Burj Khalifa, world’s tallest building

Posted by – March 26, 2018

The highest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai is at 828 meters tall, here I go to the top highest outdoor observation deck at 555 meters on the 148th floor. Designed by Adrian Smith architect and his teams, built by Samsung from 2004 to 2010 when is was inaugurated.

Bero shows AOSP TV 8.1, Gemini PDA, Android with newer kernels at Linaro LMG/LHG hacking room


Bero (Bernhard Rosenkränzer) and his colleagues from the Linaro Mobile Group (Android) and the Linaro Home Group (TV Boxes) are working in the hacking room at Linaro Connect to prepare some demos for Demo Friday including AOSP TV on 8.1 (while most Android TV runs on 7.1), updating the Linux kernel on Android phones to some newer kernel version, and Bero also gives his opinions on the multi-Linux booting Gemini PDA amazing keyboard phone which he has purchased (see my video on Gemini PDA Linux support here)

Tomas Evensen, Xilinx CTO of Embedded Software at Linaro Connect

Posted by – March 24, 2018

Tomas Evensen talks about FPGA, the Xilinx Ultra96 development board to be available at $249 (also see my video with Xilinx about Ultra96 here) and the announcement by Xilinx of their upcoming 7nm FPGA with ARM cores SoCs to come in 2019 with up to 50 Billion transistors on the SoC.

$99 Rock960 Enterprise Edition “Ficus”, Rock960 Pro with RK3399Pro with NPU for AI


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.

Xilinx Ultra96, UltraScale+ FPGA 96Boards development board

Posted by – March 22, 2018

Ultra96 is an Arm-based, Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC development board based on the Linaro 96Boards specification. The 96Boards’ specifications are open and define a standard board layout for development platforms that can be used by software application, hardware device, kernel, and other system software developers. Ultra96 represents a unique position in the 96Boards community with a wide range of potential peripherals and acceleration engines in the programmable logic that is not available from other offerings.

Ultra96 boots from the provided Delkin 16 GB MicroSD card, pre-loaded with PetaLinux. Engineers have options of connecting to Ultra96 through a Webserver using integrated wireless access point capability or to use the provided PetaLinux desktop environment which can be viewed on the integrated Mini DisplayPort video output. Multiple application examples and on-board development options are provided as examples.

Ultra96 provides four user-controllable LEDs. Engineers may also interact with the board through the 96Boards-compatible low-speed and high-speed expansion connectors by adding peripheral accessories such as those included in Seeed Studio’s Grove Starter Kit for 96Boards.

Micron LPDDR4 memory provides 2 GB of RAM in a 512M x 32 configuration. Wireless options include 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 (provides both Bluetooth Classic and Low Energy (BLE)). UARTs are accessible on a header as well as through the expansion connector. JTAG is available through a header (external USB-JTAG required). I2C is available through the expansion connector.

Ultra96 provides one upstream (device) and two downstream (host) USB 3.0 connections. A USB 2.0 downstream (host) interface is provided on the high speed expansion bus. Two Microchip USB3320 USB 2.0 ULPI Transceivers and one Microchip USB5744 4-Port SS/HS USB Controller Hub are specified.

The integrated power supply generates all on-board voltages from an external 12V supply (available as an accessory).

Cadence HiFi DSP SDK for Android

Posted by – March 22, 2018

Raj Pawate, Niranjan Yadla and Sachin Ghanekar presented a low cost SDK for Cadence HiFi 3 DSP. This Hikey960 development board enables software developers to leverage the power of the HiFi 3 DSP and introduce new algorithms for audio and speech processing. With HiFi 3 DSP running at 533 MHz and access to a large shared system memory of 13MB, software developers are no longer constrained to showcase their advanced algorithms. In addition, the HiFi 3 DSP works closely with an App processor hosting Android allowing software developers to integrate DSP functionality within the context of Android Applications.

Daniel Thompson Keynote: using the Arm Developer Box as main development box for 4 months

Posted by – March 22, 2018

Daniel Thompson talks about his use of the Socionext 24-core ARM Cortex-A53 based Arm Developer Box over the last 4 months, to do all the things that he needs to do for development.

Learn More at http://connect.linaro.org

Shane Coughlan Keynote, OpenChain Project Director at The Linux Foundation at Linaro Connect 2018

Posted by – March 22, 2018

HKG18-400K2 – Keynote: Shane Coughlan with guest speaker Lucien Cheng-hsia Lin- Complex Made Simple: The State of Governance in Open Source

Clear governance, a shared understanding of process and rules, is key to the success of open source adoption at scale. Our global community represents many perspectives, many cultures and many jurisdictions. To address these we have seen the emergence of overarching principles, practical guides and effective tools that support the necessary balance of flexibility and shared trust. This talk will focus in the key open source solutions that address real world challenges. It highlights a stack of solutions that includes OpenChain, SPDX, Reuse.Software, FOSSology, ScanCode, sw360 and QuarterMaster and explain how they work together from meta level (e.g OpenChain standard) to practical process implementation (e.g QuarterMaster CI/CD).

For the last 10 minutes of Shane’s keynote, Lucien Cheng-hsia Lin discusses License Compliance in Asia.

The OpenChain Project identifies key recommended processes for effective open source management. The project builds trust in open source by making open source license compliance simpler and more consistent.

The OpenChain Specification defines a core set of requirements every quality compliance program must satisfy. The OpenChain Curriculum provides the educational foundation for open source processes and solutions, whilst meeting a key requirement of the OpenChain Specification. OpenChain Conformance allows organizations to display their adherence to these requirements.

Learn More at http://connect.linaro.org

HiSilicon Open Source Keynote: Kenneth Lee, Chief Software Architect at Linaro Connect

Posted by – March 22, 2018

This talk explains why a commercial organization should join the open source development from the software architecture and commercial competition perspective. And it will also tell how a bad open source strategy will fail the original target.

Kenneth (Liguozhu) Lee / Hisilicon
Kenneth Lee is the chief software architect of Hisilicon. He has more than 14 years experience on OS and OS middleware design and development. He has worked on OS area for most of HUAWEI products which include wideband/Narrowband switches, routers, mobile phones, wireless stations, core network servers, etc. He is also the architect of HUAWEI’s first Linux distribution for lots of embedded telecom devices.

http://connect.linaro.org/resource/hkg18/hkg18-400k1/

Learn More at http://connect.linaro.org

Xilinx FPGA Keynote at Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2018

Posted by – March 21, 2018

HKG18-300K2 – Keynote: Tomas Evensen – All Programmable SoCs? – Platforms to enable the future of Embedded Machine Learning

As Moore’s law is slowing down, heterogeneous architectures are needed to keep up with the increasing compute requirements emerging from industry trends such as the use machine learning across a diverse range of markets and applications. These compute requirements require custom system architectures to suit the rapidly evolving demands of emerging algorithms, standards and trends.
Field Programmable hardware offers a unique capability to provide flexibility alongside advanced processor architectures to address this ever increasing multitude of applications. Development flows, programmability and flexibility are crucial to the enablement of these advancing algorithms and to enable the next generation of implementations in a world of advancing Artificial intelligence.
In this session we will introduce you to an all Programmable paradigm and low cost development platform to enable an ecosystem of flexibility and unparalleled programmability.
The future is now……

http://connect.linaro.org/resource/hkg18/hkg18-300k2/

Learn More at http://connect.linaro.org

Microsoft Azure on Arm Servers Keynote at Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2018

Posted by – March 21, 2018

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.

http://connect.linaro.org/resource/hkg18/hkg18-300k1/

Learn More at http://connect.linaro.org

Open AI Lab interview with Mingfei Huang and 96Boards.ai Yang Zhang

Posted by – March 20, 2018

OPEN AI Lab aims to promote the industry development of Arm embedded smart machines, build an embedded SoC basic computing framework for smart machine application scenarios, and integrate application scenario service interfaces. Committed to promoting the in-depth collaboration of the entire industry chain of chips, hardware, and algorithm software, artificial intelligence will be available where there is computation. You can also watch Mingfei Huang’s keynote about Open AI Lab here.

Open AI Lab at Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2018

Posted by – March 20, 2018

HKG18-200K2 – Keynote: Mingfei Huang: Accelerating AI from Cloud to Edge

The computing changes where machine meet AI. The AI shall not only be instructed from Cloud but also be embedded in Edge and Thing itself. We can’t image in the future those intelligent machines surrounding us get idiotic even horrific when disconnected. More and more instinctive intelligence in perception, cognition and decision should be embedded into machines. How to support diverse AI algorithms running across different embedded computing hardware? It needs platform that silicon companies, algorithm providers and device makers can collaborate on. Android NN is one of them, there are more devices without Android that need to be covered. OPEN AI LAB, initiated by Arm China, Allwinner and Horizon, open to all partners, is born to focus on eliminating the barriers. Its AI Distro contains a Tensor Engine that extracts ML/DL Computing from Arm-based CPU, GPU and 3rd party Accelerators for diverse algorithm models. With the collaboration between Linaro 96board and OPEN AI LAB, algorithm and application developers will have the best support with optimized AI libraries for different hardware.

http://connect.linaro.org/resource/hkg18/hkg18-200k2/

Learn More at http://connect.linaro.org

Keynote: Mark Hambleton: The Fog at Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2018

Posted by – March 20, 2018

HKG18-200K1 – Keynote: Mark Hambleton: The Fog

Today’s world of devices connected to clouds looks set to evolve with more intelligence and processing being pushed to the edge or migrating between the cloud and the edge. The very definition of edge is evolving too. In this presentation we will look at some potential futures made possible by the emergence of the fog and its implications for the segments that it embraces.

Mark Hambleton / ARM
Approaching 20 years of experience in embedded systems ranging from real time control of wind tunnels in his early career to a more recently on mobile devices. Mark has been working with the Linux kernel for approaching 15 years, initially creating networking products focussing on traffic classification and shaping for core and edge routers to more recently on mobile devices. Working as a Chief Architect for at Symbian (and Nokia), Mark established himself within the ARM community, he then joined Broadcom in 2012 to refocus on Linux on ARM working on their leading edge mobile SOCs and then on to ARM in 2014.

http://connect.linaro.org/resource/hkg18/hkg18-200k1/

Learn More at http://connect.linaro.org

Toradex at the Qt booth at Embedded World 2018

Posted by – March 19, 2018

Toradex and The Qt Company highlight their long-standing partnership. Risto Avila from The Qt Company provides an overview of interesting demos using Toradex such as the fast boot demo which boots in 1.2 seconds based on the Apalis iMX6Q SoM and Qt 5.7 with support for 3D GPU with OpenGL ES 3.0; the fact that the Toradex SoM won Qt’s battle of the boards; Qt’s readymade images for Toradex, and much more. Toradex Partner Atechnology emphasizes Toradex’s focus on its partner network.

Toradex also showcased its demo showcasing its new Apalis iMX8 SoM running Qt 3D Studio – the SoM based on NXP’s i.MX 8QuadMax processor. The Apalis iMX8QM offers one click OS installation via the Toradex Easy Installer and offers dual Arm Cortex-A72, quad Arm Cortex-A53, and dual Arm Cortex-M4. The Apalis iMX8QM also contains on-board dual-band 802.11ac 2×2 MU-MIMO Wi-Fi and is Bluetooth 5 ready. This SoM offers advanced hardware security and safety features, and is ideal for signal processing, computer vision and HMI applications. You can sign up for early access for the Apalis iMX8QM here.

HiKey970 development board for AI


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

OS Choices
Ubuntu
Debian
Android Master

Stacks
Huawei HiAI
Android NN
OpenGL ES
OpenCL

George Grey Opening Keynote at Linaro Connect Hong Kong 2018

Posted by – March 19, 2018

HKG18-100K1 – George Grey: Opening Keynote George Grey Keynote
http://connect.linaro.org/resource/hkg18/hkg18-100k1/

Learn More at http://connect.linaro.org

Gemini PDA runs 5 Linux distros, Debian, Ubuntu, Sailfish, Android, unlocked bootloader, open source

Posted by – March 16, 2018

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.

Tianma flexible OLED, bezel-less full active LCD with Notch

Posted by – March 16, 2018

Tianma claims to be the market leader in worldwide LTPS and Full Active LCD Shipments in Q4 2017, here demonstrating some of their newest displays such as their 5.46″ Flexible HD AMOLED display. 5.5″ FHD Foldable AMOLED. Low cost 5.96″ HD+ a-Si Full Active LCD with rounded corners and a Notch. 6.18″ FHD LTPS Notch LCD. 15.6″ 4K Quantum Dot Laptop display such as the 3K by 2K LTPS bezel-less Laptop display that is in the newly launched Huawei Matebook X Pro supplied by Tianma. 5.93″ Full Active LCD. Force Touch.

E Ink booth tour at CES 2018

Posted by – March 15, 2018

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.