2023 Year in review – Top 10 posts, statistics, and what to expect in 2024

CNX Software Happy New Year 2024

It’s the last day and last article of the year, so we will look at some highlights of 2023, some traffic statistics on the CNX Software website, and speculate what interesting developments may happen in 2024. Looking back at 2023 The semiconductor shortage that had happened since 2020 started to fade away in early 2023, and supplies for most electronics components and devices seem to be adequate at this time, so that was a bright spot this year, and hopefully, it will stay that way in 2024 despite geopolitical tensions. We did not have any super exciting new Arm application processors from Rockchip, Amlogic, or Allwinner announced this year, although the Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 CPU started to show up in some 8K TV boxes. The launch of the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC with a Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor was probably the main highlight for Arm on this side […]

MediaTek Filogic 860 & Filogic 360 WiFi 7 chipsets target mainstream BE7200 routers and clients

MediaTek Filogic 860

MediaTek has unveiled two new WiFi 7 chipsets with the Filogic 860 tri-core Arm Cortex-A73 SoC designed for up to BE7200 mainstream routers and gateways and Filogic 360 WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 chip for client devices such as smartphones, PCs, laptops, set-top boxes, OTT streaming boxes, etc… for up to 2.9 Gbps bandwidth. The new Filogic 860 and Filogic 360 chipsets provide more cost-effective alternatives to the Filogic 880 SoC for up to BE36000 routers and Filogic 380 clients chip capable of up to  6.5 Gbps PHY data rate, both of which were introduced in May 2022. MediaTek Filogic 860 Filogic 860 specifications: CPU – 3x Arm Cortex-A73 cores clocked at up to 1.8 GHz Network Processing Unit (NPU) – Hardware QoS acceleration and Tunneling Offload Engine for VLAN / PPTP / L2TP / GRE Networking Crypto engine (EIP-197) – For IPv4 NATP / IPv6 / DS-Lite / 6RD […]

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2023) features a 2 GHz MediaTek MT8696T CPU, support WiFi 6E

Amazon Fire TV 4K Max 2023

Amazon has recently introduced its second-generation Fire TV Stick 4K and Fire TV Stick 4K Max 2023 powered by MediaTek MT8696D and MT8696T Arm Cortex-A55 processors respectively and going for $49.99 and $59.99 on Amazon. The new Fire TV Stick 4K Max model is an incremental update compared to the Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2021) with basically the same processor but clocked slightly higher, twice the storage capacity, and WiFi 6E support instead of just WiFi 6. The Fire TV Stick 4K (2023) is a more notable update compared to the very first Fire TV Stick 4K launched in 2018. Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K / 4K Max (codenames: AFTKM and AFTKRT) specifications: SoC Fire TV Stick 4K (2023) – MediaTek MT8696D with quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ 1.7 GHz, Imagination GE9215 GPU @ 650MHz Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2023) – MediaTek MT8696T with quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor […]

Amlogic S905X5 Armv9 TV Box SoC supports AV1, H.266, Ai-SR

Amlogic S905X5 TV Box

The Amlogic S905X5 may be first the Armv9 processor designed for set-top boxes (STB) and TV boxes, supports the latest AV1 and H.266 video codecs, and also comes with a 4 TOPS AI accelerator. We don’t have the full details yet, and the news comes from a tease from SEI Robotics which is about to unveil an Amlogic S905X5 AI-SR (AI Super Resolution) Android TV box at IBC 2023. Preliminary specifications for S905X5 SoC and SEI Robotics TV box: SoC – Amlogic S905X5 CPU – Quad-core Armv9 CPU (likely Cortex-A510 cores) delivering 40K+ DMIPS GPU – Arm Mali-G310 V5 entry-level GPU clocked at 1 GHz for 4K HDR user interfaces VPU – Up to 2x 4Kp60 10-bit H.266/VCC and AV1 video codecs, and the usual VP9, AVS3, H.265/HEVC, H.264 AI accelerator – 4 TOPS NPU enabling AI-SR Process – “Second generation” 6 nm process System Memory & Storage – TBD […]

Ugoos AM8 – A true 8K TV box powered by Amlogic S928X-J processor

Ugoos AM8 Plus

Ugoos AM8 is a true 8K TV box based on Amlogic S928X-J penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor with Dolby Vision and Dolby Audio support that is now available for sale on Aliexpress. If you search for an 8K TV box on the web, you’ll find plenty of listings for 4K TV boxes incapable of 8K video output, but Ugoos AM8 is what I would call “a true 8K TV box” capable of both video playback and output up to 8Kp60 thanks to the Amlogic S928X processor which we previously found announced in IPTV/OTT devices for operators from SDMC and SEI Robotics, as well as more recently in an 8K TV box board. Ugoos AM8 (preliminary) specifications: SoC – Amlogic S928X-J CPU – Penta-core processor with 1x Cortex-A76 core, 4x Cortex-A55 cores GPU – Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.2, and OpenCL 2.0 VPU 8Kp60 H.265, AV1, […]

8K TV box board features Amlogic S928X Cortex-A76/A55 SoC

Amlogic S928X 8K TV box board

The “YB910_428_V1.0” is an Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 board designed for 8K TV boxes with up to 8GB RAM, an HDMI 2.1a port, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi connectivity, optical S/PDIF, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a few USB 3.2/2.0 ports. We first started to see Amlogic S928X TV boxes from manufacturers such as SEI Robotics and SDMC last year, but those companies mostly cater to operators and I’ve yet to see any retail Amlogic S928X devices. The YB910 board could mean we are about to see some S928X devices for sale very soon. YB910 board specifications: SoC – Amlogic S928X CPU – Penta-core processor with 1x Cortex-A76 core, 4x Cortex-A55 cores GPU – Arm Mali-G57 MC2 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.2, and OpenCL 2.0 VPU 8Kp60 H.265, AV1, VP9, AVS3/AVS2 10-bit video decoder; 4Kp60 H.264 decoder, 1080p60 MPEG-4, WMV/VC-1, AVS, MPEG-2, MPEG-1 decoder Low-latency 4Kp60 H.265/H.264 […]

Rikomagic RKM V7P TV stick and digital signage gets 4GB RAM, 32GB flash, WiFi 6

Rikomagic RKM V7P

Rikomagic RKM V7P is an upgrade to the Rockchip RK3568-powered RKM V7 HDMI TV stick with 4GB RAM, 32GB eMMC flash, and WiFi 6 connectivity, as well as the existing Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port, and HDMI 2.0 female port. The RKM V7P TV stick runs Android 11 and can be used as a 4K digital signage player with features such as an RTC (Real-time clock) for time on and off, a watchdog to make sure the system runs 24/7 even if it hangs, portrait/landscape rotation selection, support for USB touchscreen displays, and so on. Rikomagic RKM V7P specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G52 2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1, 0.8 TOPS NPU for AI acceleration, 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoding, and 1080p100 H.265/H.264 video encoding System Memory – 4 GB LPDDR4 Storage – 32 GB […]

Imagination IMG CXM is a small GPU with HDR support for TV boxes, wearables, and Smart Home appliances

IMG CXM-2-64 CXM-4-64 CXM-4-128

Imagination IMG CXM is a power-efficient embedded GPU family with HDR support user interfaces, thus enabling OEMs to provide users the enriching visual experience they have come to expect but at a lower cost and with more design flexibility. The new CXM GPUs also deliver close to 50% performance density improvement over IMG BXM consumer GPUs, offer support for 10-bit RGBA/YUV to deliver a HDR graphical user interface with less visible banding, and integrate well with Imagination RISC-V CPUs. Three CXM GPUs are available: The CXM-2-64 with 2 pixels per clock (PPC) and 64 FLOPS per clock is the smallest GPU with native support for HDR The CXM-4-64 with 4 pixels per clock (PPC) and 64 FLOPS per clock targets mainstream products The CXM-4-128 with 4 pixels per clock (PPC) and 128 FLOPS per clock targets is better suited to “premium DTV solutions” All share the following features: 10-bit RGBA/YUV […]

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