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MediaTek MT8183 Octa-core Cortex A73/A53 SoC Targets Chromebooks

MediaTek processors have been found in a few Chromebooks notably in MediaTek MT8173 powered Acer Chromebook R13, but the quad-core Cortex A72/A53 processor hasn’t made it into many models like the hexa-core Rockchip RK3399 “OP1” processor. However, I’ve been informed there are a few patchsets that have been submitted to mainline Linux and V4L2 mailing lists about MediaTek MT8183 octa-core Cortex A73/A53 processor. The latter adds a Digital Image Processing (DIP) driver on MediaTek MT8183 SoC, “which will be used in camera features on CrOS application” and some code related to MT8183 is found in Chromium OS repository, so those clues should confirm the octa-core processor will end up in Chromebooks, with the current MT8183 reference board being named Kukui. There aren’t any product pages for MT8183 on MediaTek website just yet, but by looking at the source code (e.g. Device tree file), and some clues around the web, we […]

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Amlogic S922X Cortex A73/A53 Processor Benchmarked

Amlogic S922X is an upcoming hexa-core processor with four Cortex A73 cores and Cortex-A53 cores mostly designed for devices running Android TV P, but it could also become potentially interesting for development boards and other products like Arm laptops. There aren’t any products available for purchase, but some results appeared on Geekbench in recently showing Droidlogic galilei board with a 6-core processor from Amlogic which has to be Amlogic S922X processor. There’s also g12b_w400 with a 6-core processor from Amlogic, but that’s A311D. So Amlogic S922X benchmarks report 1212 points for the single-core score, and “only” 3,133 points for the multi-core score. The base frequency in “Droidlogic galilei” board is 1.80 GHz, but 1.90 GHz in g12b_w400 “A311D” platforms. Strangely enough, the single core score is only 9xx in the latter. It’s very likely the maximum frequency drops when all four Cortex A73 cores are under loads, as the multi-core […]

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Cost-Optimized Rock960 Model C Board Sells for $69 and Up

96Boards compliant Rock960 board launched last year for $99 with Rockchip RK3399 processor, 2 to 4GB RAM, 16 to 32GB eMMC flash for $99 and up. However, now you can buy a Rockchip RK3399 SBC for as low as $45 plus shipping thanks to FriendlyElec NanoPi NEO4 board that comes with 1GB RAM and no built-in storage, relying instead on a micro SD card slot or eMMC socket. So VAMRS decided to design a cheaper version of their board with Rock960 model C that still benefits from being part of the 96boards ecosystem, is equipped with 1, 2 or 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, and the OS can boot from a micro SD card or an optional eMMC flash module. The 1GB version of the board is now sold for $69 on Seeed Studio with shipping scheduled for the 1st of February 2019. Rock960 model C preliminary specifications: SoC – Rochchip RK3399 […]

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Radxa Rock Pi 4 Review – Part 1: A First Look at RockPi 4B Performance Set

Hey, Karl here with another RK3399 board. This one is by Radxa and is called the Rock Pi 4. There are 2 main variants to this board and I was shipped the B version “performance set” which includes a power supply, heatsink, and acrylic case. Also shipped was 16gb eMMC 5.1 module, eMMC flashing board, and USB-TTL debug cable. It looks like the difference is the B version has AC wifi and GbE LAN with PoE support with a hat. The A version only has GbE. Rock Pi 4B Performance Set Unboxing Some of the more notable specs eMMC module support M.2 NVME SSD support (SATA not supported) HDMI 2.0 4k@60htz MIPI DSI 2 lanes via FPC connector 3.5mm audio jack MIPI CSI 2 lanes via FPC connector, support up to 8MP camera 802.11 ac wifi Bluetooth 5.0 40-pin expansion header :  1 x UART 2x SPI bus 2x I2C […]

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Rockchip RK1808 Cortex-A35 NPU Delivers up to 3.0 TOPS

Rockchip RK3399Pro was expected to be the first processor from the company featuring an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) to accelerate artificial intelligence workloads, but eventually went through a redesign, and the community found it gave birth to RK1808 NPU by looking at a device tree file in the Linux kernel. Rockchip has now made the NPU official at CES 2019, and we now know a little bit more. Here are the specifications shared by the company: Dual-core Arm Cortex-A35 CPU NPU computing performance up to 3.0TOPs supporting INT8/INT16/FP16 hybrid operation VPU supporting 1080P video codec Built-in 2MB system-level SRAM Display – MIPI/RGB video output Camera – MIPI/CIF/BT1120 Camera video signal input with built-in ISP Audio Microphone array support with hardware VAD function for low-power monitoring and far-field wake-up Audio output I/O PWM/I2C/SPI /UART USB3.0/USB2.0 PCIe interface Support for Gigabit Ethernet and external WiFi/Bluetooth modules Manufacturing – 22nm FD-SOI process It […]

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A Look at a Small NanoPi NEO4 Build Farm

FriendlyElec NanoPi NEO4 is currently the cheapest and smallest SBC powered by Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor which packs two Cortex A72 “fast” 64-bit cores, and four Cortex-A53 “efficiency” cores, so it should be an obvious candidate if you plan on building an Arm build farm costs to its low cost, small form factor, and relatively good performance. As part of his work on HAProxy load balancer, Willy Tarreau often has to run time-consuming builds for Arm targets, and to speed up the builds he’s put together several Arm based build farms powered by low cost development boards / SBCs. Up to now he had a build farm powered by five MIQI boards featuring Rockchip RK3288 processor with four Cortex-A17 “fast” 32-bit processor, and controlled with a ClearFog Pro networking board. He’s now decided to build another similar build farm but with NanoPi NEO4 boards instead. Willy goes through the hardware […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Year 2018 in Review, Top 10 Posts, and Some Stats

That’s it, we’ve already reached the last day of 2018, and it’s time to have a look back at what happened during the past year. On the mini PC front, Gemini Lake based mini PCs took over from Apollo Lake with some performance improvements, but I expected the price point to be a bit lower than it is today.  Apart from further developments with regards to mobile processors, it feels 2018 was an off-year for processors, such as the ones found in TV boxes and development boards, with mostly more of the same. Allwinner and Rockchip did not release any really interesting processor, and Amlogic only launched S905X2 and S905Y2 which are mostly evolutions of their previous generation with an OpenGL 3.x capable GPU and USB 3.0. Rockchip RK3399 stood out this year, as despite being launched in 2016, it suddenly became popular again with many RK3399 SBCs coming to […]

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Khadas Edge Review – Part 3: Android 7.0 Preview

Hey Karl here with a look at a preview of Android on the Khadas edge. Jean-luc has done 2 parts already. The first one looking at the hardware side, and a second looking at Ubuntu. A third img is available that for LibreELEC. The initial release was very barebones, and the 2nd version is much more polished with the Play Store installed now and overall feels snappier. Khadas is supposed to be sending an Edge over to Super Celeron, and I hope they follow through. DHL DHL really messed up my board. Here are some pics. I will only be testing with Ethernet because the WiFi antenna got damaged badly and even bent the heatsink. I think the board is slightly damaged as well. I can only flash using the buttons on the board and not the carrier board. Everything else seems OK. Due to the damage, I am using […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products