ASUS unveils Tinker Board 2 SBC with faster Rockchip RK3399/OP1 processor

Tinker Board 2S SBC

ASUS surprised the maker community in 2017 with the introduction of the Rochchip RK3288 powered Tinker Board to compete as Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. It was followed by Tinker Board S with built-in storage and other new features, as well as Tinker Board Edge T and Edge R SBC’s both with an AI accelerator namely Google Edge TPU and the NPU inside Rockchip RK3399Pro. The company has now launched a new model called Tinker Board 2 without AI accelerator, but featuring Rockchip RK3399, or more exactly the higher grade Rockchip OP1 used in Chromebooks,  delivering 96% faster single-thread performance and a 64% boost in multi-core performance compared to the Rockchip RK3288 processor found in the original Tinker Board, while the GPU is around 28% faster with glmark2-es2 off-screen benchmark. There are two variants of the board with Tinker Board 2 and Tinker Board 2S with the latter adding onboard […]

Khadas VIM3 & VIM3L SBC’s become Android reference boards

Khadas VIM3 & VIM3L Android Reference Boards

If you need to work on the very latest development version of Android or AOSP, you can either get one of the supported phones such as Google Pixel 5,  one of the reference boards for Android which should be better for development and also fairly cheaper. We previously reported about Hikey, Hikey960, and DragonBoard 845c single board computers being part of the short list of reference boards for the Android Open-Source Project (AOSP), but Amlogic powered Khadas VIM3 and VIM3L have recently been added to the official devices page which makes them the first AOSP reference boards with a dedicated NPU / AI accelerator. As a quick reminder, Khadas VIM3 is the most powerful board with an Amlogic A311D hexa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor with up to 4GB RAM and 32GB flash, and Khadas VIM3L is the light version with an Amlogic S905D3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor with 2GB RAM and 16GB flash. […]

SolidRun launches i.MX 8M Plus SOM and devkit for AI/ML applications

SolidRun already offers NXP based solutions with AI accelerators through products such as SolidRun i.MX 8M Mini SoM with Gyrfalcon Lightspeeur 2803S AI accelerator, or Janux GS31 Edge AI server with NXP LX2160A networking SoC, various i.MX 8M SoCs and up to 128 Gyrfalcon accelerators. All those solutions are based on one or more external Gyrfalcon AI chips, but earlier this year, NXP introduced i.MX 8M Plus SoC with a built-in 2.3 TOPS neural processing unit (NPU), and now SolidRun has just unveiled the SolidRun i.MX 8M Plus SoM with the processor together with development kits based on HummingBoard carrier boards. Specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Plus Dual or Quad with dual or quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @1.6 GHz (industrial) / 1.8 GHz (commercial), with Arm Cortex-M7 up to 800MHz, Vivante GC7000UL 3G GPU (Vulkan, OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenCL 1.2), 2.3 TOPS NPU, 1080p60 H.264/H.265 video encoder, 1080p60 video […]

ASRock iBOX-V2000 mini PC integrates an AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 SBC

AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 mini PC

AMD officially announced AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 Zen2 processor family yesterday, with claims of twice the multi-threaded performance-per-watt, up to 30 percent better single-thread CPU performance, and up to 40 percent better graphics performance over Ryzen Embedded V1000 processors. We’ve already covered ADLINK cExpress-AR COM Express module featuring the new AMD embedded processor, but we should expect more Ryzen V2000 hardware announcements over the next few days and weeks, and ASRock Industrial has announced the iBOX-V2000 fanless mini PC with lower power parts, namely Ryzen Embedded V2516 & V2718, and targets embedded, industrial, and Edge applications such as retail, automation, automotive, entertainment, and smart cities. IBOX-V2000 mini PC comes in two variants IBOX-V2000M and IBOX-V2000V with the following specifications: SoC IBOX-V2000V – AMD Ryzen Embedded V2516 hexa-core/12-thread processor @ up to 2.1 GHz / 3.95 GHz (Turbo) with 6 CUs Radeon RX Vega 6 GPU; 10-25W TDP IBOX-V2000M – AMD […]

NanoPi R4S headless RK3399 SBC features up to 4GB RAM, dual Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 ports

NanoPi R4S

We’ve seen several tiny ultra-cheap boards for headless applications over the last few years with products Orange Pi Zero Plus or NanoPi R2S which are usually based on 32-bit Cortex-A7 or low power 64-bit Cortex-A53 processors, coupled with up to 512MB to 2GB, and may have some limitations when it comes to Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 speeds. If you’d like something similar but more powerful, FriendlyELEC is working on NanoPi R4S headless SBC powered by a Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core Cortex-A72/A53 processor with up to 4GB RAM, dual Gigabit Ethernet, and two USB 3.0 ports. NanoPi R4S preliminary specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor with dual-Core Cortex-A72 up to 2.0GHz,  quad-core Cortex-A53 up to 1.5GHz, Mali-T864 GPU with OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC support, 4K VP9 and 4K 10-bit H265/H264 60fps video decoder System Memory – 1GB DDR3 or 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – MicroSD card slot Networking – […]

Giveaway Week 2020 winners announced

Giveaway Week 2020 Winners

CNX Software’s “Giveaway week 2020” took place last week with 7 different prizes including three MINIX accessories (USB-C hubs and USD PD charger), M5Stack Atom Echo ESP32 based programmable speaker,  Miniware DT71 smart tweezers, and two SBC’s namely RockPi 4C and Ryzen Embedded based DFI GHF51. All people had to enter was to leave a comment with the country to which the parcel would have to be sent. With the help of random.org, we now have selected and confirmed winners which all happen to come from the US or Europe this time around: MINIX NEO Storage Plus USB-C Hub with 480GB SSD – Marc, USA Miniware DT71 Smart Tweezers – xdcc_master, GERMANY MINIX NEO C-G USB-C Multiport Adapter – Barnaby, UK RockPi 4C SBC – Garrett, USA M5Stack Atom Echo ESP32 Speaker – Venet, ITALY MINIX NEO P2 100W USB-C Charger – Michal, SLOVAKIA DFI GHF51 Ryzen Embedded SBC – […]

XuanTie C906 based Allwinner RISC-V processor to power $12+ Linux SBC’s

Allwinner XuanTie C906 RISC-V Processor

Alibaba unveiled Xuantie-910 RISC-V core (aka XT910) in 2019 for powerful SoC with up to 16 cores, but an update in 2020 revealed the company planned to have a complete RISC-V core family for a wide range of application from low-power microcontrollers to server SoCs. At the time, I just assumed the company planned to keep their cores to themselves, but time proved me wrong as T-Head, the Alibaba subsidiary in charge of developing RISC-V cores, started to cooperate with Allwinner to develop open-source processors, which should lead to low-cost Linux capable RISC-V SBC very soon according to a tweet from Sipeed. Good News: We get first chip which based on XuanTie C906 (RV64GCV), it have abundant interface (HDMI/RGB/DVP/MIPI/GMAC/…), and will be able to run Debian system.Last and most important, the basic dev board price is start at 12.5$ (1% of HiFive Unleashed)。 pic.twitter.com/EJbXTJ5eMb — Sipeed (@SipeedIO) November 6, 2020 […]

Giveaway Week – DFI GHF51 Ryzen Embedded SBC

DFI GHF51

Let’s end this year’s Giveaway Week with a bang courtesy of DFI GHF51 single board computer, that’s about the size of the Raspberry Pi, but is powered by an AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606G dual-core processor coupled with 4GB RAM and 32GB storage. With Gigabit Ethernet, dual micro HDMI output, and a single USB-C port, the board is clearly designed for industrial machines, digital signage, and robotics, but it can also be used as a standard computer via a USB-C hub. I tested the SBC with WIndows 10 Enterprise LTSC and Ubuntu 20.04, and it worked well in Windows, except for some issue with one of my USB hard drives where transfers would just stall from time to time. I had the same issue in Ubuntu plus some artifacts while running the UNIGINE 3D benchmark. For testing, I set up dual-boot for Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04, so considering there’s just […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC