more when I wake up tomorrow. But in the meantime, let’s enjoy (and test) the 6.3 release. As always, the shortlog […]

Armbian 23.02 out with Linux 6.1, DietPi 8.14 adds experimental RISC-V support

Armbian 23.02

Two of the most popular projects providing images for Arm and RISC-V single board computers have released new updates with Armbian 23.02 adding Linux 6.1-based Debian and Ubuntu images, and DietPi 8.14 adding experimental RISC-V support for the StarFive VisionFive 2 SBC and new Arm boards. Armbian 23.02 Quoll Linux 6.1 is the latest LTS kernel, so Armbian is now providing Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy and Debian 11 Bullseye images based on Linux 6.1.y for boards that support it, as well as the first development images based on Debian 12 Bookworm and Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar. I could not find any new boards added in the changelog, but the release brings several improvements and bug fixes to some of the already supported SBCs including the Raspberry Pi 3, Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS, ROCK Pi S, ROCK Pi 4,  NanoPi R2S, NanoPi NEO3, and Banana Pi BPI-M2 Pro. The announcement also highlights […]

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