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Intel Atom Z3735F (Bay Trail) vs Intel Celeron N4200 (Apollo Lake) Benchmarks Comparison

Intel introduced new processors every year, but in most cases the performance improvement from new processor with a similar power profile is only incrementally better, as we’ve seen in our Atom X7-Z8700 vs Pentium N4200 benchmarks comparison, which means it’s not really worthwhile to upgrade performance-wise, unless you really a specific feature or interface found in the new processor. But what if we compare to processor from 2 to 3 years ago? Intel Atom Z3735F was a popular choice two years ago, and if you’re looking for a cheap Intel mini PC or TV box, that’s still the cheapest option with prices under $80. So I’ve decided to compare Intel Atom Z3735F (Bay Trail) processor with 2W TDP to the latest Pentium Celeron N4200 (Apollo Lake) with 6W TDP. To do so, I gathered benchmarks results from MeLE PCG03 mini PC (PCMark 8) and PCG01 TV stick (Passmark + 3Dmark) […]

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SD Specifications 5.1 to Introduce App Performance Class (for Random I/O) & Logo

SD cards used to store media data only, for example photos and videos in your camera or smartphone, but with the introduction of “Adoptable Storage” in Android 6.0 you can now run apps directly on a micro SD card, and many development boards rely on (micro) SD card to run the full operating system. The difference is important, as with media storage, the raw sequential read and write speeds are the most important, as large files are created and accessed, but for apps and operating systems many small read and write operations such as databases access take place on the card, so random IO performance becomes much more important. So far, the SD card specifications would only report sequential performance with different classes, and for example for are often recommended to use “Class 10” SD cards on Raspberry Pi, which does not clearly indicates the random IO performance. SD Specifications […]

ArmSoM RK3588 AIModule7 NVIDIA Jetson Nano-compatible SOM
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Xiaomi Mi Box (US) Android TV TV Box Review

Introduction The Mi Box is the first Xiaomi product I have used. I received it beginning of December and have been using it regularly since then. I have received 3 updates which went through uneventfully. I was very pleased with this box. I ended up getting one for my in-laws and one for my 4 year old sons bedroom. The UI worked as expected. I have an Nvidia Shield Android TV, and the Mi Box complements it very well. Having Plex Server running on the Shield and Plex on the Mi Box is pretty fantastic to easily share content. Not to mention way more cost effective than putting a Shield in every room. What’s Inside The build quality is good. The power supply puts out 5.2v which is not typical. I do wish it had more USB ports. A single USB is inadequate. I found myself swapping USB out frequently […]

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Samsung Introduces Artik 530 IoT Module & Development Kit with WiFi, BLE, and Zigbee/Thread

Samsung unveiled Artik 1, Artik 5, and Artik 10 IoT modules & development board families in 2015, but since then they dropped the Artik 1 family, and instead launched Artik 0, Artik 5, and Artik  7 modules and boards late last year. More recently the company canceled the more powerful Artik 1020 development board, but the Artik project is still going on, as they’ve just added Artik 530 module & development kit to their Artik 5 family. Samsung ARTIK 530 module specifications: SoC – Unnamed Quad core ARM Cortex A9 processor @ 1.2 GHz with a 3D graphics accelerator System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 Storage – 4GB eMMC v4.5 flash Connectivity – Dual band SISO 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2 LE + Classic, 802.15.4/Zigbee/Thread, 10/100/1000M MAC (external PHY required) Other Interfaces and peripherals Camera – 4-lane MIPI CSI up to 5MP (1920×1080 @ 30fps) Display – 4-lane MIPI DSI […]

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LG Watch Style and Watch Sport Smartwatches Launched with Android Wear 2.0

Google released an Android Wear 2.0 developer preview  last May at Google I/O 2016, with the new operating system now supporting standalone apps and keyboard and handwriting input method, featuring a new user interface with material design support, integrating Google Fit & Google Assistant support, and supporting many of the features available in Android 7.0 Nougat like data saver, and emojis. The first two devices running the latest Android Wear 2.0 will be LG Watch Style and Watch Sport smartwatches. LG Android Wear 2.0 watches specifications can be found in the table below (Source: XDA) LG Watch Style LG Watch Sport (W280A) Display 1.2″ 360×360 P-OLED (Gorilla Glass 3) 1.38″ 480×480 P-OLED (Gorilla Glass 3) Processor Snapdragon Wear 2100  @ 1.1GHz RAM 512MB 768MB Storage 4GB Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2, LTE, NFC, GPS Sensors Accelerometer, Ambient light sensor, Gyro sensor Heart Rate Sensor (PPG), Gyroscope, Accelerometer, Barometer […]

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Older Intel Atom C2000 Series Server Chips May Stop Working After a While, and There’s no Fix

It takes time and efforts to debugging hardware and software to get a product right, but some bugs may be hard to reproduce, or only happen over time, and it appears some Intel Celeron C2000 series processor for microservers may stop working after about 18 months, with the likelihood of problems increasing over time, due to clock signals that stop functioning. This is documented in Intel Atom Processor C2000 Product Family Specification Update, with Errata AVR 54 explaining the issue: AVR54. System May Experience Inability to Boot or May Cease Operation Problem: The SoC LPC_CLKOUT0 and/or LPC_CLKOUT1 signals (Low Pin Count bus clock outputs) may stop functioning. Implication: If the LPC clock(s) stop functioning the system will no longer be able to boot. Workaround: A platform level change has been identified and may be implemented as a workaround for this erratum. Status: For the steppings affected, see Table 1, “Errata […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs and SoMs in 2025
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How to Assign Brightness Keys in Ubuntu 16.04 and Greater

Yesterday, I installed Ubuntu 17.04 in CHUWI LapBook 14.1, and was surprised everything appeared to work properly. However, the laptop does not come with brightness up and down keys. So I looked for ways to assign other keys to adjust brightness on the laptop, and eventually found a solution on AskUbuntu, and tried the options for Ubuntu 16.04. First we need to install xdotool, a utility that simulate keyboard input and mouse activity:

Once it’s done, go to the Dash, start Keyboard settings app, select Shortcuts tab, and click on the + icon on the bottom of the window to bring up the “Custom Shortcut” window. Now fill the Name field with “Brightness Up”, and the Command field with:

Repeat the procedure with for the down key filling the Name field with “Brightness Down”, and the Command:

Now we should have our two brightness keys, and we […]

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Installing Ubuntu 17.04 on CHUWI LapBook 14.1 Apollo Lake Laptop

[Update: The instructions below do not work with the newly manufactured models because CHUWI completely changed the hardware The company also disabled the Linux option in the BIOS (See comments in this post) So you may need to use rEFInd boot manager or isorepin.sh script to install Linux (and some drivers may still not work out of the box) ] Since I’ve completed the review of CHUWI LapBook 14.1 with Windows 10 last week-end, I’ve decided to give it a try with a Linux distribution, and I chose to go with a daily build of Ubuntu 17.04 since we’ve seen Apollo Lake platforms need a recent Linux kernel. While Ubuntu 17.04 will be officially release in April 2017, likely with Linux 4.10, the current (alpha) build comes with Linux 4.9. I had already quickly booted Ubuntu 17.04 on the Laptop from a USB drive flashed using Rufus right after the […]

Boardcon CM3588 Rockchip RK3588 System-on-Module designed for AI and IoT applications