Luckfox has launched the Pico WebBee, a Linux-based micro development board powered by the Rockchip RV1103 Cortex-A7 SoC with 64MB of on-chip RAM. Externally, the Pico WebBee resembles a USB dongle enclosed in an ABS case with a USB Type-A port and a 100Mbps Ethernet RJ45 port. Additionally, it includes an internal microSD card slot and a boot button. The board is designed for applications such as lightweight web servers, USB scripting tools, and smart home devices. It’s not quite the first Rockchip RV1103 solution from Luckfox, as we previously covered the Luckfox Pico Mini Arm Linux camera board and the Luckfox Pico Plus camera board with an Ethernet port. The Pico WebBeee is quite different in its form factor (it’s a complete device), and it also lacks a camera interface. Luckfox Pico WebBee specifications: SoC – Rockchip RV1103 G1 CPU – Single-core Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ 1.2GHz + RISC-V […]
MNT Reform Next is an open-source, RK3588-powered modular 12.5-inch laptop (Crowdfunding)
The MNT Reform Next brings the Rockchip RK3588 processor to the modular laptop series. It retains the open-hardware nature of the older MNT Reform and introduces a lighter and more modular design, complete with a much faster processor. The MNT Reform Next separates the three port boards from the main motherboard, allowing for greater customization and modification than its predecessors. The standard processor module (RCORE) can be swapped with other modules such as the Raspberry Pi CM4, as well as NXP i.MX 8M Plus, NXP LayerScape 1028A, and AMD Kintex-7 FPGA modules. Like the classic MNT Reform and the MNT Pocket Reform, the enclosure for the Reform Next is milled from anodized, bead-blasted aluminum. Apart from being repairable and customizable, the RK3588 modular laptop is powerful enough to be a daily driver for browsing, writing, programming, gaming, graphics design, sound creation, and video editing. MNT Reform Next specifications: SoM SoC […]
Luckfox Lyra boards feature Rockchip RK3506G2 triple-core SoC, display interface, optional Ethernet port
The Luckfox Lyra boards feature a Rockchip RK3506G2 triple-core Arm Cortex-A7 SoC with one Cortex-M0 real-time core, 128MB on-chip DDR3, a MIPI DSI display interface, and built on a 22nm process. Three versions are available with the Luckfox Lyra, Lyra B (with 256MB flash), and Luckfox Lyra Plus offering similar features, but the longer Plus model also adds a 10/100Mbps Ethernet RJ45 connector besides having 256MB SPI NAND flash. These are Luckfox’s first boards featuring the RK3506G2 processor, offering Ethernet connectivity and a display interface. But it’s not quite the first Arm Linux board from the company with Ethernet and a display interface, and we covered the Luckfox Pico Ultra micro development board all based on a Rockchip RV1106G3 SoC earlier this year. The company also introduced the similar-looking LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max boards powered by an RV1006G2 SoC in February, but instead of a display interface, they […]
Rockchip RK3588 mainline Linux support – Current status and future work for 2025
The Rockchip RK3588 is one of the most popular Arm SoCs for single board computers, and while good progress has been made with regards to mainline u-boot and Linux support, the SoC is quite complex and it takes time to port all its features even though it was first teased in 2020 and the first Rockchip RK3588 SBCs were introduced in 2022. While the simpler Rockchip RK3566 and RK3568 SoCs are already fairly well supported in mainline Linux, more work is needed to upstream code, and as noted before in posts and comments here, Collabora keeps track of the status on Gitlab, and the company recently posted an article about the progress and future plans related to upstream Linux support for Rockchip RK3588. Rockchip RK3588 mainline Linux progress in 2024 Linux 6.7 kernel – Network support on the Radxa ROCK 5B using a 2.5GbE PCIe controller. Linux 6.8 kernel – […]
Upcoming Rockchip RK3688 Armv9.3 AIoT processor to feature a 16 TOPS NPU, UFS 4.0 interface
Rockchip has unveiled the RK3688 AIoT SoC with Armv9.3 Cortex-A7xx cores delivering up to 250K DMIPS (RK3588 delivers 93K DMIPS), a 1 TFLOPS GPU, and a 16 TOPS NPU. The new processor succeeds the Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 first announced in 2019, and also features a 128-bit LPDDR4/4x/5 memory interface, and a UFS 4.0 storage interface. That’s about all we know about the RK3688 right now, but we can also deduct it’s probably based on a new, yet-to-be-announced Arm Cortex-A7xx core, possibly named Cortex-A730 or Cortex-A735, because no Arm cores have been announced with the Armv9.3 architectures. The Arm Cortex-A725 CPU core unveiled last May still relies on Armv9.2, and I’d expect new Arm cores to be introduced within the next few months unless Rockchip made a mistake in the presentation slide above. Two other platforms were also announced at the same time starting with a new entry-level/mid-range RK35XX octa-core […]
Linux 6.11 Release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures
Linux 6.11 is out with Linus Torvalds’ announcement on the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML): I’m once again on the road and not in my normal timezone, but it’s Sunday afternoon here in Vienna, and 6.11 is out. The last week was actually pretty quiet and calm, which is nice to see. The shortlog is below for anybody who wants to look at the details, but it really isn’t very many patches, and the patches are all pretty small. Nothing in particular stands out – the biggest patch in here is for Hyper-V Confidential Computing documentation. Anyway, with this, the merge window will obviously open tomorrow, and I already have 40+ pull requests pending. That said, exactly _because_ I’m on the road, it will probably be a fairly slow start to the merge window, since not only am I on my laptop, there’s OSS Europe starting tomorrow and then the […]
Dusun DSGK-061 – A RK3568-powered VNC Edge AI box for industrial automation and remote management
Dusun has recently launched the DSGK-061 Smart VNC Edge Computing AI Box or DSGK-061 Edge AI Box for short. This new Edge AI gateway is powered by a Rockchip RK3568 quad-core processor with a 1 TOPS NPU for edge computing. It has a built-in VNC (Virtual Network Computing) application for remote management and supports various interfaces and communication protocols such as HDMI, USB 3.0, TTL serial, LAN/WAN, and WiFi, making it suitable for applications like industrial automation, smart manufacturing, and more. Previously we have written about similar Edge AI boxes like the Mixtile Edge AI box or Techbase iModGATE-AI, and some very powerful AI boxes with more than 30 TOPS NPU power like the Radxa Fogwise Airbox, the Firefly AIBOX-1684X, the Sipeed MaixBox M4N and more. Feel free to check those out if you are interested in similar products. Dusun DSGK-061 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 CPU – Quad-core Cortex A55 processor […]
Firefly ROC-RK3576-PC low-profile Rockchip RK3576 SBC supports AI models like Gemma-2B, LlaMa2-7B, ChatGLM3-6B
Firefly ROC-RK3576-PC is a low-power, low-profile SBC built around the Rockchip RK3576 octa-core Cortex-A72/A53 SoC which we also find in the Forlinx FET3576-C, the Banana Pi BPI-M5, and Mekotronics R57 Mini PC. In terms of power and performance, this SoC falls in between the Rockchip RK3588 and RK3399 SoCs and can be used for AIoT applications thanks to its 6 TOPS NPU. Termed “mini computer” by Firefly this SBC supports up to 8GB LPDDR4/LPDDR4X memory and 256GB of eMMC storage. Additionally, it offers Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 5, and Bluetooth 5.0 for connectivity. An M.2 2242 PCIe/SATA socket and microSD card can be used for storage, and the board also offers HDMI and MIPI DSI display interfaces, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, a few USB ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header. Firefly ROC-RK3576-PC specifications SoC – Rockchip RK3576 CPU 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2GHz, four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.8GHz Arm Cortex-M0 MCU at 400MHz GPU […]