Tom Cubie of Vamrs introduces two new Rockchip RK3399Pro based development boards with http://96boards.ai at Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2018, a new ecosystem of development boards for Artificial intelligence development, where the new Rockchip RK3399Pro includes an NPU (2.4 TOPS capable NPU) teamed up with Open AI Lab (who I interviewed here) to support the AI framework.
Rockchip has now officially joined 96Boards as Steering Committee member, which means ROCK960 and other futures 96rocks boards based on Rockchip processors now have official identity in the 96boards/linaro community.
ROCK960 Enterprise Edition board runs Rockchip RK3399Pro hexa core dual ARM Cortex-A72, quad ARM Cortex-A53, Mali-T860MP4 GPU with 2.4 TOPS capable NPU, up to 4GB RAM, Dual SATA 3.0 port with RAID 0/1 support, HDMI 2.0/eDP up to 4K @ 60 Hz, Dual MIPI CSI camera interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi, 3x USB 3.0, 5x USB 2.0, PCIe 2.1 x16 slot and more.
Rock960 consumer edition which I previously also filmed here is about to be manufactured now to be available next month.
HKG18-300K1 – Keynote: Leendert van Doorn “Microsoft Azure: Operating at Hyper-Scale”
At scale everything changes. It is one thing to operate a datacenter of 10K nodes, it’s an entirely different thing to operate millions of nodes across 100’s of datacenters around the world. What works well for enterprises doesn’t necessarily work at scale.
Microsoft is currently deploying their 6th generation platform designs and at each generation their insights improve and in some cases entirely change leading to many specific requirements to silicon vendors, ODMs and system integrators. Over the years Microsoft effectively had to become its own OEM where they manage the entire system design from sheet metal, motherboards, firmware, hypervisors, operating systems, management stacks and corresponding higher-level services. They do this so they can control cost, quality, reduce complexity and drive their innovations.
In this talk he takes people through some of the lessons learned when Microsoft Azure’s scale increased over the years. He presents some of the rationale behind their ARM64 server plans and specifically the rational behind some of their ARM64 silicon requirements.
Leendert van Doorn is a distinguished engineer in Microsoft’s Azure organization where he is running a set of hyper-scale incubation projects. Before joining Microsoft he was a Corporate VP/Fellow at AMD driving various software and hardware initiatives. Leendert holds a Ph.D. from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
HiSilicon and Hoperun introduces their new HiKey 970 development board, 10nm HiSilicon Kirin 970 based (same chipset that is in the recent Huawei Mate 10) quad ARM Cortex-A73 at 2.36GHz with quad ARM Cortex-A53 at 1.8GHz with Mali-G72MP12 and their new Dedicated Neural-network Processing Unit (NPU) with 256MAC/cycle @ 960MHz performance. To be available next month for $299 on Amazon and at http://hihope.org this is their Super Edge AI Computing Platform with Huawei HiAI SDK that can provide up to 25X Performance and 50X better Power Efficiency compared with doing the AI tasks by CPU or GPU. This enables the Heterogeneous multi processing Resource Management for use in applications such as Deep Learning, Robots, Automobile, Smart City. The NPU provides frequently used artificial intelligence function APIs, model management APIs and basic operator computing APIs, so developers can focus on developing new AI applications instead of focusing on performance tuning. The HiKey970’s dedicated AI processor has a rich set of imaging and I/Os that enables developers to build highly integrated flexible products for AI-based intelligent cameras in smart cities.
Features include:
UEFI + ARM Trusted Firmware
Kernel 4.9
CAN driver
CSI/CSI-2 driver
WiFi enable
Video Codec enable
PCIe enable for storage and LTE connect
4 lanes CSI + 2 lanes CSI
CAN V2.0B up to 1Mbps
Video Dec up to H.265 3840×2160@60fps
6GB 1866MHz, 4 Channel LPDDR4x
GPS, GLONASS, and BeiDou
Planet Computers CTO Davide Guidi, filmed at the Gemini PDA headquarters in London, they shipped to first 1000 backers of 4200 from their successful Indiegogo. Here presenting 5 Linux distros, unlocked bootloader, open source on their website (with more source code to come shortly to that page) hardware acceleration of any Linux distro is under development using Libhybris and planning to try to integrate Halium to optimize the performance in all Linux distributions, to use the Android GPU, sound, video, modem and other binaries to each their fullest hopefully within each Linux distro. Gemini PDA hopes that by unlocking their bootloader, by providing the bootloader open source, providing their Linux distro images open source, letting users do whatever they want and multi-booth any OS that they would like, hopefully there will be a vibrant community to bring great all Linux performance on this MediaTek X27 deca-core Powered large and awesome mechanical keyboard phone. After having soon shipped to their remaining Indiegogo backers, Planet Computers hopes to be able to expand much further selling their phone through distributors and telcos around the world.
E Ink shows and talks about its latest innovations in consumer electronics, architecture, healthcare, retail and fashion at CES 2018, to bring dynamic elements to generally static environments such as architecture and design, as well as discuss how its ePaper technology is being integrated into smart cities and connected devices, famous for eReaders, also revolutionizing the digital signage, healthcare and retail industries as well. Bus signs, electronic shelf labels, medical devices, products featured include the E Ink DAZZLE wall, the world’s largest media façade on the San Diego International Airport parking garage, featuring 2,100 tiles of E Ink’s Prism technology. A dress designed by Bergmeyer featuring E Ink Prism which won Best in Show at IIDA Fashion Show in October, 2017. A reconfigurable Retail Price Tag, a thin, batteryless price tag containing Powercast’s power harvesting technology that enables quick price changes using a typical handheld UHF RFID reader for wirelessly updating the display, the LTS Smart Patch transdermal therapeutic system that delivers medication to patients in a convenient and controlled manner, ReMarkable E Ink tablet offering paper-like reading, pen input writing and sketching, Onyx Boox Note, Onyx Boox Max2 (which I filmed here), Sony Digital Paper and more.
Nubia’s flagship phone is their Z17S with a 5.73″ FHD+ screen 2040*1080 Pixel display (403ppi), 4G LTE Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, 6GB RAM, 64GB Flash, Four Cameras, Android 7.1, NFC, Type-C 26W fast Charge. Nubia also does smart locks, IoT, smart lamps and more. The N Series and V Series are going to be price attractively yet provide a 18:9 display. As concepts for future phones they are showing one with a built-in fan for gamers to cool their phone when cranking up the peak performance output and designs for gamers that includes kevlar. Noise canceling headphones, power banks, 360 degree Type-C camera and more.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 is Qualcomm’s fastest consumer ARM Processor yet (30-40% faster than last year’s Snapdragon 835 using 30% less power), on 10nm FinFET LPP Samsung process, it features 64bit Octa-core quad 2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold which are ARM Cortex-A75 custom cores and quad 1.8 GHz Kryo 385 Silver which are ARM Cortex-A55 custom cores, Qualcomm’s fastest ever GPU the Adreno 630 with its Visual Processing Subsystem (including GPU, VPU and DPU) with OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan2, DxNext eXtended Reality (XR), Room-Scale 6DoF with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), Adreno Foveation, Advanced visual inertial odometry (VIO), HDR10 and Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG), 4K Ultra HD @ 60 FPS, 2x 2400×2400 @ 120 FPS (VR), 10-bit color depth (encoding and decoding). Qualcomm’s AI Platform is on their 3rd Generation Qualcomm Hexagon 685 DSP which supports sophisticated, on-device AI processing, delivering richer camera, voice, XR and gaming experiences as a Neural Processing Engine (NPE) with Caffe, Caffe2 and TensorFlow support. With DisplayPort and USB Type-C support. Qualcomm’s X20 Modem supports 1.2Gbit/s download speed using 5×20 MHz carrier aggregation, up to 256-QAM, up to 4×4 MIMO on three carriers, up to 150mbit/s upload speed using 2×20 MHz carrier aggregation, up to 64-QAM. Multi-gigabit Wi-Fi 802.11ad and integrated 2×2 802.11ac. Qualcomm Secure Processing Unit (SPU) where Biometrics can be used for authentication can be stored in isolation in hardware.
This is Epson’s best ultra short throw interactive FHD projector, generating up to a 100″ laser display at Full HD WUXGA resolution with Epson’s 0.67 inch with MLA (D10) 3LCD technology at 4000lumen, 2,500,000:1 Contrast Ratio, 20,000 Hours Durability.
Karim Yaghmour at Embedded World in Nuremberg, he is most widely known as the author of O’Reilly’s “Embedded Android” and “Building Embedded Linux Systems” books. He talks about a wide-range of topics including Android’s Project Treble, Android Things and Embedded Android in general. Karim will be holding a live session on Android’s Project Treble on YouTube on March 27th (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XJAdK9XKcQ) and another one on the HIDL mechanism introduced as part of Treble on March 28th (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFaWqdxBW4E) you can click on these to set a reminder so that you can watch them live and later on demand.
TechNexion shows off its Android Things development kits, modules, embedded systems and more new products at the Embedded World 2018. The TechNexion product lineup has grown once again in size. The company is showcasing Android Things development kits based on PICO-PI-IMX7 Low-cost system on modules that are modular, scalable and versatile. The Android Things development boards are based on the NXP i.MX7 applications processor. TechNexion is also launching several wireless communication modules, including PIXI-41Z and the PIXI-9377 low-cost, certified, 1×1 802.11 AC/BT4.1 module that deliver high transmission rates, low latency and improved range.
TechNexion is a provider of embedded systems and system-on-modules, in 2017, TechNexion was chosen by Google as a partner to develop the reference design for its Android Things development kit. That kit based on the PICO-PI-IMX7 board has been the go-to development kit distributed at developer shows and used for demoing the potential of Android Things.
The New TechNexion PIXI series is a communication module that delivers all IoT multi-mode communication needs in one ultra-compact and secure module series. It is specifically designed to enable better transmission rates, lower latency, better range and higher resistance to interference when two or more communication protocols – for example, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or Thread – are needed to run concurrently on one system-on-chip. Multiple communication protocols in one chip means users can collect more data from disparate communication protocols, while also having the flexibility to use the right protocol to suit the type of data and distance from your hub.
Panel PCs – TechNexion has three human-machine-interface (HMI) panel computing series: TC, TEP and TWP. The TEP Series is available with either ARM or x86 architecture and has an IP65 anodized aluminum enclosure and a flux mounted projective capacitive touch, high brightness LCD display – ranging from 5 to 15.6 inches. The TWP Series is a fully waterproof, IP69K, panel PC designed to withstand extreme temperatures, high vibration, and cleaning with a jet spray. It is also available with either ARM or x86 architecture – ranging from 10 to 15.6 inches. The TEP-1560-IMX6 is their 15” panel computer based on i.MX6 and the TWP-1560-IMX6 is their NEW model that is waterproof, stainless steel, panel computer.
Fanless Box PCs – The TEK Series fanless computing systems are enclosed in a compact, fully ruggedized enclosure, and are perfect for controlling versatile end-equipment.
System-on-Modules – TechNexion continues to expand its SoM options through its two series, EDM and PICO. These series have an exhaustive range of options around size, processor capability and connector type enabling the creation of almost any kind of embedded device. They are designed to be scalable and come with fully open source software – Linux and Android – and schematics.
WandPi-8M community board – TechNexion were also showing the latest version of their community development board. It is based on NXP’s i.MX8M Quad application processor with ARM Cortex-A53 + M4 architecture to deliver 4K UltraHD with HDR video quality with pro audio fidelity. The WandPi-8M is available for pre-order and is expected to ship in Spring of this year.
Sony launches their XZ2 and XZ2 Compact Smartphone (https://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/phones/xperia-xz2/) based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 with 4K HDR video recording support. Featuring a 5.7″ Full HD+ (2160×1080) HDR display (5″ on XZ2 Compact), Dynamic Vibration System with powerful stereo speakers, Full HD 960fps slow motion, 19MP Motion Eye camera with memory-stacked image sensor. 4GB RAM, 64GB UFS internal memory.
MediaTek helio P60 is MediaTek’s most powerful chipset yet, built on TSMC’s 12nm FinFET production process, with MediaTek’s CorePilot 4.0, featuring four ARM Cortex-A73 cores at 2.0GHz, four ARM Cortex-A53 cores at 2.0GHz in a big.LITTLE configuration, ARM Mali-G72 MP3 GPU clocked at 800MHz. They also provide a Multi-core AI processing unit (Mobile APU) with a 280GMAC/s performance for deep learning facial recognition, object and scene identification, user behavior-informed performance and other AI and AR application enhancements good for computer vision enhancements on the cameras such as Single or Dual Camera bokeh, Real-time HDR recording and viewing and more.
Vuzix is about to launch the mass manufacturing, they are already shipping a few samples to developers to prepare some of the killer apps that will be available. They will be providing two skews, one more basic consumer edition and more higher spec version for the enterprise. They support Alexa, it runs Android with all kinds of Augmented Reality and Smart Headmounted Dashboard type apps that can be developed. It also has a Smartphone app that simplifies the management of the smart glass, choosing which app to load in the UI.
Samsung releases the same phone again, this year still $900, but now they re-imagined the camera. It was already a great camera last year. But now it’s better for sure. Now the “amazing” S9 camera has a mind blowing dual aperture so that is supposedly good. The 960fps slow motion is grainy and blurry but it’s the same Sony did in their XZ phone last year. Samsung Dex is great but it seems they haven’t developed any productivity apps yet, just loading whatever is there for smartphone and tablet. The poop emoji is also here the highlight the most important revolutionary feature of 2018, as a copy of Apple’s poop highlight from last year. Also it’s great you can buy your next makeup using augmented reality. Welcome to my Samsung review!
Rockchip has optimized their RK3229 and RK3036 Quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 System on Module solution to run Android Things or another optimized Linux OS to be able to support Google Assistant, Alexa, iflyertek, DuerOS for high-end to low cost smart speaker products and intelligent voice interactive products, supports sound source localization, sound field enhancement, echo cancellation and noise suppression technology. This Rockchip RK3229 Solution supports 8 channel digital silicon microphones directly connected chip solution, and thus achieves an overall solution of cost-effectiveness and high expandability for the Smart Speakers market.
Here I film at the UK launch of the Blade Shadow cloud PC gaming service, at the Meltdown London e-sports bar, where they have setup a bunch of Shadow PCs for cloud based gaming PC streaming service
here powering their League of Legends tournament. Blade Shadow is a French startup who I also interviewed at CES here they have now launched their service to cover the UK and they have also activated their West Coast USA server to serve customers in California. For about $35 per month you get remote access to “your own” Xeon gaming desktop with an Nvidia GTX1080 GPU, 12GB RAM, 256GB SSD running Windows 10 Pro.
Google booth tour at the BETT education technology conference, showcasing some of the newest Chromebooks released for the education market, new security features to help schools prepare for the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU (more information at Google Blog), collaborative tools for teachers and students, the Jamboard interactive whiteboard display device, Google Expeditions using Augmented Reality and VR. Chromebooks are the leading device for the K-12 education market in the USA and now also in Sweden, Canada and New Zealand with 25 million users worldwide. G Suite for Education is used by 80 million users worldwide.
Neverware CloudReady provides smooth dual boot or single boot of a very recent Chromium OS based OS, with automated security and feature updates coming automatically within 6 weeks after Google releases them, it works smoothly on most laptops released since around 2008, their officially supported devices list is here but many more Intel/AMD powered Laptop models also work fine but may not be supported by CloudReady officially yet.
Acer C732 Chromebook is an education-focused Chromebook with IP41-rated durability, a quad- or dual-core Celeron processor, and the option for built-in LTE connectivity. It can be configured with an 11.6-inch 1366 x 768 IPS touchscreen, IPS non-touchscreen, or non-touch TN panel. It has two USB-C 3.1 ports as well as two USB-A 3.0 ports and a microSD slot. Pricing starts at $279.99 for non-touch and $299.99 for touch.
Lenovo 100e has a 11.6″ HD anti-glare display, powered by the 2.4 GHz Intel Celeron dual-core processor, military-grade durability with rubber bumpers, reinforced ports, a 180-degree hinge that won’t snap under pressure, compliant with MIL-STD-810G testing for shock and awe, it’s drop-resistant up to 29.5 inches (75cm), roughly the height of a school desk, a sealed touchpad and resists spills of up to 1.39 cups (330 ml),10 hours of battery life, two USB-C ports, two USB 3.0 ports, 2 x 2 AC WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, Micro SD card reader.
