linaro News - Page 3 of 27 - CNX Software

March 21, 2018July 26, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Edge Server SynQuacer E-Series 24-Core Arm PC is Now Available for $1,250 with 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Geforce GT 710 Video Card

Right before Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017, GIGABYTE, Socionext and Linaro unveiled a development platform / PC based on Socionext SC2A11 24-core Arm Cortex A53 processor, and whose motherboard complies with 96Boards Enterprise Edition (EE) specifications. I called the platform GIGABYTE Synquacer at the time, because GIGABYTE helped with the design, and the platform was called Synquacer, even during the demo at Linaro Connect. George Grey, Linaro CEO, talked about Synquacer against during Linaro Connect HK 2018 opening keynote, notably to demo the platform combined with Gyrfalcon Light-speeur PCIe card delivering 93TOPS at relatively low power for artificial intelligence applications. I wanted to find out if there were now updates with regards to software support, availability, and pricing. While searching for the product page, I found out it was now called “Edge Server SynQuacer E-Series“, and while GIGABYTE designed the board, they will probably not use their brand for this […]

March 19, 2018March 28, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

96Boards Unveils Four A.I. Developer Platforms: HiKey 970, Ultra96, ROCK960 PRO & Enterprise Edition

Many new processors include a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) – aka Neural Network Accelerator (NNA) – in order to speed up talks associated with artificial intelligence, such as object or other patterns recognitions. With Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2018, 96Boards has just unveiled four development boards specifically designed for artificial intelligence solution with Hikey 970 powered by Hisilicon Kirin 970 processor, Ultra96 based on Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ ZU3EG ARM+ FPGA SoC, and ROCK960 PRO & Enterprise Edition featuring the upcoming Rockchip RK3399Pro processor. Hikey 970 Preliminary specifications: SoC – Kirin 970 with 4x Cortex A73 @ 2.36GHz, 4x Cortex A53 @ 1.8GHz, Arm Mali G72-MP12 GPU, NPU with 256MAC/cycle @ 960MHz System Memory – 6GB 1866MHz, 4 Channel LPDDR4x Storage -64GB UFS storage, micro SD card slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4 up to 1080p60 Camera – 4 lanes CSI + 2 lanes CSI Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, wireless module, […]

December 13, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Geniatech & Arrow Are Working on Tablet Docks for 96Boards Development Boards

Geniatech has been working on some interesting tablet docks specifically designed for 96boards compliant hardware platform. They showcased a prototype at Linaro Connect US 2017 with their “almost-96Boards-compliant” Developer Board IV based on Snapdragon 410E which adds an Ethernet port to 96Boards CE specifications.The model showcased comes with a 10.1″ FullHD touchscreen display, and should work with all 96Boards CE edition boards once launched. JinJun Fang, CEO of Geniatech, also mentioned they are discussing with Arrow Electronics, which will manage distributions, about other 7″ and 13″ models. The video – by Charbax – embedded below was filmed in September 2017, but AFAIK the 96Boards tablet docks have not launched yet, and Geniatech did not reply to request for information, so we’ll have to wait a little longer before launch. Mr Fang also mentioned a new Snapdragon 820 based board coming later-on, maybe Developer Board V? Via ARMdevices Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc […]

September 28, 2017December 2, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Secure96 is a 96Boards Mezzanine Expansion Board To Experiment with Hardware Based Security

With the Internet of things booming and taking a more important role in our lives, security will become more and more critical. So far, it has often been an afterthought with modems & routers frequently shipping with default username and password, and getting security right is really hard, as shown by the recent CLKSCREW attack that somehow leverages DVFS to break ARM TrustZone security, and that “is not a software bug, nor a hardware bug, it’s a fundamental part of the energy management design”, so most ARM platforms are vulnerable. Optimal security normally combines software and hardware, so having a platform to experiment with different HW security solutions would be useful, and that’s what Secure96 Mezzanine board for 96Boards aims for. Secure96 expansion board specifications: Security ICs Microchip Atmel ATSHA204A SHA-based CryptoAuthentication crypto element device Microchip Atmel ATECC508A crypto device with ECDH (Elliptic Curve Diffie–Hellman) key agreement Infineon SLB 9670 TPM […]

September 26, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro Connect SF 2017 Welcome Keynote – New Members, Achievements, the Future of Open Source, and More…

Linaro Connect San Francisco 2017 is now taking place until September 29, and it all started yesterday with the Welcome Keynote by George Grey, Linaro CEO discussing the various achievements since the last Linaro Connect in Budapest, and providing an insight to the future work to be done by the organization. The video is available on YouTube (embedded below), and since I watched it, I’ll provide a summary of what was discussed: Welcoming New Members – Kylin (China developed FreeBSD operating systems) joined LEG (Enterprise Group), NXP added LHG (Home Group) membership, and Xilinx joined LITE (IoT and Embedded). Achievements OPTEE open portable trusted environment execution more commonly integrated into products. Details at optee.org. LEG 17.08 ERP release based on Linux 4.12, Debian 8.9 with UEFI, ACPI, DPDK, Bigtop, Hadoop, etc… LITE group has been involved in Zephyr 1.9 release, notably contributing to LwM2M stack More projects to be found […]

September 24, 2017July 26, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

GIGABYTE SynQuacer 96Boards Enterprise Platform is Powered by SocioNext SC2A11 24-core ARMv8 SoC

GIGABYTE, Socionext and Linaro have partnered to design a software development platform compliant with 96Boards Enterprise specifications, with GIGABYTE taking care of manufacturing the hardware based on Socionext SC2A11 processor, while Linaro will provide support via 96Boards community. GIGABYTE SynQuacer platform preliminary specifications (based on photos and SC2A11 specifications): SoC – Socionext SynQuacer SC2A11 24x ARM Cortex-A53 MPCore cores @ up to 1GHz, with 32KB/32KB I/D L1 cache, 256 KB L2 cache, and 4MB L3 cache (5W power consumption) System Memory – 4x DIMM slots for 64-bit DDR4-2133Mbps with ECC up to 64GB Storage – 32GB Samsung KLMBG2JENB-B041 eMMC 5.1 flash + 2x SATA interfaces Connectivity – 2x Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45) with IPSec Network Offload Engine USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports on motherboard (via Renesas D720201), 4x USB ports on front panel via expansion board Audio – 1x microphone input, 1x speaker output on front panel Expansion – 1x PCie […]

May 15, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

MCUBoot is an Open Source Secure Bootloader for IoT / MCUs

Bootloaders takes care of the initial boot sequence on the hardware before the operating system takes over. For example, U-boot is often used in embedded systems as the bootloader before starting the main operating systems such as Linux or FreeBSD. MCUBoot is also a bootloader, but it targets the IoT, here referring to MCU based systems with limited memory and storage capacity, and is born out of work on Apache Mynewt OS, when developers decided to develop the bootloader separately from the operating system. MCUBoot is designed to run on small & low cost systems running on MCU with ~512 KB flash, ~256 KB RAM, and currently supports Zephyr OS and Mynewt, with support for other RTOS also considered. Due to constraint the bootloader uses minimal features with a flash driver, a single thread, and crypto services. The project also aims at solving security and field firmware updates. To address the […]

April 8, 2017April 8, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Cambrionix PowerPad 15S is a 15-Port USB Hub with 2.1A Output, Control API, Serial Console, Power Consumption Monitoring

Many development boards are powered over USB, usually via a micro USB ports, and if you have one board, you’d just use a 5V USB adapter with the right amperage, and it will work fine as long as you have a low resistance USB cable (AWG20 cables recommended for higher loads). But when you start to running multiple boards using power strips with USB adapter start to take space, so USB hubs are much more convenient. However, you need to find one that delivers enough power, is reliable, and possible allows per port power control. The guys at LAVA (Linaro Automated Validation Architecture) are using a lot of boards to validate software developed by Linaro and their members, with the boards having to run 24/7, and they had various misfortunes with USB hubs, but as Dave Pigott reports they’ve now found that USB hub of their dream with a 15-port […]