Intel Gemini Lake NUC7CJY/NUC7PJY Kits and Mini PC Specifications Released

Based on Intel NUC 2018/2019 roadmap published, we expected the first Intel Gemini Lake NUC mini PC to launch right at the end of 2017, but there’s been some delays. Since then we’ve learned Gemini Lake mini PC from third parties should launch around the end of March / beginning of April, and the official Intel GLK NUCs might launch around that time frame, or maybe a little earlier, because today, I’ve been informed the specifications for NUC7CJY/NUC7PJY kits and mini PC had been released on Intel website. Both variants have basically the same specifications expect NUC7CJY comes with a Celeron processor, and NUC7PJY with a Pentium Silver processor: SoC Intel NUC Kit NUC7CJYH / Intel NUC Mini PC NUC7CJYS –  Dual core Intel Celeron J4005 processor @ 2.0 GHz / 2.70 GHz (Turbo) with 4MB cache, Intel HD Graphics 600; up to 10 TDP Intel NUC NUC7PJYH –  Quad […]

Intel Compute Cards Review – Windows 10 and Ubuntu 17.04 on CD1C64GK, CD1P64GK and CD1M3128MK

The Intel Compute Stick revolutionized the mini PC market through the introduction of x86 based processors making Windows available as an OS option. However, for Intel the biggest target market turned out to be business rather than consumer with digital signage being a key user. As a result Intel have responded with the introduction of the Intel Compute Card. So far they have released four versions of card: and they they differ from compute sticks by no longer being standalone mini PCs but dependent on a dock or host device. The card itself is relatively small with a footprint slightly larger than a standard credit card: and is distinguished by the back being printed with details about the card including the model: The lack of emphasis on the consumer market is also evident in the rather unobtrusive plain packaging: On the end that inserts into the dock or host device […]

FOSDEM 2018 Open Source Developers Meeting Schedule

FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) occurs every year on the first week-end of February, where developers meet for two days discussing about open source software projects. FOSDEM 2018 will take place on February 3-4 this year with  652 speakers, 684 events, and 57 tracks, an increase over  last year 608 speakers, 653 events, and 54 tracks. There will be 8 main tracks namely: Community, History, Miscellaneous, Performance, Python, Security and Encryption, Space, and Global Diversity CFP Day. There will also be 33 developer rooms, and since the full schedule is now available, I’ll make a virtual schedule mostly based on sessions from the Embedded, mobile, and automotive, Hardware Enablement, and Internet of Things devrooms. Saturday 3, 2018 09:50 – 10:15 – Turning On the Lights with Home Assistant and MQTT by Leon Anavi In this presentation you will learn the exact steps for using MQTT JSON […]

Companies Address Concerns related to Speculative Execution Exploits: Meltdown and Spectre

Yesterday, news surfaced about a “bug” in Intel processors that could be fixed at the operating system level at the cost of a decrease in performance for some tasks, from a typical, and barely noticeable 5% hit, to a more consequent 30% hit for some specific tasks, and as we discussed yesterday I/O intensive tasks are the most impacted by the changes. While Intel (and Arm) are impacted, AMD claims not to be, and the issue was reported by major news outlets and likely impacting the stock price of the companies with Intel stock losing 3.39%, and AMD stock gaining 5.19%, so obviously every company felt the need to answer, starting with Intel’s response to security research findings: Recent reports that these exploits are caused by a “bug” or a “flaw” and are unique to Intel products are incorrect. Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices […]

Intel Hardware Security Bug Fix to Hit Performance on Windows, Linux…

Many security bugs can be fixed without performance penalty , but according to reports Intel processors have a hardware bug – whose details have not been disclosed yet (embargo) – that seems to affect all operating systems including Windows, Linux, Mac OS, etc…, and the fix may lead to significant performance hits for some tasks. We know a bit more thanks to the Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI) patch for Linux that enables the fix/workaround with X86_BUG_CPU_INSECURE feature. The fix used to be called KAISER, and there’s an explanation on LWN about “hiding the kernel from user space” about the issue: On contemporary 64-bit systems, the shared address space does not constrain the amount of virtual memory that can be addressed as it used to, but there is another problem that is related to security. An important technique for hardening the system is kernel address-space layout randomization (KASLR), which randomizes […]

More Details about Goldmont Plus Microarchitecture (used in Gemini Lake Processors)

2017 was the year of systems based on Intel’s low power, low cost Apollo Lake processors, and provided Intel does not suddenly decide to cancel yet another product, they will be replaced by Gemini Lake processors in 2018. The former is based on Goldmont microarchitecture, while the latter relies on the updated Goldmont microarchitecture. Intel has now released a document entitled “Intel 64 and IA-32 Architectures Optimization Reference Manual” where you’ll find more gritty technical details about Goldmont Plus in chapter 16 “SOFTWARE OPTIMIZATION FOR GOLDMONT PLUS, GOLDMONT, AND SILVERMONT MICROARCHITECTURES”. The enhancements over Goldmont include: Widen previous generation Atom processor back-end pipeline to 4-wide allocation to 4-wide retire, while maintaining 3-wide fetch and decode pipeline. Enhanced branch prediction unit. Improved AES-NI instruction latency and throughput. 64KB shared second level pre-decode cache (16KB in Goldmont microarchitecture). Larger reservation station and ROB entries to support large out-of-order window. Wider integer execution […]

Ubuntu 17.10 May Corrupt the BIOS on Some Lenovo, Acer, Dell, and Other Laptops

Canonical has decided to temporarily remove the download link to Ubuntu 17.10 due leaving a notice reading: The download of Ubuntu 17.10 is currently discouraged due to an issue on certain Lenovo laptops. Once fixed this download will be enabled again. The issue that many user are reported being unable to save BIOS settings or boot with USB in several Lenovo Laptops with many topics about this issue on Lenovo Forums. The installed operating system still boots normally, so many affected people may not have even noticed. Based on the bug report it seems to be related to the enablement of intel-spi-* drivers (Intel Serial Flash drive) in the kernel (CONFIG_SPI_INTEL_SPI_PCI option), and this could also affect Ubuntu 16.04 with HWE kernels. The fix is to disable the driver in the kernel, and Canonical will soon release images. The downside of not using the driver are likely null or minimal, […]

Intel Stratix 10 MX FPGA Integrates High Bandwidth Memory DRAM (HBM2)

Intel started sampling (Altera) Stratix 10 ARM + FPGA SoC in late 2016, and now the company has announced the availability the new Stratix 10 MX FPGA family wih High Bandwidth Memory DRAM (HBM2). The latter allow Stratix 10 MX FPGAs to offer up to 10 times the memory bandwidth when compared with standalone DDR memory solutions. The higher bandwidth will be useful for multi-function accelerators for high-performance computing (HPC), data centers, network functions virtualization (NFV), and broadcast applications. Intel / Altera Stratix 10 MX SoC key features and specifications: Processor – Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 MP Core up to 1.5 GHz Logic Density Range – 1.092M LE to 2.073M LE Embedded Memory 3.5 to 8GB HBM2 high-bandwidth DRAM memory 45 Mbit to 90 Mbit  eSRAM memory 86 Mbit to 134 Mbit M20K memory 6 Mbit to 11 Mbit MLAB memory Up to 7,920 18 x 19 Multipliers Up to 72 […]

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