HiSilicon D02 Server Board Supports up to 64 ARM Cortex A57 Cores

HiSilicon has showcased their latest server SoC and board at Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2015, with up to two processors with 32 Cortex A57 cores @ 2.1GHz, 8 DIMM DDR3 slots (up to 128 GB RAM), 12 SATA ports, 4 PCIe slots, 10GbE / GbE ports. D02 board specifications: SoC – Hisilicon PhosphorV660 Hip05 with 16 to 32 ARM Cortex-A57 cores @ up to 2.1GHz and 1MB L2 cache/cluster, 32MB L3 cache System Memory – 2x Memory channel 4x DDR3 DIMM(4x DIMM per processor) Storage 12x SAS 3.0 ports @ 12 Gbps (8 for the first processor, 4 for the second).  SAS port are compatible with SATA drives. You may want to read SAS vs SATA post for more details about SAS. 2x SPI Flash 158Mb BIOS/UEFI 1Gb NorFlash Connectivity – 2×10/100/1000Mbit/s Gigabit Ethernet ports, 2x xGE SFP+ ports (10Gb/s) Expansion – 2x 8x PCI express interfaces per processor (4 […]

How To Install Ubuntu 15.04 on MeLE PCG03 Intel Mini PC

I’ve already spent some time to test MeLE PCG03 Bay Trail-T mini PC in Windows 8.1, including a detailed video and audio review in Kodi 14.1. Since I don’t have anything else to do with Windows on the machine, I’ve decided to install Ubuntu instead, completely wiping out Windows 8.1. Since you pay around $30 for the Windows license, MeLE PCG03 is not the ideal platform computer for this little exercise due to the extra cost, but it should also work with other Intel Atom Z3735F based computer that may not come with a license. At first I planed to go with Ubuntu 14.10 Mate ISO image, and it boots fine, but was curious to try from “scratch” with another ISO, so I went with Ubuntu 15.04 Alpha 2 (64-bit) image. I just went to the first link Google Search provided me and did not pay attention enough, and ended-up […]

$129 Hikey Board Features a 64-bit ARM HiSilicon Processor, Complies with Linaro’s 96Boards Specifications

In my post about the Embedded Linux Conference 2015, I noticed a talk entitled “Generalizing Android for Low-Cost 64-Bit ARM-Based Community Boards” to be presented by Khasim Syed Mohammed, Linaro, mentioning that “Linaro is developing an open hardware platform specification to encourage software development on low-cost boards to lower the cost and accelerate the availability of maker and embedded products based on ARM SoCs”. But at the time, I had no details about the specifications themselves. As Linaro Connect HK 2015 is now taking place, the 96Boards Consumer Edition specifications have been released, and Hikey board have been unveiled with HiSilicon Kirin 620 octa core Cortex A53 processor, 1 GB RAM, and 4GB eMMC. Hikey board specifications: SoC – HiSilicon Kirin 620 octa core Cortex A53 processor @ 1.2 GHz (10,000 Dhrystone VAX MIPS) with ARM Mali-450MP4 GPU System Memory – 1GB LPDDR3 @ 800 MHz Storage – 4GB eMMC […]

Orange Pi Plus Development Board Gets Upgraded to Allwinner H3 Processor

Orange Pi boards were recently launched with a form factor similar to the Raspberry Pi Model B+, and featuring Allwinner A20 and A31s processors. Orange Pi Plus was initially fitted with Allwinner A31s processor, but Shenzhen Xunlong Software has now decided to use the latest Allwinner H3 quad core processor instead for this model, adding better CPU performance, and H.265 video decoding up to 4K @ 30 fps, likely at the cost of a slower Mali- 400MP2 GPU against the PowerVR SGX544MP used in Allwinner A31s. New Orange Pi Plus specifications: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.6 GHz with ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – micro SD card slot, SATA interface (via a USB to SATA chip), unpopulated  8GB eMMC on the back of the board (despite picture, see comments section) Video Output – HDMI, AV port Audio […]

BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition is the First Official Ubuntu Smartphone

Canonical announced its plans for Ubuntu for Phone over 2 years ago, and all that work may finally pay off, as BQ Readers will soon launch Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition, the first Ubuntu smartphone that’s based on the company’s Aquaris E4.5 smartphone running Android 4.4. BQ Aquaris E4.5 (Ubuntu Edition) specifications: SoC – Mediatek MT6582 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.3 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 500 MHz System memory – 1 GB Storage – 8 GB eMMC, microSD card (up to 32 GB) Display – 4.5″ IPS multi-touch screen (5-point); qHD (540 x 960) resolution Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, FM Radio, GPS and A-GPS Cellular Connectivity –  2G GSM (850/900/1800/1900),  3G HSPA+ (900/2100). Dual micro SIM. Audio – 3.5 mm headphone jack, microphone, Ambient noise cancellation, Dolby sound technology Camera – 5MP front-facing camera, 8MP rear camera with autofocus and flash USB – micro USB […]

Latest Ubuntu 14.10 Image for Tronsmart Draco AW80 Supports Hardware Video Decoding

Tronsmart Draco AW80 is one of the most powerful ARM mini PC on the market thanks to Allwinner A80 octa core processor, and the company also released an early Linux (Ubuntu) image at the end of last year. However, this firmware could not support hardware video decoding nor 2D/3D graphics acceleration. Since then progress has been made, and Tronsmart has just released an image with hardware video decoding. There’s still some work to be done as 4K and H.265 are not supported, and support for Kodi also needs to be implemented. At least for now you should be able to play 1080p video with VLC without issues, and the company also claims online video will play without lags. If you’d like to give it a try, download and extract Draco_AW80_Ubuntu_20150204.zip. Then follow Allwinner A80 firmware upgrade instructions with PhoenixSuit (Windows) or LiveSuit (Linux) firmware tool to complete the process. You […]

Raspberry Pi 2 / ODROID C1+ Development Boards Comparison

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B board has just been released, and although it’s not a direct answer to ODROID-C1, as Broadcom started the design for BCM2836 SoC for RPI2 a long time ago, both low cost development boards have similar specifications, with a quad core processor, 1GB RAM, Ethernet, and four USB ports, as well as the exact same price: $35. So I’ve decided to compare both in details to find out the actual differences, and which one may be more suitable to a particular application. Let’s get straight to the comparison table. [Updated on November 24 to use ODROID C1+ instead of ODROID C1] Hardkernel ODROID C1+ Raspberry Pi 2 Model B Comment Processor Amlogic S805 quad core Cortex A5 @ 1.5 GHz (Overclockable to 1.7 GHz or more) Broadcom BCM2836 quad core Cortex A7 @ 900 MHz (Overclockable to 1.1GHz or more) Despite the architecture advantage for Cortex […]

Linaro 15.01 Release with Linux 3.19 and Android 5.0

Linaro has just announced the first release of the year with Linux 3.19-rc3 (baseline), Linux 3.10.65 and 3.14.29 (LSK), Android 5.0.2, and Ubuntu Linaro Utopic. Changes seem to have focused on ARM, Qualcomm, and HiSilicon hardware platforms such as Juno, and IFC6410, and some work has been done on Debian ARM64 rootfs. Here are the highlights of this release: Linux Linaro 3.19-rc5-2015.01 GATOR topic updated to version 5.20.1 builddeb topic: fixes for the dtb files location changes in 3.19 (vendor subdir introduced) updated integration-linaro-vexpress64 topic by ARM LT (FVP Base and Foundation models, and Juno support) updated topic from Qualcomm LT (IFC6410 board support) updated topic from HiSilicon LT (Hi36xx, HiP04, and X5HD2 families support) updated LLVM topic (uses the community llvmlinux-latest branch) Included ILP32 patch set v3 rebased on 3.19-rc5. Initial tests using syscalls LTP tests are done: msgctl07 stalls when using ILP32 userland (no stall with LP64 userland). […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC