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Sipeed TANG Hex is a Low-Cost Xilinx Zynq-7020 Arm FPGA Board

Last year, Sipeed launched a $5 FPGA board called Sipeed Tang and based on an entry-level Gowin GW1N-1-LV FPGA. But I had not noticed the company had also worked on a more powerful, yet still low-cost Xilinx Zynq-7020 board in a business card form factor not too dissimilar from the Raspberry Pi model B form factor. Meet Sipeed TANG Hex. So far a low-cost Zynq-7010 or Zynq-7020 board met you had to spend $99 to $199 with products such as MyIR Z-Turn and Digilent PYNQ-Z1. But Sipeed Tang HEX can be purchased for as little as $73 shipping on Aliexpress,  or 439 RMB ($62) on Taobao for people based in mainland China. It might be tempting to get a low-cost board to get started, but is it worth it? Read on to find out. Sipeed TANG Hex specifications: SoC – Xilinx Zynq-7020 (XC7Z020-1CLG484) dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 processor and FPGA with […]

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NVIDIA Introduces Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit, and Cloud-Native Support

NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX SoM was launched last month for $459. But while some third-party carrier boards were also announced at the time, the company had yet to offer Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit as they did for Jetson Nano. But as GTC 2020 conference is now taking place in the kitchen of Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, the company had plenty to announce including Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit as well as  “Cloud-Native” support for all Jetson boards and modules. NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit Specifications: CPU – 6-core NVIDIA Carmel ARMv8.2 64-bit processor with 6 MB L2 + 4 MB L3 cache GPU – NVIDIA Volta architecture with 384 NVIDIA CUDA cores and 48 Tensor cores Accelerators 2x NVDLA Engines 7-Way VLIW Vision Processor Memory – 8 GB 128-bit LPDDR4x 51.2GB/s Storage – MicroSD slot, M.2 Key M socket for NVMe SSD Video Output – HDMI and DisplayPort […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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DFI GHF51 AMD Ryzen Embedded SBC Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Assembly

Earlier this year, Taiwan based DFI launched GHF51 Ryzen Embedded R1000 SBC offering some similarities with Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, including a business card form factor, two Micro HDMI ports, and Gigabit Ethernet. But the comparison stopped there, as DFI GHF51 board will vastly outperform the Raspberry Pi 4 boards both in terms of CPU and graphics performance due to AMD Ryzen processor, and DFI embedded board does not target hobbyists nor students, but instead business and industrial customers. The company recently contacted CNX Software, and send GHF51 board with all accessories for review. I was pretty excited since it’s the first AMD Ryzen Embedded SBC that I’ll review, so it should be particularly interesting.  I’ve just received the sample and will do a two-part review starting with unboxing and kit assembly, before publishing the second part of the review reporting on my experience with Windows 10 and/or Ubuntu 20.04. […]

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n-Fuse SX1302 Mini PCIe LoRaWAN Concentrator Card to Sell for 100 Euros

Semtech SX1302 LoRa transceiver was announced in Q3 2019 as an updated to the company’s SX1301 LoRaWAN gateway chip with improved efficiency, lower BoM costs, and the ability to handle more traffic. At the time, the company also showcased a mini PCIe LoRaWAN concentrator card reference design pairing SX1302 with SX1250 sub-GHz RF front end, and that could be connected to a Raspberry Pi board via an interface board. n-Fuse has now come up with a commercial product adapted from the reference design with LRWCC2-MPCIE SX1302 Mini PCIe concentrator card designed for LoRaWAN gateways. n-Fuse LRWCC2-MPCIE key features and specifications: MCU – STMicro STM32 (no details provided) LoRa Connectivity Semtech SX1302 digital baseband processor with 2xSX1250 and 1xSX1261 Tx/Rx front-ends Frequency Range – 863 to 870 MHz or 915 to 928 MHz Sensitivity <= -124dBm at SF7, BW 125KHz <= -138dBm at SF12, BW 125kHz <= -125dBm at SF7, BW […]

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Onion Omega2 Dash Enables Touch-based UI’s, Features Omega2S WiFi Module (Crowdfunding)

Onion, the team behind the Omega2 series self-styled computing modules has launched the Omega2 Dash a self-contained Omega2S module with a touchscreen. Unlike some modules integrating with a display that mostly comes in the form of a HAT (in the case of Raspberry Pi), USB, HDMI, or some unique data lines. The Omega2 Dash is a stand-alone 3.2″ TFT touchscreen display running a Linux OS, comes with a Micro USB, and boots in less than a minute, thanks to the Omega2S module attached to the back of the display screen. The Omega2S is the latest in the series of computing modules from Onion after succeeding the Omega2+.  Targeted to the IoT industry in its 24x20x2.8mm form factor, the Omega2S was designed for mass production and people interested in integrating IoT solutions into their products. Integrating a display to the Omega2S will be tricky. It will require investing in a custom […]

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RISC-V based PolarFire SoC FPGA and Devkit Coming in Q3 2020

Microsemi unveiled PolarFire FPGA + RISC-V SoC about one year ago, but at the time, development was done on a $3,000 platform with SiFive U54 powered HiFive Unleashed board combined with an FPGA add-on board from Microsemi. I’ve now been informed that Microchip has announced its Linux-capable PolarFire FPGA+RISC-V SoC would start shipping in Q3 2020 at the RISC-V summit and that a development kit will be sold for a few hundred dollars. PolarFire SoC FPGA   PolarFire SoC FPGA key features and specifications: Mid-Range FPGA optimized for Low Power High-speed serial connectivity with built-in multi-gigabit/multi-protocol transceivers from 250 Mbps to 12.7 Gbps Up to 461k logic elements consisting of a 4-input Look-Up Table (LUT) with a fracture-able D-type flip-flop Up to 31.6 Mb of RAM Power optimized transceivers Up to 1420 18 × 18 multiply-accumulate blocks with hardened pre-adders Integrated dual PCIe for up to ×4 Gen 2 Endpoint […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Centaur Unveils an x86 SoC with Integrated AI Coprocessor

Artificial intelligence is handled at different levels in the ecosystem with ultra-powerful systems in the cloud equipped with dedicated hardware such as FPGA or GPU cards, while on the other side of the spectrum we have Arm or RISC-V based processor with AI accelerator for low power systems like smartphones or battery-powered smart cameras. Centaur Technology aims to provide a solution catering to the middle segment of devices that don’t need ultra-low power consumption, nor the highest possible peak performance, but still require a relatively compact form factor and low costs. Their solution is a still-unnamed octa-core x86 processor featuring Centaur NCORE AI coprocessor. SoC with built-in NPU (Neural-network Processing Unit) is pretty common in the Arm and RISC-V world, but it’s apparently a world’s first in the x86 space since existing solutions are all based on external accelerators. Key features of the Centaur x86 AI processor: x86 microprocessor with […]

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Allwinner H6 VC200-OS Processor is a Cheaper Version Allwinner H6 SoC without PCIe, GbE, Camera…

Allwinner H6 SoC has been around a few years, first used exclusively in Zidoo H6 Pro TV box, but then finding its way into other TV boxes, and some single board computers such as Orange Pi 3 or Pine H64 model B. There’s no a cost-down version called Allwinner H6 VC200-OS with most of the same features but without the mostly useless PCIe port (since it does not work well on H6), and other interfaces. I’ve gone through Allwinner H6 (V200) specifications and highlighted the ones missing or updated in H6 VC200-OS using stricken bold or bold text using information from the datasheet. CPU –  Quad-core ARM Cortex A53 with NEON, hardware Java acceleration, and FPU 3D GPU – Dual shader ARM Mali-T720 with support for OpenGL ES3.1/3.0/2.0/1.1, OpenCL 1.1/RenderScript, Microsoft DirectX 11 FL9_3 Memory I/F – DDR4/DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2/LPDDR3 interfaces Storage I/F – 1x eMMC 5.1 flash interface, 1x NAND Flash […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC