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Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c & 8c Processors Target Entry-Level & Mainstream Mobile PCs

Nearly exactly one year ago, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8cx processor for always-on always-connected PCs, and lateron Qualcomm and UL released PCMark 10 benchmark results showing Snapdragon 8cx had similar performance to a 15W Intel Core i5-8250U Kaby Lake-R processor, but with much better efficiency. The price of such laptops is still fairly high with Samsung Galaxy Book S announced in August for $1,000, and possibly canceled at this stage. Microsoft SQ1 powered Surface Pro X tablet is the only system based on Qualcomm Arm technology (customized version of Snapdragon 8cx) available now, and also sells for $1,000 and up. Qualcomm has now unveiled Snapdragon 7c and 8c arm processor to address the entry-level and mainstream markets of connected mobile PCs. Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Specifications: CPU – Octa-core Kryo 468 processor @ up to 2.45 GHz GPU – Qualcomm Adreno 618 GPU DSP – Qualcomm Hexagon 692 DSP with Hexagon […]

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webOS OSE 2.0 Adds Support for Rapsberry Pi 4, Dual Displays, FOTA and More

Back in March 2018, LG unveiled webOS Open Source Edition optimized for Raspberry Pi 3 board. Last month, the company released a major version with webOS OSE 2.0 adding support for Raspberry Pi 4, dual displays, FOTA support and more. We missed the release at the time but caught up as LG just released a minor update with webOS OSE 2.1 a few days ago that adds a Japanese keyboard, uses journald, and provides various fixes and improvements. Some of the new features of webOS OSE 2.x include: Dual-display support which will eventually enable multi-display support for rear-seat entertainment (RSE) systems Firmware-Over-the Air (FOTA) Smack integration for enhanced security New passenger-friendly and touch input optimized Home Launcher as shown above WiFi tethering support via SoftAP Added support Raspberry Pi 4 (new reference hardware) Upgrade to Qt 5.12 and Chromium 72 webOS is generally known as an operating system for televisions, […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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PiPo Snapdragon 850 2-in-1 Laptop to Sell for around $400

Current Qualcomm based Windows 10 laptops are mostly interesting for people wanting all-day battery life and/or being always connected over 4G LTE, as they are still pretty expensive, and performance somewhat underwhelming, although Snapdragon 8cx processor should change that. Chinese-based PiPo, known for their tablets,  mini PCs and Arm Android laptops, is working on solving affordability of Arm Windows 10 laptop with their Snapdragon 850 2-in-1 laptop, heavily inspired by Huawei MateBook E 2019, and expected to sell for half the price or around $400. PiPo 2-in-1 laptop preliminary specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 octa-core Kryo 385 Arm cores clocked @ up to 2.96 GHz with Adreno 630 Visual Processing Subsystem, Hexagon 685 DSP Systmem Memory – 8GB RAM Storage – 256GB flash storage Display – 12.3″ IPS display with 3000×2000 resolution, 10-point touch Audio – 3.5mm audio jack, Connectivity – WiFi 5 802.11ac/b/g/n + 4G LTE Camera – […]

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Pixblasters MS1 Video LED Controller Outputs HDMI Input to 16K+ LED Video Walls (Crowdfunding)

Pixblaster Video LED Controller Pixblasters, a company focused on LED signage and video display, have started a Crowd Supply campaign for their MS1 Video Controller. The Pixblaster MS1 controller can be attached to any laptop or computer with HDMI output (think Raspberry Pi SBC) and control 16,384 LEDs without any programming, physical modifications or soldering. Extreme Scalability The market the MS1 video controller is aimed at is small business and makers, who hadn’t before had a controller with this much scalability.  The company is saying that the MS1 can be daisy-chained together to control hundreds of thousands of LEDs and act as a full video monitor across hundreds of meters of LED strips. Programming The unit can easily and with little technical knowledge connect WS212B-Based addressable LED strips together for a complex output of digital displays, even mirroring a video display in some instances. Target Users The ability to use […]

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Allwinner R328 Smart Speaker & System-on-Module Spotted in China

Earlier this year, Allwinner introduced some AIoT (AI + IoT) processors including Allwinner R328 dual-core Cortex-A7 processor for “low-cost voice interaction solutions” aka low-cost smart speakers. I did not pay too much attention at the processor at the time, but since then, the company has released a product brief with some more details about the processor. We can see it integrates 64MB to 128MB DDR3 memory which should be enough to run Linux without external memory, and truly provide a low-cost solution for smart speakers, and I was told the chip may cost around $3. I was also asked whether Allwinner R328 smart speakers were already shipping. A Google search in English did not help, so I had to switch to Chinese, and after visiting several sites, I could see some Allwinner A328 platforms including a smart speaker and a system-on-module were showcased at some event in China. We’ve got […]

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Linaro Connect San Diego 2019 Schedule – IoT, AI, Optimizations, Compilers and More

Linaro has recently released the full schedule of Linaro Connect San Diego 2019 that will take place on  September 23-27. Even if you can’t attend, it’s always interested to check out the schedule to find out what interesting work is done on Arm Linux, Zephyr OS, and so on. So I’ve created my own virtual schedule with some of the most relevant and interesting sessions of the five-day event. Monday, September 23 14:00 – 14:25 – SAN19-101 Thermal Governors: How to pick the right one by Keerthy Jagadeesh, Software Engineer, Texas Instruments With higher Gigahertz and multiple cores packed in a SoC the need for thermal management for Arm based SoCs gets more and more critical. Thermal governors that define the policy for thermal management play a pivotal role in ensuring thermal safety of the device. Choosing the right one ensures the device performs optimally with in the thermal budget. […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Khadas VIM3 (Amlogic A311D) Benchmarks & System Info in Android 9

I received Khadas VIM3 kit at the very beginning of this month, and showed the content of the kit, and how to assemble it. Now after clearing some other items for review, I’ve started to play with the Amlogic A311D board which ships with Android 9.0 by default.  I’ll focus my efforts on Ubuntu as most people will run Linux distributions on the board, but before doing so I’ve upgraded Android to the latest version, and checked out system information and ran some benchmarks in Android. Installing the latest Android firmware on VIM3 Instructions to upgrade the firmware over USB-C are available for Windows and Ubuntu, but since my laptop runs Ubuntu 18.04 I’ll focus on the latter. We can install the burn-tool for Linux as follows:

We can now download and extract the latest Android image:

Once it’s done you can connect your VIM3 board to your […]

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XIDU PhilPad 2-in-1 Hybrid 2K Laptop Review

I had never heard about XIDU laptops and tablets, and it’s apparently the brand name of “Shenzhen Baohuazhong Co Limited” that was founded in 2014 and specializes in the design, development, manufacturing, distributions, and support for computer systems. I came to know about the company as they approached me to review one of their laptops, namely XIDU PhilPad XT133A model with an Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core Apollo Lake processor coupled with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage, and equipped with a 13.3″ touchscreen display with 2K (2560×1440) resolution. XIDU PhilPad Specifications SoC – Intel Celeron N3350 dual core Apollo Lake processor @ 1.10 GHz / 2.40 GHz (Turbo) with 12EU Intel HD graphics 500 GPU; 6W TDP System Memory – 6GB DDR3 Storage – 64GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot Display – 13.3″ touchscreen IPS display with 2560 x 1440 resolution Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack, built-in microphone and speaker Camera […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC