low power News - Page 33 of 41 - CNX Software

May 10, 2020May 10, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ 5G Mobile SoC Supports 144Hz FHD+ Displays, 5G UltraSave Technology, and More

MediaTek Dimensity 1000 5G processor for premium mobile devices was announced in Q4 2019 with eight Cortex-A77/A55 cores, an Arm Mali-G77 MC9, and APU 3.0 AI coprocessor. Since then, several companies have announced plans to launch Dimensity 1000 smartphones with products such as Astro Slide 5G Transformer. But while there aren’t any Dimensity 1000 phones available for sale just yet (AFAIK), MediaTek has already announced an updated version with Dimensity 1000+ (Dimensity 1000 Plus). The new version of the processor runs the CPU and GPU cores at the same frequencies, and the differences are instead in other specific features of the processor, as we’ve highlighted below. MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ specification: Processor 4x Arm Cortex-A77 @ 2.6GHz 4x Arm Cortex-A55 @ 2.0GHz DynamIQ heterogeneous multi-processing technology GPU – 9-core Arm Mali-G77 MC9 AI Coprocessor – APU 3.0 hexa-core AI accelerator with 2x big cores, 3x small cores, and 1x tiny core […]

April 21, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Sipeed MaixCube is a Fully Integrated AI Development Platform Powered by Kendryte K210 RISC-V SoC

MaixCube All-in-one K210 Development Platform

Sipeed has made several boards and kits based on Kendryte K210 RISC-V processor for low-power AI workloads such as face detection or object recognition including Maixduino board and Grove AI HAT that ship with camera and display. The company has now come up with MaixCube all-in-one development platform that houses Sipeed M1 module, a display, a camera, and a battery into a plastic case that’s somewhat similar to MStack M5StickV but with a larger display, and variations in the form factor and features. Sipeed MaixCube specifications: SoC – Kendryte K210 dual-core 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 400 MHz (overclockable to 600 MHz) with FPU, 8MB SRAM, KPU AI accelerator, APU audio processor, and FFT accelerator Storage – 128 Mbit flash, MicroSD card slot Display – 1.3″ TFT screen with 240×240 resolution Camera – OV7740 sensor (VGA camera) Audio – Built-in microphone, external speakers support; ES8374 audio codec USB – 1x USB […]

April 20, 2020April 20, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Getting Started with Qoitech Otii Developer Tool using ESP8266 and Raspberry Pi 4 Boards

Last month, I received Qoitech Otii Arc power supply, power meter, and DAQ unit that aims at helping hardware and software engineers develop energy-efficient products. I’ve now had time to test the unit with an ESP8266 board and Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, so I’ll show how to get started and my overall experience with the hardware and program. Requirements and Initial Setup The unit takes a 9V power supply or micro USB adapter as power input, but power output is done through banana plugs. I did not have any cables with banana plugs so I bought one on eBay for about $5 shipped. This cable is really convenient with output to USB (female connector), crocodile clips, and hook clips. However, as we’ll see below it may not be suitable for all types of loads, and you may have to make your own with a higher rated cable. You’ll need to […]

April 17, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Qualcomm 212 LTE IoT Modem Supports LTE Cat NB2, Promises Higher Power Efficiency

A few years ago, Qualcomm launched Snapdragon 212 processor for smart speakers. This post has nothing to do with this, but strangely the company decided to reuse the 212 number in its new Qualcomm 212 LTE IoT modem with the claim of being the “world’s most power-efficient single-mode (NB2) chipset”. Specifically, Qualcomm 212 LTE IoT Modem is said to require less than one micro-amp (1uA) of sleep current, support ultra-low system-level cut-off voltage (as low as 2.2V) with provisions for adapting power usage according to varying source power levels. Qualcomm® 212 LTE IoT Modem key features and specifications: MCU Core – Arm Cortex M3 @ up to 204 MHz Cellular Connectivity 3GPP Rel.14 LTE capabilities: Cat-NB2 with multi-carrier NPRACH and Paging, Cat-NB2 Release Assistance Indication (RAI), Cat-NB2 with larger TBS and 2 HARQ processes Peak Speeds – DL: 127 kbps; UL: 158.5 kbps Frequency Bands (700Mhz to 2.1 GHz for […]

April 6, 2020April 6, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

MIOTY Silicon Vendor Agnostic, Scalable LPWAN Standard to Take on LoRaWAN, NB-IoT

[April 6th update: The article was updated to reflect Fraunhofer invented the technology] There are plenty of LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Networks) standards designed for low power, low bitrate and long-range connectivity with the most popular currently being NB-IoT and LoRaWAN. But Texas Instruments has joined other smaller companies (Fraunhofer, Ragsol, STACKFORCE, WIKA…) to form the MIOTY alliance in order to develop and promote a new LPWAN standard operating in the sub-GHz range called MIOTY. Texas Instruments explains MIOTY was born due to a lack of scalability and robustness (interferences issues) of current LPWAN solutions. But just like other similar low power WAN standards, it aims to support long-range while achieving long battery life, but MIOTY is also supposed to help IoT developers mitigate performance degradation in high-node-count networks. MIOTY works in the same license-free bands (868 MHz, 915 MHz …) as LoRa radios with no costs involved to […]

April 1, 2020October 9, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Edgeless EAI-Series Dual Arm Cortex-M4 MCU Features a 300 GOPS CNN-NPU

Microcontrollers will have an important role to play in AIoT (AI + IoT) applications as they provide the lowest cost and power consumption. Performance is limited but we start seeing MCUs with AI accelerators such as GreenWaves GAP9 multi-core RISC-V microcontroller or Kendryte K210 RISC-V MCU with a KPU AI accelerator. Another option is by Edgeless Semiconductor Co. Ltd (零边界集成电路有限公司) based in Zhuhai, China, and more specifically its Edgeless EAI-Series dual-core Arm Cortex-M4 microcontrollers equipped with a 300 GOPS CNN NPU. Edgeless EAI specifications: CPU – Dual Arm Cortex-M4F @ up to 200Mhz, with DSP instructions, I/D cache for high performance; 500DMIPS/1.25DMIPS/MHz (Dhrystone2.1) AI Accelerator – CNN-NPU clocked at up to 300MHz with 300 GOPS peak throughput; 144MAC/cycle, EER up to 1TOPS/W, for image recognition scenario. Support major CNN Models including Resnet-18, Resnet-34, Vgg16, GoogleNet, Lenet, etc.. Support Convolutional kernel size 1~7 Support Channel/Feature No. up to 512 Support Max/Average […]

February 26, 2020February 26, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

AMD Goes Low Power with 6W Ryzen Embedded R1102G & 10W Ryzen Embedded R1305G Processors

If you’d like a relatively low cost (~$200) mini PC featuring a recent processor with a TDP less than 10W your only options up to this point were models with Intel Cherry Trail, Apollo Lake or Gemini Lake processors. AMD launched some 12W-25W processors with Ryzen Embedded V1000 series and Ryzen Embedded R1000 series for embedded systems over the course of the last two years. But the company is now providing lower cost and lower power versions of their Embedded R1000 family with Ryzen Embedded R1102G and Ryzen Embedded R1305G processors with a TDP of respectively 6W and 10W. Ryzen Embedded R1102G & R1305G Key Specs The new processors have many the same features as the previous R1505G & R1606G models but at a lower TDP and performance (frequencies): Ryzen Embedded R1102G – 2-core/2-thread @ 1.2 GHz / 2.6 GHz (Turbo); 3x CU Radeon Vega 3 graphics cores @ 1.0 […]

February 11, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Arm Introduces Cortex-M55 MCU Core, Arm Ethos-U55 microNPU for Cortex-M Microcontrollers

Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things often go hand in hand with AIoT being a new buzz word that came up last year or so. But for AIoT to scale we need ultra-low-cost, low-power solutions capable of doing inference at the sensor node level, and this is only possible with microcontrollers. To achieve this goal, Arm has just unveiled the Arm Cortex-M55 microcontroller core optimized for artificial intelligence workloads that delivers up to a 15x uplift in ML performance and a 5x uplift in DSP performance with greater efficiency, as well as Ethos-U55 microNPU designed for Cortex-M microcontrollers that need even more AI performance (up to 480 times faster), while consuming as little power as possible. Arm Cortex-M55 Key features and specifications: Architecture – Armv8.1-M Bus interface – AMBA 5 AXI5 64-bit master (compatible to AXI4 IPs) Pipeline – 4-stage (for main integer pipeline) Security – Arm TrustZone technology […]