CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

October 29, 2011November 17, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Google TV 2.0 For Android 3.1 Released

Back in August, Google released a Preview of Google TV Add-on for the Android SDK. Google has now announced a software upgrade for Google TV a software running on Android device (Smart TV / STB) such as the Sony NSX-24GT1 Google TV that bring web video (e.g. YouTube, Netflix and more) to the TV. Google admits the initial version of Google TV wasn’t perfect and they even asked partners not to show product with Google TV at CES 2011. Let’s see what improvements Google TV 2.0: 1. Keep it simple The interface is now much simpler. The new customizable home screen gets you to your favorite content quickly. And within “all apps” you can see all of your shortcuts, similar to your Android phone or tablet. 2. Make it easy to find something worth watching Search has been improved across the board for content from Live TV, Netflix, YouTube, HBO […]

October 29, 2011October 29, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Display Multiplication Table With A Command Line

If you forgot your multiplication table and happen to have a terminal window opened in Linux at the time, here’s the command to use: seq 9 | sed ‘H;g’ | awk -v RS=” ‘{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)printf(“%dx%d=%d%s”, i, NR, i*NR, i==NR?”\n”:”\t”)}’ Same thing using perl:

perl -e 'print join "\n", map {$a=$_;join "\t",map {$_."x$a=".$a*$_} (1 .. $a) } (1 .. 9)'

1	perl -e 'print join "\n", map {$a=$_;join "\t",map {$_."x$a=".$a*$_} (1 .. $a) } (1 .. 9)'

Here’s the output:

1x1=1
1x2=2	2x2=4
1x3=3	2x3=6	3x3=9
1x4=4	2x4=8	3x4=12	4x4=16
1x5=5	2x5=10	3x5=15	4x5=20	5x5=25
1x6=6	2x6=12	3x6=18	4x6=24	5x6=30	6x6=36
1x7=7	2x7=14	3x7=21	4x7=28	5x7=35	6x7=42	7x7=49
1x8=8	2x8=16	3x8=24	4x8=32	5x8=40	6x8=48	7x8=56	8x8=64
1x9=9	2x9=18	3x9=27	4x9=36	5x9=45	6x9=54	7x9=63	8x9=72	9x9=81

1x1=1

1x2=2 2x2=4

1x3=3 2x3=6 3x3=9

1x4=4 2x4=8 3x4=12 4x4=16

1x5=5 2x5=10 3x5=15 4x5=20 5x5=25

1x6=6 2x6=12 3x6=18 4x6=24 5x6=30 6x6=36

1x7=7 2x7=14 3x7=21 4x7=28 5x7=35 6x7=42 7x7=49

1x8=8 2x8=16 3x8=24 4x8=32 5x8=40 6x8=48 7x8=56 8x8=64

1x9=9 2x9=18 3x9=27 4x9=36 5x9=45 6x9=54 7x9=63 8x9=72 9x9=81

Source (in French): http://www.tux-planet.fr/afficher-les-tables-de-multiplication-en-ligne-de-commande/

October 28, 2011October 30, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

ST Micro 15 USD STM32F4-Discovery Cortex-M Development Kit

ST Microelectonics promote their Cortex-M series at ARM Techcon 2011 and especially the new STM32F4 series the most powerful cortex M4 MCUs. They also showcase a low cost development board called STM32F4-Discovery that they give away at the exhibition and that can be bought online for 14.90USD from distributors. The evaluation board is based on the STM32F407VGT6 and includes an ST-LINK/V2 embedded debug tool, two ST MEMS, digital accelerometer and digital microphone, one audio DAC with integrated class D speaker driver, LEDs and push buttons and an USB OTG micro-AB connector. A large number of free ready-to-run application firmware examples are available in the STM32F4-Discovery board firmware package to support quick evaluation and development. Key Features of the Development kit: STM32F407VGT6 microcontroller featuring 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4F core, 1 MB Flash, 192 KB RAM in an LQFP100 package On-board ST-LINK/V2 with selection mode switch to use the kit as a standalone ST-LINK/V2 […]

October 28, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Freescale i.MX6 Quad-Core Benchmark Demo

Freescale is showcasing the performance of their Quad Core ARM Cortex-A9 i.MX6 Quad processor at ARM Techcon 2011. The Freescale i.MX6 reference design runs a demo in Android 3.x (Honeycomb) with four windows: JPEG Decoding Window Web browser rendering and scrolling HTML5 Fish tank CPU Usage real-time chart The 3 windows used for the benchmark are all using software processing (no GPU involved) to show to performance improvement by moving from 1 to 2 and finally 4 cores. The benchmark results are quite impressive as with one core JPEG decoding is about 0.6 frame per second and with 4 cores it can decode 4.2 frames per seconds while other windows also show performance improvement. Freescale says there was little modifications done to make the software work on four core and you don’t even need to have multi-threaded applications to take advantage of 4 cores as the OS will usually take […]

October 28, 2011February 22, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Qualcomm Fast Computer Vision SDK

Qualcomm introduced FastCV (Fast Computer Vision), a mobile-optimized computer vision (CV) library that includes the most frequently used vision processing functions for use across a wide array of Android mobile devices. FastCV provides computationally intensive vision processing APIs, with hardware acceleration and better performance on mobile devices. FastCV is designed for efficiency on all ARM-based processors, but is also especially tuned to take advantage of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors (Qualcomm S2 and above). That’s because FastCV for Snapdragon can offload processing onto various subsystems within the processor, whereas FastCV for ARM is limited to acceleration on the CPU. FastCV is the framework at the heart of Qualcomm’s vision-based Augmented Reality (AR) SDK, because AR is much more precise and useful when it’s based on camera input than on location-based estimates. Qualcomm anticipates that FastCV will be used to build additional frameworks that will allow developers of computer vision apps to build […]

October 28, 2011October 29, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

ARM Unveils 64-Bit ARMv8 Architecture

ARM has just disclosed the technical of the ARMv8 architecture (to selected partners), featuring 64-bit instruction set support, extended virtual addressing, and backwards-compatible 32-bit support, so that software designed for ARMv7 (Cortex-A family) cores will run on the ARMv8 architecture. Here are the key points of the press release: The ARMv8 architecture consists of two main execution states, AArch64 and AArch32. The AArch64 execution state introduces a new instruction set, A64 for 64-bit processing. The AArch32 state supports the existing ARM instruction set. The key features of the current ARMv7 architecture, including TrustZone®, virtualization and NEON™ advanced SIMD, are maintained or extended in the ARMv8 architecture. … In support of the introduction of the ARMv8 architecture, ARM is working to ensure a robust design ecosystem to support the 64-bit instruction set. The ARM compiler and Fast Models with ARMv8 support have already been made available to key ecosystem partners. Initial […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

October 28, 2011October 28, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

I’m Watch: Freescale i.MX233 based Android Watch

I’m Watch is a wireless (Bluetooth) watch designed by an Italian Company http://www.imwatch.it currently showcased at ARM Techcon 2011. The device is powered by Freescale i.MX233 feature a capacitive touchcreen and runs Android. It can synchronize with any Android smartphone and iPhones via Bluetooth. The company developed an Android API for this watch. The product will be ready before Xmas and be available for 299 Euros (base version) in Europe, although you’d have to wait until January if you are based in the US. If you want to show off you can buy the Gold version for 12,000 Euros. There already have pre-orders for 30,000 pieces. The company will also announce other services at CES 2012 such as I’m Market, an app store to download apps for the watch and I’m Music an app to listen music via the watch. Watch the video below to see the Android watch in […]

October 27, 2011October 27, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Raspberry Pi at ARM Techcon 2011

Raspberry Pi Foundation is currently at ARM Techcon 2011 showcasing their 25 USD ARM11 Linux Computer unveiled last May. The board is build around Broadcom BCM2835 (ARM11 @ 700Mhz + GPU) application processor with 128/256MB “soldered” on top of the processor (Package on package (PoP) technology) and a USB Hub/Ethernet adapter chip and that’s it. The board features an Ethernet 10/100 RJ45 connector, 2 USB 2.0 port, an Audio out, HDMI and composite video output and an SD card slot. They currently only have the larger alpha board, the final board will be shrunk to the size of a business card and should be available in November 2011 (but most probably December). They believe the board will have better multimedia performance than the Beagleboard. I’m not convinced of that yet, but we’ll see. There will be two versions: Without network and 128 MB RAM – 25 USD Network support (Ethernet) and […]