Linux News - Page 383 of 457 - CNX Software

March 24, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

ITEAD Studio IBOX AllWinner A20 mini PC Review

ITEAD Studio IBOX is an AllWinner A20 based mini PC currently running Android or Linux distributions currently featured on Indiegogo. I’ve already written about IBOX in a separate post, where you can get all the specifications, but the company has also sent me a unit (engineering sample) for review. Since the system is still in development, and it’s mostly a development platform, I won’t do a review with video testing, system performance, etc… as usual, but rather show the progress and current issues in terms of hardware and software, and I’ll also mention documentation, and shortly try Android 4.2 (pre-installed) and the Debian 7.0 image released by the company. IBOX Unboxing Pictures I’ve received the device in a cartoon box containing the device itself and a 9V/2A power supply. If you are or become a backer on Indiegogo you’ll also receive an add-on board providing access to a SATA connector, […]

March 24, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Avalue ECM-DX2 3.5″ Single Board Computer Features DM&P Vortex86DX2 SoC

Avalue Technology, a company specialized in industrial and embedded single board computers, has recently announced ECM-DX2 3.5” single board computer (SBC) micro module powered by DM&P Vortex86DX2 SoC with up to 1GB RAM, support for LVDS, TTL, and VGA video outputs, SATA, dual Ethernet, and more. The board targets embedded applications such as industrial controls & automation, the railway industry, cleantech, transportation/vehicle construction and aviation applications. Avalue ECM-DX2 specifications: SoC – DM&P Vortex86DX2 single core @ 800 MHz with integrated graphics and chipset System Memory – 1GB DDR2 Memory Storage – 1 x SATA II, 1x CompactFlash Type I/II socket, and 2MB SPI (Flash BIOS). Expansion – PC/104 Expansion (8/16-bit ISA), 1 x Mini PCIe Card I/O MIO – 2 x RS-232, 2 x RS-232/422/485, 1 x PS2 K/B & Mouse USB – 2 x USB 2.0 DIO – 4-bit GPI, 4-bit GPO Display Resolution – VGA Mode: 1280 x 1024 […]

March 21, 2014March 21, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

iRobot Ava 500 Telepresence Robot Roams Autonomously, Recharges Itself

Earlier this week, I watched Edward Snowden interview at TED2014 in Vancouver. For obvious reason he was not physically in Canada, but instead used some telepresence robots that could be controlled remotely, and allowed Snowden to move around and see the audience. I thought I may have to look into this type of solutions to write in CNX Spftware, but I eventially did not need to as Linux Gizmos wrote about a similar product called iRobot Ava 500. This robot will automatically learn about its environment, roam the office or factory floor as needed for meetings, and even go back to a docking station to recharge itself when it’s needed. The pictures above show Ava 500 with Cisco Telepresence EX60 solutions that comes with the following specifications: Cisco TelePresence EX60 display 21.5″ LCD (1920 x 1080) 16:9 aspect ratio, 1000:1 contrast ratio 170° viewing angle 5ms response time Cisco TelePresence […]

March 20, 2014March 20, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

OpenCL Accelerated SQL Database with ARM Mali GPU Compute Capabilities

We’ve previously seen GPU compute on ARM could improve performance for mobile, automotive and consumer electronics application. GPU compute offload CPU task that can be parallelized to the GPU using APIs such as OpenCL or RenderScript. Most applications that can leverage GPU compute are related to media processing (video decoding, picture processing, audio decoding, image reconigion, etc…), but one thing I did not suspect could be improve is database access. That’s what Tom Gall, Linaro, has achieved in a side project by using OpenCL to accelerate SQLite database operations by around 4 times for a given benchmark. The hardware used was a Samsung Chromebook with an Exynos 5250 SoC featurig a dual core Cortex A15 processor and an ARM Mali T604 GPU. CPU compute is only possible on ARM Mali T6xx and greater, and won’t work on Mali 400 / 450 GPUs. Other GPU vendors such as Vivante and Imagination […]

March 18, 2014March 18, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Huawei D01 Server Board Features 16 ARM Cortex A15 Cores with up to 64 GB RAM, 3 SATA, 2 GbE Ports

During Linaro 14.02 release, I noticed a Huawei D01 board with 16 ARM Cortex A15 core, but details were lacking. Charbax was a Linaro Connect Asia earlier this month, and he could film the board in action, and interview the development team about this server board, and software development. Huawei D01 specifications: Processor HiSilicon SoC with16 x ARM Cortex-A15 CPU Core @ max. 1.5GHz (up to 84000 DMIPS) Support for CPU configuration as AMP/SMP Configurable Big or Little endian. Default: Little endian System Memory – 2x 64bit DDR3 DRAM Dual Inline Memory up to 1600 MHz, Module(DIMM) sockets:(2)&(3) . Default capacity: 8GB, upgradeable to 64GB Storage – 2x 1Gb NOR Flash, 2x 512MB NAND Flash, 3x SATA III for 2.5″ hard drives or SSD, 1x SD card Connectivity – 2x 10/100/1000Mbit/s Gigabit Ethernet ports, 1x 10/100Mbit/s FE port Other Peripheral Interfaces 2x USB 2.0 Host ports 2x UART, 4x I2C, […]

March 17, 2014March 17, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Selecting the Best Adobe Flash Player in Linux for x86 and ARM

I’ve had countless and recurrent crashes caused by Adobe flash plugin either in Firefox and Chromium, mainly while playing videos from YouTube or other online video services that still mostly use flash, instead of HTML5. Adobe flash death is certain, but up to now it has been soooo slow, so I doubt that thing will truly die any time soon, and unfortunately it will probably be with us for many years to come. To work around the issue, I started by enabling Youtube HTML5 player, and try to play embedded videos inside YouTube instead of the orignal website. I still had crashes from time to time, and this method did not help with other video services. So I decided to check out what I could do to fix the issue. When you go to http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ you can check your flash version, and Adobe will also list the player version for […]

March 13, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

AAEON EMB-KB1 AMD G-Series SoC based mini-ITX Embedded Motherboard

AMD announced their G-Series SoC combining CPU, GPU and chipset in a single chip nearly a year ago, but AAEON EMB-KB1 is the first mini-ITX board I’ve ever heard of using these embedded SoCs. The board features first generation AMD SoCs in dual and quad core configuration, with up to 16GB RAM, up to 9 USB interfaces, 2 SATA III ports, and 2 USB 3.0 ports. AAEON EMB-KB1 hardware specifications: SoC GX-420CA quad-core CPU @2.0GHz with AMD Radeon HD 8400E GPU @600MHz – 25W TDP GX-217GA dual-core CPU @1.65GHz with AMD Radeon HD 8280E GPU @450MHz – 15W TDP System Memory – 2x SODIMM sockets for up to 16GB DDR3/DDR3L @ 1600MHz/1333MHz Storage – 2x SATA III (6.0Gb/s) I/O Chipset – Fintek F8186D-I Connectivity – 2x Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek 8111F) Video Output – 1x LVDS, 1x VGA, and 1x DVI up to 1080p or 1920×1200 Audio – Mic-in, line-out, and […]

March 13, 2014March 13, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Mediatek MT6589 Linux Source Code, CyanogenMod 11 Image for Wiko Stairway Smartphone

Mediatek and their customers have still not gotten into the habit of complying with the GPL license, and releasing the relevant source code such as the Linux kernel. There appears to be at least one smartphone, Wiko Stairway, where the Linux kernel has been released, and chrmhoffmann, a members of XDA developers forums, has even released on unofficial CyanogenMod 11 ROM (Android 4.4.2 Kit Kat) for the device. There are three source repositories for the Linux kernel, “android device“, and Android. I’ve only looked into the kernel which is version 3.4.5. Mediatek has apparently messed up the Linux kernel quite a bit, and you’ll have to do some funny things to build the kernel, and all Mediatek options in menuconfig are in a sub-section called “Mediatek Properitary Configuration” (sic.), and it’s not possible to simply go to System Type menu to change the processor type for instance. Let’s get the […]