x86 News - Page 6 of 11 - CNX Software

October 27, 2019October 27, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Changing Ubuntu Apt Mirror from the Command Line, and the Lack of Arm64 Mirrors

When you install Ubuntu on a computer, you’d normally go through the installation ISO which guides you through a wizard where you select your location among other things, and that means you get connected to the mirror closest to your location allowing timely updates. But for those of us who flash Ubuntu images on Arm SBC’s, the mirror is normally fixed to the one set by the developer be it in China or Slovakia, or defaults to the US mirror. It still works, but it can be slower than necessary. In a computer, an easy way to change that from Ubuntu desktop to launch Software & Update program and change the download from field to a mirror in your country or neighboring country as shown below. But I’ve found myself mostly connecting to boards over SSH since it’s easier that way for reviews. One way to change the mirror would […]

October 1, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Atomic Pi x86 SBC Meets Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 in $99 Neural Computing DevKit (Crowdfunding)

Atomic Pi Neural Computing Development Kit

IoT Team launched the $34 Atomic Pi SBC powered by an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor via a Kickstarter campaign last December. At the time, it only ships to the US, and looked too good to be true. But the thing is real coming from a failed robotics project, and the low-cost x86 board went back for sale via Amazon and other channels with worldwide availability last spring. The price has even gone a bit lower as you’ll find it for $32.95 on Amazon. Note that it requires some technical skills to get started and with 16GB eMMC flash it only supports Liux distributions such as Ubuntu 18.04, and installing Windows 10 is possible, but you’ll be seriously limited. Atomic Pi is back in the news, as IoT Team has now launched another Kickstarter campaign for the board, except it’s not sold standalone, but instead as part of a $99 neural […]

September 26, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

UDOO X86 II SBC Combines Intel Braswell SoC with Microchip ATMega32U4 “Arduino” MCU

UDOO X86 development board was first introduced in a crowdfunding campaign in 2016 with a quad-core Intel Braswell processor coupled with an Arduino 101 compatible Intel Curie module for real-time I/O processing. Early July of next year (2019) the Intel processor and module seems to be going so well and have a bright future together with UDOO X86 board and accessories becoming broadly available. But life can be cruel at times, and Intel announced their plan to discontinue Intel Curie and other IoT projects just a few weeks later with the last shipment scheduled for July 2018. SECO, the company behind UDOO, could only order so much stock of Intel Curie module, so they had to design an alternative, and here we are with UDOO X86 II SBC offering many of the same features but replacing Intel Curie module by a Microchip ATmega32U4 MCU compatible with Arduino Leonardo. Two […]

July 8, 2019November 8, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Debian 10 “Buster” Released

If you’re a recent owner of a Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, you should have had an early taste of Debian 10 “Buster”, since the Raspberry Pi Foundation decided to release their Raspbian “Buster” image before the actual release in order to lower software development costs. Debian developers have only just announced the release of Debian 10 “Buster”. The new version of Debian supports various desktop environments including Cinnamon 3.8, GNOME 3.30, KDE Plasma 5.14, LXDE .99.2, LXQt 0.14, MATE 1.20, and Xfce 4.12. Besides the official announcement Debian also posted tidbits on their Twitter feed, where we learn for example that “Debian 10 buster has 28,939 source packages with 11,610,055 source files”. Officially supported architectures for Debian 10 include i386 and amd64 for x86 targets, arm64, armel and armhf Arm architectures, as well as various other architectures including MIPS (mips64el, mipsel…), PowerPC (ppc64el), and IBM System z (s390x). One notable […]

June 14, 2019June 14, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

DM&P Vortex86EX2 Dual Core Processor Targets Dual OS Systems, Support ISA & PCI Interfaces

Most people will probably think about Intel and AMD when asked about x86 processors, at least those who understand the question… But there are also other companies such as Zhaoxin (based on VIA Technologies designs) and DM&P. Last time I wrote about the latter was in 2015 with the introduction of DM&P Vortex86DX3 dual-core x86 SoC for embedded systems and the corresponding evaluation board. The company is still making new x86 processors, and I’ve just been information the company unveiled Vortex86EX2 dual-core processor last year with master and slave cores suitable for running two operating systems at the same time without the need for virtualization, nor hypervisor. The new processor still supports ISA & PCI interfaces for legacy expansion cards and targets real-time industrial or automation applications. DM&P Vortex86EX2 specifications: Processor Cores Master @ 600MHz max with Build-in FPU L1/L2 Cache for user interface Slave @ 400MHz max with Build-in […]

May 18, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Embedded Linux Conference & Open Source Summit 2019 Schedule

In the last few years, I covered the Embedded Linux Conference and IoT Summit schedules since both were happening at the same time and in the same location. But the Linux Foundation have recently announced the Embedded Linux Conference will combine with the Open Source Summit, so the IoT Summit appears to have been phased out. The full schedule for the events taking place on August 21 – 23, 2019 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, USA, has also been released, so I’ll create a virtual schedule with some of the sessions most relevant to this blog. Wednesday August 21, 2019 11:30 – 12:05 – What’s New with U-Boot? by Simon Glass, Google LLC U-Boot is a widely used bootloader in embedded systems. Many users are unaware of the wide feature-set of U-Boot, particularly features added in the last few years. This talk aims to bring users (and prospective users) […]

November 25, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

An Attempt to Benchmark Entry-level x86 Boards against RK3399 & Exynos Arm Boards

Some Arm boards have become quite powerful, while hardware based on low power Intel processor has generally become cheaper with both architectures somewhat converging in terms of performance and price. Piotr Maliński got interested and purchased some low cost (<$150) Intel hardware to compare to mid-range Arm boards, throwing a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ into the mix as well for comparison. Those are the Intel test boards / computers: Qotom motherboard with Intel Atom Z3735F Bay Trail processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB flash – $74 + shipping on Aliexpress Piesia nano ITX board with Intel Celeron N2806 Bay Trail processor, DDR3 SO-DIMM socket, SATA / mSATA interfaces – Piotr found it for around $85 on Aliexpress, but the price now jumped to over $150 plus shipping, which does not make it very attractive Generic thin mini ITX motherboard based on Celeron N3160 “Braswell” processor, DDR3 SO-DIMM socket, SATA / mSATA interfaces. $62.68 […]

October 19, 2018October 20, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 40 Comments

ODROID-H2 Intel Celeron J4105 Single Board Computer to Launch in November

There were talks about Hardkernel working on an ODROID x86 board since last year, as the CEO expected to launch such board later in 2017 in an interview published in ODROID magazine. Finally, it took them several iterations and processors considerations before being ready for launch, and ODROID-H2 should become available next month as the first ODROID x86 board. ODROID-H2 will feature an Intel Celeron J4105 Gemini Lake processor, two SO-DIMM slots for memory, two SATA ports and M.2 NVMe slot for storage, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a mix of USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, and more. ODROID-H2 board specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J4105 quad core processor @ up to 2.3 GHz (real frequency) with 12EU Intel UHD Graphics 600 System Memory – Dual-channel Memory DDR4-PC19200 (2400MT/s) supporting up to 32GiB RAM in total Storage – M.2 PCIe 2.0 x4 slot for one NVMe storage, 2x SATA 3.0 ports, […]