Rockchip RK2118G/RK2118M dual-core Star-SE Armv8-M microcontrollers target smart audio applications

Rockchip RK2118G microcontroller block diagram

Rockchip RK2118G and RK2118M smart audio microcontrollers based on a dual-core Star-SE Armv8-M processor, an NPU for smart AI audio processor, three DSPs, 1024KB SRAM, optional DDR memory in package, and a range of peripherals. I first noticed the RK2118M in slides from the Rockchip Developer Conference 2024 last March, but I did not have enough information for an article at the time. Things have now changed since I’ve just received a bunch of datasheets including the one for the RK2118G and RK2118G microcontrollers, which look identical except for the DDR interface and optional built-in 64MB RAM for the RK2118G. The datasheets have only one reference to Arm with the string “Arm-V8M” and nothing else, and Cortex is not mentioned at all. But the slide above reveals the STAR-SE core looks to be an Arm Cortex-M33 core. We also learn the top frequencies for the “STAR-M33″/”STAR-SE” core  (300MHz) and the […]

Linux 6.9 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.9 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.9 on LKML: So Thorsten is still reporting a few regression fixes that haven’t made it to me yet, but none of them look big or worrisome enough to delay the release for another week. We’ll have to backport them when they get resolved and hit upstream. So 6.9 is now out, and last week has looked quite stable (and the whole release has felt pretty normal). Below is the shortlog for the last week, with the changes mostly being dominated by some driver updates (gpu and networking being the big ones, but “big” is still pretty small, and there’s various other driver noise in there too). Outside of drivers, it’s some filesystem fixes (bcachefs still stands out, but ksmbd shows up too), some late selftest fixes, and some core networking fixes. And I now have a more powerful arm64 machine […]

BIGTREETECH Pi 2 SBC and CB2 module for 3D printers now feature Rockchip RK3566 SoC with Gigabit Ethernet

BIGTREETECH Pi 2 and the BIGTREETECH CB2 Compute Modules

BIGTREETECH recently announced the release of the BIGTREETECH Pi 2 SBC and BIGTREETECH CB2 SoM, both powered by the Rockchip RK3566 SoC. These new modules are direct upgrades from the BIGTREETECH Pi v1.2 and BIGTREETECH CB1, which we covered and reviewed in our previous posts. Specially designed for 3D printers, these new modules have a similar form factor to that of a Raspberry Pi and the RPI CM4 module, and come with a set of upgraded features including support for GbE Ethernet, dual-band WiFi, up to 32GB of LPDDR4 RAM, eMMC storage, HDMI, USB, and more. BIGTREETECH Pi 2 Specifications SoC – Rockchip RK3566 CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali G52-2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 2.0 NPU – 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator VPU – 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoding, 1080p100f H.265/H.264 video encoding System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 (Customizable – 1GB/2GB/4GB/8GB) […]

Rockchip RK3582 is a cost-down version of RK3588S with two Cortex-A76 cores, four Cortex-A55 cores, no GPU

Rockchip RK3582

Rockchip RK3582 hexa-core SoC is pin-to-pin compatible with the popular Rockchip RK3588S octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 SoC, but only features two Cortex-A76 cores, a 5 TOPS NPU (instead of 6 TOPS) and does not come with a 3D GPU. I was first made aware of the Rockchip RK3582 in October 2023 when I was sent a photo of a board allegedly for a TV box, but while the RK3582 still features a 4K video decoder, the lack of a 3D GPU could make it problematic with 3D accelerated user interface. We now have more details with Radxa having released the datasheet and a few more interesting details. Rockchip RK3582 specifications: Hexa-core CPU – 2x Cortex-A76 and 4x Cortex-A55 cores in dynamIQ configuration (frequencies are still shown as TBD in the datasheet) GPU No 3D GPU 2D graphics engine up to 8192×8192 source, 4096×4096 destination AI Accelerator – 5 TOPS NPU 3.0 (Neural […]

Linux 6.8 release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 6.8 release

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.8 on the Linux kernel mailing list: So it took a bit longer for the commit counts to come down this release than I tend to prefer, but a lot of that seemed to be about various selftest updates (networking in particular) rather than any actual real sign of problems. And the last two weeks have been pretty quiet, so I feel there’s no real reason to delay 6.8. We always have some straggling work, and we’ll end up having some of it pushed to stable rather than hold up the new code. Nothing worrisome enough to keep the regular release schedule from happening. As usual, the shortlog below is just for the last week since rc7, the overall changes in 6.8 are obviously much much bigger. This is not the historically big release that 6.7 was – we seem to […]

LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max – Rockchip RV1106 powered boards with 10/100M Ethernet and camera support

LuckFox Pico Pro and Pro Max Rockchip RV1106 Powred Dev Board

The LuckFox LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max are two new Rockchip RV1106-powered development boards that offer a Linux-based development platform for IoT applications. The boards feature 10/100M Ethernet, up to 256MB DDR2 memory, and a 0.5TOPS NPU for AI tasks. With support for Buildroot and Ubuntu 22.04, this board can be used for smart homes, remote monitoring, and other AI-enhanced projects. Last year, we covered the LuckFox Core3566, a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 alternative, and the LuckFox Pico with its RV1103 SoC which has a similar form factor and similar features to these new modules. But the new modules are built around the RV1106 SoC which features an Arm Cortex-A7 processor (up to 1.2GHz),  a RISC-V co-processor, a 0.5 TOPS NPU for AI tasks, and a 4M @ 30fps ISP for high-quality image processing. LuckFox Pico Pro and Pico Max Specifications SoC – Rockchip RV1106G2 CPU – Arm Cortex […]

EmbedFire LubanCat 4 card computer – A Rockchip RK3588S dev board with a mini PCIe socket for WiFi or 4G LTE

youyeetoo Lubancat 4 RK3588S Based Raspberry Pi Size SBC

Launched by Yehuo Electronic EmbedFire LubanCat 4 card computer or LubanCat 4 in short, is a Rockchip RK3588S SBC that packs quite a lot of features in an 85x56mm form factor with Ethernet, USB, mini PCIe, HDMI 2.1, SIM & microSD card holder, and more. The board comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC flash. It comes with a Gigabit Ethernet port, five USB ports (including one USB-C), a built-in microphone, multiple audio inputs and outputs, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible expansion header, and supports HDMI input through an adapter connected to a MIPI CSI port. EmbedFire LubanCat 4 card computer specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S CPU – Octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.2-2.4 GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 1.8 GHz GPU –  Arm Mali-G610 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2,  OpenCL 2.2, and Vulkan 1.2 support VPU – 8Kp60 video decoder […]

JellyFin adds support for Rockchip RK3588 MPP hardware acceleration

Jellyfin RK3588

Jellyfin open-source media server has recently added support for Rockchip RK3588 MPP hardware acceleration, which means the software supports video hardware decoding and encoding, hardware scalers, and other features. The GitHub request lists the following changes: Add full HWA transcoding pipeline for Rockchip RKMPP HW decoder (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, H264, HEVC, VP8, VP9, AV1) HW encoder (H264, HEVC) up to 1080p @ 480fps / 4k @ 120fps on RK3588 HW scaler, format conversion, and subtitle burn-in HW HDR-to-SDR tone-mapping (requires OpenCL, RK3588 only) The OpenCL runtime can be downloaded and installed from libmali-valhall-g610-g13p0-x11-wayland-gbm_1.9-1_arm64.deb Support lossless AFBC (Arm frame buffer compression) to save memory bandwidth and improve FPS Support async RGA filter and MPP encoder If indeed decoding and encoding can be performed simultaneously, that would mean video transcoding can be offloaded to the Rockchip RK3588’s VPU. The changes has been tested with Linux 5.10 and Linux 6.1, but do not […]

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