CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

July 10, 2021July 10, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Intel Alder Lake hybrid mobile processor family to range from 5W to 55W TDP (leak)

Intel Alder Lake Mobile Hybrid Processors

Intel’s first foray into hybrid processors using Foveros 3D stacking technology did not end well with the company just announcing the end of the life for Lakefield hybrid processors. But the company is not giving up on hybrid technology, and a recent leak shows the Intel Alder Lake family comprised of more powerful mobile hybrid processors will be offered for a wide range of applications from tablets with 5-7W M5 processors and up to “muscle laptops” or mobile workstations (MWS) with H55 processor at 45-55W TDP. Alder Lake hybrid processors will be comprised of high-performance CPU “Golden Cove” cores and energy-efficient Atom-based “Gracemont” CPU cores, in a way that’s similar to Arm’s Cortex-A7x big cores and Cortex-A5x LITTLE cores with big.LITTLE or DynamIQ processing with the goal of optimizing power consumption. The Intel Alder Lake Mobile SKU stack includes processors for 6 market segments including three “new” segments/TDP ranges according […]

July 9, 2021July 21, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Nokia E63 phone converted into LoRa messenger for secure, off-the-grid communication

While LoRa radios are mostly designed to transmit data from sensors and to actuators, there have been attempts to leverage LoRa for messaging in the past with, for instance, the Meshtastic Mesh Networking Project to help hikers exchanged their GPS coordinates or other short messages, the Raspberry Pi Pico powered PICOmputer with QWERTY keyboard, display, and a LoRa module, and Pine64 is also working on developing LoRa hardware for messaging. Trevor Attema decided to repurpose his Nokia E63 Blackberry-like phone with a custom STM32H7 board with a LoRa radio while keeping the enclosure, display, backlighting, keyboard, and speaker which he calls the Off The Grid Messenger, or OTG Messenger for shorts. The custom board also adds Microchip ATECC608 crypto authentication chip for encrypted messages, and the LoRa Messenger would allow a theoretical transmission range of 16 kilometers in line of sight which would allow a small group of people to […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM

July 9, 2021July 9, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Embedded development board features Microchip PolarFire RISC-V FPGA SoC

PolarFire RISC-V FPGA SoC development board

Microchip/MicroSemi first introduced PolarFire RISC-V FPGA SoC at the end of 2018, with the chip being like the RISC-V equivalent of Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ Arm & FPGA MPSoC. The following year, ARIES Embedded unveiled the ARIES M100PF system-on-module and evaluation board, before Microchip launched PolarFire SoC Icicle 64-bit RISC-V and FPGA development board, followed by the more compact PolarBerry SBC in 2020. There’s now at least a fourth platform based on PolarFire SoC with Aldec TySOM-M-MPFS250 embedded development board. Aldec TySOM-M-MPFS250 specifications: SoC – Microchip PolarFire MPFS250T-FCG1152 SoC with 4x SiFive U54 RV64GC application cores (similar to Cortex-A35 performance), 1x SiFive E51 RV64IMAC monitor core, FPGA fabric with 254K logic cells, 17.6 Mb RAM System Memory 2GB (16Gbit) 32-bit DDR4 for the FPGA 2GB (16Gbit) 36-bit RAM with ECC for the RISC-V cores (aka MSS = Microprocessor Subsystem) Storage – MicroSD card socket, eMMC flash, SPI flash, 64 Kbit […]

July 9, 2021July 30, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

Kendryte K510 tri-core RISC-V AI processor deliver up to 3 TOPS

Kendryte K510 is a 64-bit tri-core RISC-V processor clocked at up to 800 MHz with AI accelerators that succeed the 400 MHz Kendryte K210 dual-core RISC-V AI processor released a few years ago first in Kendryte KD233 board, and then boards like Maxduino or Grove AI HAT conveniently programmable with Arduino or Micropython. Canaan formally announced the processor yesterday at the 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference claiming K510 had three times the performance of K210 making it suitable for UAV high-definition aerial photography, high-definition panoramic video conferences, robotics, STEAM education, driver assistance scenarios, and industrial and professional cameras. The press release did not have much information, but multiple sources provided additional details to CNX Software, so we have Kendryte K510 specifications: Processor – 2x 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 800 MHz, and 1x 64-bit RISC-V core @ 800 MHz with DSP extension AI subsystem with 3 TOPS in total KPU: General […]

July 8, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

u-blox introduces WiFI 5/6 & Bluetooth 5 M.2 cards

u-blox is well known for its wireless modules be it WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, or cellular connectivity that are soldered unto CPU modules or boards. But the company has now introduced two M.2 cards with WiFi 5 or WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.x that work with NXP i.MX evaluation and development boards. M2-JODY-W2 M.2 card The M2-JODY-W2 card comes with the following features: Connectivity Wi-Fi 5 1×1 SISO IEEE 802.11ac data rates up to 433 Mbit/s (PHY, MCS9), beamforming Supports 802.11d/e/h (DFS)/i/k/r/u/v/w/ai Wi-Fi 20, 40, and 80 MHz channels Bluetooth BR/EDR and Bluetooth low energy v5.0 supporting 2 Mbit/s Access point mode for up to 8 stations 2x u.FL antenna connectors Host interfaces SDIO & UART host interfaces PCM interface for Bluetooth audio Security Hardware encryption engines: AES and TKIP WPA, WAPI, WPA2, WPA3, WPS, and Easy Connect Dimensions – M.2 Type 2230 Key E form factor Certifications – Chipset is […]

July 8, 2021October 8, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Reverse engineering the SDK for BL602 RISC-V WiFi & BLE microcontroller

Bouffalo Lab BL602, and its big brother BL604 with extra GPIOs, are RISC-V microcontrollers with WiFi and Bluetooth LE that offer an alternative to Espressif Systems ESP32 Xtensa based WiSoC, although Espressif has also designed its own RISC-V solution: ESP32-C3. Soon after the “announcement” in October 2020, we found out the SDK and a relatively cheap BL602 board, but the SDK has many closed-source binaries. Soon after Sipeed and Pine64 expressed their interest in developing an open-source toolchain and even an open-source WiFi (and BLE) stack. Time has passed and even got a Pinecone board in January, but did not do anything with it, especially seeing the status of the software. The same cannot be said for Lup Yuen Lee (aka MrTechBlog) who spent a lot of time doing interesting with Pine64 BL602 module and board including playing and thoroughly documenting his work with Tensorflow Lite, connecting the board to […]

July 8, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Tiger Lake UP3 single board computer offers quad displays, 2.5 GbE, PCIe Gen4, up to 32GB RAM

Taiwan Commate Computer Inc, also known as just Commell, has unveiled LE-37O 3.5-inch single board computer based on Intel Tiger Lake UP3 embedded processors for industrial applications. The SBC supports up to 32GB DDR4 single-channel memory, up to four displays through DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA, and LVDS interfaces, and offers both Gigabit Ethernet and 2.5 GbE ports, as well as PCIe Gen4 via an M.2 socket. Commell LE-37O specifications: SoC – Intel Tiger Lake UP3 processor with Iris Xe graphics; FBCGA1449 package; 12-28W TDP; default: Core i7-1185G7E quad-core/octa-thread processor; option: Celeron 6305E dual-core processor System Memory – 1x 260-pin DDR4 3200 MHz SO-DIMM up to 32GB non-ECC, unbuffered memory Storage – 2x SATA III ports with RAID 0,1 support, M.2 and mSATA storage (see Expansion section) Video Outputs HDMI port DisplayPort port 24-bit dual channel LVDS connector with +3.3V/+5V/+12V supply; 1x LCD inverter connector VGA connector Quad independent display support Optional […]

July 7, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

End-of-life notice issued for Intel Lakefield hybrid processors

end-of-life intel lakefield hybrid processor

Intel launched Core i3-L13G4 and Core i5-L16G7 penta-core Lakefield Hybrid processors last year with one high-performance Sunny core, and four high-efficiency Atom Tremont cores, in a way that’s similar to what Arm is doing with DynamIQ and before that, big.LITTLE technology. The new processors were found in Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold foldable tablet and Samsung Galaxy Book S laptop, both premium products sold for over $2,000. Even some large websites never got hold of a testing sample of those products, and Anandtech has just reported that Intel published a product change notification (PCN) with the title “Select Intel Core Processors with Intel Hybrid Technology, PCN 118334-00, Product Discontinuance, End of Life”. The discontinuance of Lakefield hybrid processors is a shocker considering they were just introduced last year, but I don’t think it will affect many people as I hadn’t heard about any upcoming boards or products based on Intel’s hybrid […]