CNX Software’s 2024 Year in review, website statistics, and what to expect in 2025

CNX Software Happy New Year 2025

That’s it! 2024 is almost over, and it’s time to reflect on what happened during the year. So I’ll look at the highlights of 2024, share some CNX Software website traffic statistics, and speculate on what may be ahead of us in 2025. Looking back at 2024 Raspberry Pi was super active this year with 22 product launches that included boards and modules like the Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB RAM,  Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and Pico 2 W, Raspberry Pi CM5, expansion modules like the Raspberry Pi AI camera, AI HAT+, and M.2 HAT+, new accessories such as the Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2 and the Raspberry Pi Monitor, and the new Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC among others. As usual, there was also plenty of announcement of accessories from third parties, and some boards with the new Raspberry Pi RP2350 Arm/RISC-V microcontroller. There weren’t any ground-breaking Arm processors […]

Sipeed NanoKVM-PCIe is an inexpensive KVM over IP solution with optional WiFi 6 and PoE support

Sipeed NanoKVM-PCIe

Sipeed NanoKVM-PCIe is a variation of the NanoKVM KVM-over-IP solution introduced last summer, but instead of being a tiny Cube with USB-C power, the new model can be powered through the PCIe slot from the host (as well as USB-C) and adds optional WiFi 6 and PoE functionality. While it’s not based on the LicheePi Nano SBC like the NanoKVM, it relies on the same SOPHGO SG2002 RISC-V/Arm/8051 SoC and offers many of the same ports in a different form factor including 10/100Mbps Ethernet, two USB-C ports one for HID, the other for power, a small OLED information display, and an HDMI input port supporting up to 1080p60. NanoKVM-PCIe specifications: SoC – SOPHGO SG2002 Main core – 1GHz 64-bit RISC-V C906 or Arm Cortex-A53 core (the latter is likely not used here) Minor core – 700MHz 64-bit RISC-V C906 core Low-power core – 25 to 300MHz 8051 MCU core VPU […]

Sipeed’s MaixCAM-Pro AI camera devkit adds 2.4-inch LCD, 1W speaker, PMOD interface on top of WiFi 6 and BLE 5.4

Sipeed MaixCAM Pro AI camera devkit

Sipeed has recently released the MaixCAM-Pro AI camera devkit built around the SOPHGO SG2002 RISC-V (and Arm, and 8051) SoC which also features a 1 TOPS NPU for AI tasks. The module includes a 2.4-inch color touchscreen and supports up to a 5MP camera module. Other features include WiFi 6, BLE 5.4, optional Ethernet, built-in audio capabilities, a PMOD interface, GPIOs, and more. Additionally, it features an IMU, RTC chip, and AXP2101 power management for enhanced performance. The module is designed for AI vision, IoT, multimedia, and real-time processing applications. Just a few months back, Sipeed introduced the MaixCAM AI camera devkit, which is also built around the SOPHGO SG2002 RISC-V SoC. The new module improves on the MaixCAM with a redesigned PCB, upgraded casing, and various new features including a 2.4-inch IPS touchscreen (640×480), a 1W speaker, expanded IO interfaces, a power button, and an illumination LED. It also […]

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 – International deals and coupons

Banggood Black Friday Mega Deals

While Black Friday and Cyber Monday used to be a US-only event, it changed many years ago, and we’ve been writing about international Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and coupon codes since 2014, since a large portion of our audience cannot benefit from promotions on Amazon’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday events that will take place from November 21 until December 2 this year. So I’ve gathered some international Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 deals and discount coupon codes from relevant manufacturers and popular online stores such as Aliexpress, Banggood, and others. Aliexpress Black Friday and Cyber Monday event Aliexpress’ Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 event has already started. There are three periods: Nov 19-21 PST – Warm Up event where users can find and add items to the cart before purchasing during the main event. Nov 22-30 PST – “On Sale” event with discounts up to […]

LicheePi 3A – A SpacemIT K1 RISC-V development board with SoM and carrier board

LicheePi 3A development board

Sipeed LicheePi 3A is a development board comprised of the LM3A system-on-module based on SpacemIT K1 octa-core RISC-V SoC and the same baseboard as found in the earlier LicheePi 4A equipped with a T-Head TH1520 quad-core RISC-V “LM4A” system-on-module instead. The LicheePi 3A is currently offered with a 32GB eMMC flash and 8GB or 16GB LPDDR4x memory. The carrier board provides a microSD card, two M.2 PCIe sockets for storage or other expansion, two gigabit Ethernet ports, a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 module, HDMI and MIPI DSI display interfaces, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, four USB 3.0 ports, and a 20-pin GPIO header for expansion. Sipeed LicheePi 3A specifications: Sipeed LM3A SoM SoC – SpacemiT K1 CPU – 8-core X60 RISC-V processor @ 1.6 GHz GPU – Imagination IMG BXE-2-32 with support for OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.2, OpenCL 3.0; 20 GFLOPS VPU – H.265 and H.264 1080p60 decoding/encoding NPU […]

$20+ NanoKVM is a tiny low-power RISC-V KVM over IP solution

NanoKVM Tiny RISC-V KVM over IP solution

Sipeed NanoKVM is a tiny KVM over IP solution based on the Lichee RVNano RISC-V microcontroller board that offers most of the features provided by the popular Raspberry Pi 4-based PiKVM solution allowing users to fully remote control a host such as a computer, server, or SBC down to the BIOS level and power on/off. Two variants are available, namely the NanoKVM Lite and NanoKVM Full. Both support up to 1080p60 displays, virtual USB keyboard and mouse, USB storage emulation, Ethernet with Wake-on-LAN, and IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) through serial interfaces, but the Full version also adds a resin enclosure, 0.96-inch information display, ATX power control through USB-C port, a microSD card with the firmware, and optional WiFi or PoE support Sipeed NanoKVM specifications: SBC – Sipeed RVNano SoC – SOPHGO SG2002 Main core – 1GHz 64-bit RISC-V C906 or Arm Cortex-A53 core (the latter is likely not used […]

Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Dock is a lower-cost GOWIN GW5AST FPGA + RISC-V development board

Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Dock

The Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Dock is a low-cost version of the Tang Mega 138K Pro development board launched last year with the GOWIN GW5AST FPGA + RISC-V SoC, two SPF+ cages, a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, and DVI Rx and Tx ports. The new Tang Mega 138K Dock keeps a GW5AST FPGA SoC but with a 484-ball package that fits on a smaller system-on-module, and does without the SPF+ cages, replaces the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface with a PCIe 2.0 x4 interface, and only uses a single HDMI port for DVI Rx or Tx. Sipeed Tang Mega 138K system-on-module Let’s first have a look at the specifications of the SoM itself: SoC FPGA – GOWIN GW5AST-LV138FPG484A with 138,240 LUT4 1,080 Kb Shadow SRAM (SSRAM) 6,120 Kb Block SRAM (BSRAM) Number of BSRAM – 340 298x DSP slices 12x PLLs 16x global clocks 24x HCLK 8x transceivers at 270Mbps to […]

ESWIN EIC7700X quad-core RISC-V SoC embeds 19.95 TOPS NPU for Edge AI vision applications

ESWIN EIC7700X block diagram

Yesterday we noted Sipeed was working on the LM5A system-on-module powered by ESWIN EIC7700X quad-core RISC-V processor with a ~20 TOPS AI accelerator in order to integrate it into its Lichee Book laptop and other carrier boards. So today, I’ve decided to look into the EIC7700X SoC designed by “BEIJING ESWIN COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD”, or ESWIN for shorts. The EIC770X features four 64-bit RISC-V (RV64GC) cores clocked up to 1.8 GHz, unnamed 3D and 2D GPUs, a 19.95 TOPS NPU, H.265/H.264 video encoder/decoder capable of handling up to 32x 1080p30 videos, various video output (HDMI + DSI) and input interfaces, dual GbE, 4-lane PCIe Gen 3, and more.   ESWIN EIC7700X specifications: CPU 4x SiFive Performance P550 RV64GC RISC-V cores @ 1.4GHz (up to 1.8GHz) with Cortex-A75-class performance 32KB(I) + 32KB(D) L1 Cache 256KB L2 Cache 4MB shared L3 Cache Cache supports ECC (support SECDED) DNN Accelerator – 19.95 […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design