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iWave Telematics Control Unit Supports GPS, 4G LTE, WiFi, and Bluetooth

We’ve often written about iWave Systems’ single board computers, development kits, and systems-on-module, but the company has also been offering automotive products such as a Linux based OBD-II Dongle. And they’ve just introduced a new one called Telematics Control Unit (TCU) based on an Arm Cortex-A7 processor and offering GPS, 4G LTE Cat 4/1/M1, WiFi 5, and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity for vehicle fleet management and insurance companies that want to know how drivers behave… iWave Telematics Control Unit (TCU iW-G26) specifications: Processor – Arm Cortex-A7 based CPU @ 792MHz (likely NXP i.MX 7ULP) System Memory – 256MB DDR3L SDRAM Storage – 4GB eMMC Flash Connectivity 4G LTE Cat 4, Cat 1, Cat M1 (eMTC) 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi 4 or 802.11b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi 5 (Hotspot & Station mode) Bluetooth 5.0 GNSS – GPS/A-GPS receiver with antenna Sensors – 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis magnetometer OBD Features & Protocols 12V Power Input from TCU […]

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Linux 5.8 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS, and RISC-V Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 5.8: So I considered making an rc8 all the way to the last minute, but decided it’s not just worth waiting another week when there aren’t  any big looming worries around. Because despite the merge window having been very large, there really hasn’t been anything scary going on in the release candidates. Yeah, we had some annoying noise with header file dependencies this week, but that’s not a new annoyance, and it’s also not the kind of subtle bug that keeps me up at night worrying about it. It did reinforce how nice it would be if we had some kind of tooling support to break nasty header file dependencies automatically, but if wishes were horses.. Maybe some day we’ll have some kind of SAT-solver for symbol dependencies that can handle all our different architectures and configurations, but right now it’s just a manual […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Ingenic X2000 IoT Application Processor Combines 32-bit MIPS Xburst 2 Cores with Xburst 0 Real-time Core

In Arm’s world, heterogeneous processors are pretty common, with for example big.LITTLE / dynamIQ application processors mixing powerful Cortex-A7x cores with power-efficient Cortex-A5x cores., or  “industrial” processor such NXP i.MX 8M family with Cortex-A53 application cores combined with Cortex-M4F real-time core. Maybe I did not follow enough, but I hadn’t really seen anything equivalent in MIPS world, except if we count Ingenic T31 with RISC-V and MIPS cores. That is until today where I was informed about documents related to Ingenic X2000 IoT application processor with two 32-bit MIPS Xburst 2 core, one MIPS Xburst 0 real-time cores, as well as up to 256MB RAM built-into the SoC. Ingenic X2000 specifications: CPU Core – Dual XBurst 2, MIPS ISA based, frequency up to 1.5 GHz with 32KB L1 x2 Cache, 512KB L2 Cache, 32KB SRAM, FPU,128bit SIMD MCU Core – XBurst 0 MIPS core @ 300MHz for security and real-time […]

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Interview – NXP Linux BSP and Timesys Vigiles Maintenance Service & Security Updates

I’ve been interviewing Ed White, Manager of NXP’s Professional Support and Engineering Services, and Akshay Bhat, Director of Engineering, Security Solutions at Timesys by email to find out more about NXP Linux BSP development process, and how Timesys can help to keep it updated and secure with its Vigiles service. Q1. CNX Software readers recently discussed NXP Linux BSP update status. One person specifically noted Linux 4.14.98 used in the BSP was well over a year old, and there were various opinions about the topic, including one person suggesting NXP only provides a stable BSP and it was the ultimate responsibility of the customer to merge Linux security patchsets. Could you explain the typical development process for NXP Linux BSP, and why the company chose not to update the patchsets regularly? Answer: The kernel strategy for NXP’s i.MX family BSPs closely follows the annual cadence of kernel.org’s LTS kernel selection. […]

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MNT Reform Open Source Hardware Laptop Launched for $999 and Up (Crowdfunding)

MNT Reform DIY Arm Linux laptop has been in the works at least since 2017. The open source hardware laptop is also fully modular with Boundary Devices Nitrogen8M SoM featuring NXP i.MX 8M quad-core Cortex-A53 processor and 4GB RAM, M.2 NVMe SSD storage, and standard, replaceable 18650 batteries. The good news is the laptop is now almost ready for prime-time and has been launched on Crowd Supply with price starting at $999 in DIY kit form without storage, and $1,300 for a complete, assembled system with 256GB NVMe storage. If you don’t have that amount of money to spend, but would like to support the project, a $40 MNT Reform T-shirt is also offered. Alternatively, the motherboard only goes for $550. Here’s a reminder of MNT Reform specification: SoM – Boundary Devices Nitrogen8M SoC – NXP i.MX 8MQuad quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.5 GHz, 1x Arm Cortex-M4F real-time core Vivante […]

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Linux 5.6 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 5.6 on the Linux Kernel Mailing List: So I’ll admit to vacillating between doing this 5.6 release and doing another -rc. This has a bit more changes than I’d like, but they are mostly from davem’s networking fixes pulls, and David feels comfy with them. And I looked over the diff, and none of it looks scary. It’s just slightly more than I’d have preferred at this stage – not doesn’t really seem worth delaying a release over. So about half the diff from the final week is network driver fixlets, and some minor core networking fixes. Another 20% is tooling – mostly bpf and netfilter selftests (but also some perf work). The rest is “misc” – mostly random drivers (gpio, rdma, input) and DTS files. With a smattering of fixes elsewhere (a couple of afs fixes, some vm fixes, etc). […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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MNT Reform 2 Open Source DIY Arm Linux Modular Laptop Coming Soon (Crowdfunding)

We first covered MNT Reform in fall of 2017, when it was a prototype for a DIY and modular laptop powered by NXP i.MX 6QuadPlus processor, and with plans to eventually use i.MX 8 hexa-core processor. Last year they designed several beta units of Reform to get feedback for a dozen users, and have now fully redesigned the laptop based on an NXP i.MX 8M system-on-module with the crowdfunding campaign expected to go live in February on Crowd Supply. MNT Reform 2 specifications: SoM – Boundary Devices Nitrogen8M SOM with SoC – NXP i.MX 8MQuad quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.5 GHz, 1x Arm Cortex-M4F real-time core Vivante GC7000Lite 3D GPU System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – Probably none Networking – Atheros Ethernet MAC chip (AR8035) 200 pin SO-DIMM edge connector exposing USB 3.0, PCIe, MIPI DSI, etc… Dimensions – 67.6mm x 48.4mm Motherboard Storage – SD card slot, M.2 […]

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Some Interesting Talks from FOSDEM 2020 Schedule

We wrote about IoT devroom call for proposals for FOSDEM 2020 a little while ago, and as the free open-source developer meetup is getting closer, FOSDEM 2020 organizers released the schedule. So I’ll look at some of the talks in the relevant devrooms such as the Internet of Things, hardware enablement, Embedded, Mobile and Automotive, as well as RISC-V and others to compose my own little virtual schedule for the 2-day event. Saturday, February 1 10:30 – 10:50 – How lowRISC made its Ibex RISC-V CPU core faster – Using open source tools to improve an open-source core – by Greg Chadwick Ibex implements RISC-V 32-bit I/E MC M-Mode, U-Mode, and PMP. It uses an in-order 2 stage pipe and is best suited for area and power-sensitive rather than high-performance applications. However, there is scope for meaningful performance gains without major impact to power or area. This talk describes work […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC