Category: Development Boards

Geniatech Embedded Solutions, Developer Board 4X, world’s smallest Snapdragon 410 board


Geniatech presents their new Embedded and Develpment board Solutions, with full in-house support and development for customized development for interested customers around the world. Supporting Windows 10 IoT Core, Android and some Linux. Geniatech shows their new Developer Board 4X, the world’s smallest 64bit Qualcomm 410 based board, can be used for home applications, to easily connect everything to advanced IoT.

OpenMandriva ARM Powered Laptop at the OpenMandriva Summit in Budapest

Posted by – April 11, 2017

At the OpenMandriva meeting in Budapest with Bernhard Rosenkränzer and Colin Close, President of OpenMandriva, showing off the ARM Powered laptop that could run Open Mandriva at the Open Mandriva meeting in Budapest. This video was taken at the OpenMandriva annual meeting which this year took place in the City of Budapest where the OpenMandriva team met to talk about their plans to workw to move their distro forward. One of the major decisions taken was to move fully to the Clang compiler suite by using lld as their default linker. This is in line with their efforts to create a distro that can be used on more modern architectures. The Clang compiler/linker suite brings with it built in cross-compilers which make the creation of packages for alternate processors such as on their prototype laptop using hardware for 64bit ARM architecture using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Extended 96Boards, they have built sufficient core software to be able to provide a distro for it. Recently a key element required for them to bring this project to fruition was the demonstration of freedreno graphics driver running on the latest Adreno GPU. The OpenMandriva team are looking forward to test this new driver alongside the OpenMandriva software compilation. Another major discussion point was the OpenMandriva package management system. A decision was taken to start using the dnf package manager for the core management function, they will however provide a wrapper script so that users will still be able to use familiar command to perform package management. These changes will have a major impact on their distributed build farm as it will require restructuring the repository metadata on their ABF (Automated Build Farm) while they are doing this they will take the opportunity to incorporate a QA system and a method for building multiple dependent packages within a container. They hope these changes will improve the overall quality of the OpenMandriva distribution. If you would like to to join the OpenMandriva Association either as a user or as a developer you can visit their website http://www.openmandriva.org or contract them through the developer irc channel on freenode #openmandriva-cooker, if you have no packaging experience there are plenty of interesting jobs to do that don’t require coding skills.

Linaro CEO George Grey at Linaro Connect Budapest 2017


Linaro CEO George Grey interview on the last day of the Linaro Connect in Budapest 2017, talking about Google joining Linaro as a club member, some of the latest developments at Linaro, the high amount of contributions from Linaro into Linux and open source, IoT, Servers, Mobile, Networking, Kernel, Gateways, Set-top-boxes, Smart TVs, Android, and a lot more. Other new Linaro members are HXT a joint venture between Qualcomm and the CHinese Government, Fujitsu with their new ARM Powered Supercomupter. You can watch George Grey’s opening keynote at Linaro Connect Budapest 2017 here.

365km/h electric car, Rimac Concept One with Toradex Apalis Systems inside

Posted by – April 7, 2017

Toradex shows off Rimac Concept One at the Qt booth at Embedded World 2017. RIMAC Automobili Concept One is an ultra-fast electric super car with a top-speed of 365km/h, a 0-60mph acceleration of only 2,5 seconds, 1224HP, 1600Nm Torque. RIMAC chose Qt and Toradex as they provided a true ‘out-of-box’ experience to create one of the most advanced In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) systems and instrument clusters on the market, from scratch. The car uses several Apalis System on Modules throughout the car. This video also talks about Toradex’s Heterogeneous Multicore Low Power and Fast Boot.

Project developers and industry insiders can contact Toradex here:
lakshmi.naidu@toradex.com
http://toradex.com

Amit Kucheria, 96Boards Technical Lead about 96Boards evolution, IoT, mezzanine and future spec

Posted by – March 28, 2017

Amit Kucheria, 96Boards Technical Lead, Yang Zhang, 96Boards Director and Robert Wolff, 96Boards Community Manager host of the http://96boards.org/openhours talk about the 96Boards adoption process for chip makers and manufacturers. Amit and Robert dive deeper into the 96Boards evolution and specification, compliance and testing, and the OpenHours program. Highlighting many announcements from the previous day’s keynote, taking a look at a table full of 96Boards from Consumer edition to IoT edition and a bunch of community driven Mezzanine products. The 96Boards team takes a look at the different 96Boards footprints and talks about the future.

96Boards MediaTek X20 Pro development board by ArcherMind

Posted by – March 25, 2017

ArcherMind presents the MediaTek X20 Pro 96Boards development board featuring the MediaTek X20 10-core heterogeneous processor, Tri-Cluster dual ARM Cortex-A72, octa ARM Cortex-A53 with Mali-T880 GPU and MediaTek’s multimedia support. The MediaTek X20 Pro development board also features 3G/4G LTE support, 2k LCM or two 1080P LCM,13M+13M dual camera you can read more about it here. This video also features ArcherMind’s Mstar Altra enterprise edition 96Boards based on Mstar MSD6A838 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 featuring Mstar 4K M-Genuine Video Engine which supports MEMC, HDR, De-noise, color enhance and etc.

Yang Zhang, Director of 96Boards and Robert Wolff, Host of 96Boards Open Hours


Yang Zhang is the Director of Linaro’s http://96boards.org with Robert Wolff host of http://96boards.org/openhours talk about the status of the 40+ 96Boards that are in development, the 96Boards standard and latest news, IoT boards, extended boards, Enterprise boards and what may happen in the future.

Qualcomm Snapdragon at Embedded World 2017


The Qualcomm Snapdragon platform is originally designed for mobile, but now can be embedded into Interactive kiosks, Digital signage, Robotics, High-tech toys, in flight entertainment, medical imaging and all kinds of ideas for any advanced IoT. Qualcomm positions their Snapdragon processors for Embedded to provide a superior performance, low power consumption and integrated connectivity to make devices more aware, connected, intelligent and interactive. The Snapdragon platform offers development kits, single-board computers and scaling up to customer solutions, integration services and production-ready, customizable System-on-Modules (SOMs). At Embedded World 2017, Qualcomm talks about Snapdragon 410E, Snapdragon 600E and also talks about the upcoming 820 series for embedded all with long term support (at least until 2025) to provide their maximum performance. With many projects to be born out of the Dragonboard 410c and showing off other solutions such as the Geniatech Developer Board 4, the small Geniatech DB4x 410 based module, the Altierre Systems powered embedded vision real-time synchronized multi-camera 130-degree panorama 4K system that is in the Panacast 2, eInfoChips eragon 820, Inforce, Kiteboard Snapdragon 410 board with a LTE sim card slot and more. All these Qualcomm Snapdragon based Embedded products can support multiple operating systems Android, Linux thanks to the availability of the open source Freedreno GPU driver and Windows 10 support also.

Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 at Embedded World 2017


Nordic Semiconductor is showing various demos showcasing their nRF52 series microcontrollers, showcasing the nRF52840 specifically, which supports all the new features introduced in Bluetooth 5.0, while also adding 802.15.4 and Thread support to the Nordic platform.

World’s first ARM Cortex-M23 in Nuvoton M2351


Nuvoton M2351 is a secure microcontroller platform powered by ARM Cortex-M23 core with ARMv8-M architecture, TrustZone technology, security technologies, peripherals and tools. The ultra-low-power 32-bit microcontroller works in low voltage range from 1.62V to 3.6V and can operate at up to 48 MHz frequency, with up to 512 Kbytes embedded Flash memory in dual bank mode supporting OTA firmware update and up to 96 Kbytes embedded SRAM. It is suitable for applications such as IoT secure connections, fingerprint authentication, EMV card reader, security alarm system, smart home appliance, wireless sensor node device (WSND), auto meter reading (AMR) and portable wireless data collector.

The M2351 series is equipped with 32 Kbytes Secure Boot ROM as root of trust, multiple firmware programming tools by In-System Programming (ISP), In-Circuit Programming (ICP) and In-Application Programming (IAP). In addition to TrustZone software protection mechanism, it also supports eXecution Only Memory (XOM), LDROM (user program loader) and multiple cryptographic hardware accelerators which are used to protect the core software and data assets on a microcontroller system. The M2351 series also integrates a 8 COM x 40 SEG controller with internal charge pump for segment LCD panel and provides high performance connectivity peripheral interfaces such as UART, SPI, I²C, GPIOs, USB and ISO 7816-3 for smart card reader.

As to Power efficiency, the M2351 series supports Brown-out detector, Power-down mode with RTC turn on, RAM retention less than 2.0 uA, deep power-down mode with RAM retention less than 1 uA and fast wake-up via multiple peripheral interfaces.

Security Features:
ARM Cortex-M23 TrustZone Technology
8 Memory Protection Units (MPU)
8 Security Attribution Units (SAU)
Implementation Defined Attribution Unit (IDAU)
2 KB OTP ROM with additional 1KB lock bits
Hardware Crypto Accelerators
CRC calculation unit
Up to 6 tamper detection pins
96-bit Unique ID (UID), 128-bit Unique Customer ID (UCID)

ST booth tour: STM32L4, STM32H7, startups, students at Embedded World 2017


ST shows their best-in-class ultra-low-power STM32L4 microcontroller which delivers 100 DMIPS based on its ARM Cortex-M4 core with FPU and ST ART Accelerator at 80 MHz offering dynamic voltage scaling to balance power consumption with processing demand, low-power peripherals (LP UART, LP timers) available in Stop mode, safety and security features, smart and numerous peripherals, advanced and low-power analog peripherals such as op amps, comparators, LCD, 12-bit DACs and 16-bit ADCs (hardware oversampling). STM32L4 is available in these skews: STM32L4x1 (Access line), STM32L4x2 (USB Device), STM32L4x3 (USB Device, LCD), STM32L4x5 (USB OTG) and STM32L4x6 (USB OTG, LCD).

ST also shows their new STM32H7 platform, taking advantage of an L1 cache, STM32H7 can deliver the maximum theoretical performance of the ARM Cortex-M7 core, regardless if code is executed from embedded Flash or external memory: 2010 CoreMark /856 DMIPS at 400 MHz fCPU. STM32H7 supports AXI and multi-AHB bus matrixes for interconnecting core, peripherals and memories, 16 Kbytes +16 Kbytes of I-cache and D-cache, Up to 2 Mbytes of embedded dual-bank Flash memory, with ECC and Read-While-Write capability, high-speed master direct memory access (MDMA) controller, two dual-port DMAs with FIFO and request router capabilities for optimal peripheral management, and one additional DMA, Chrom-ART acceleration for efficient 2D image copy and double-precision FPU are also part of the acceleration features available in the device, peripheral speed independent from CPU speed (dual-clock support) allowing system clock changes without any impact on peripheral operations, even more peripherals, such as four serial audio interfaces (SAI) with SPDIF output support, three full-duplex I²S interfaces, a SPDIF input interface supporting four inputs, two USB OTG with dedicated power supply and Dual-mode Quad-SPI interface, two FD-CAN controllers, a high-resolution timer, a TFT-LCD controller, a JPEG codec, two SDIO interfaces and many other analog peripherals including three fast 14-bit ADCs, two comparators and two operational amplifiers. STM32H7 has 1 Mbyte of SRAM with a scattered architecture: 192 Kbytes of TCM RAM (including 64 Kbytes of ITCM RAM and 128 Kbytes of DTCM RAM for time-critical routines and data), 512 Kbytes, 288 Kbytes and 64 Kbytes of user SRAM, and 4 Kbytes of SRAM in backup domain to keep data in the lowest power modes, Security Authenticate and protect software IP while performing initial programming in production or firmware upgrades in the field.

This ST booth tour video at Embedded World 2017 in Nuremberg also features several demos from the STM32 Fan Zone area at Embedded World 2017 featuring demos including a Gameboy emulator and a color LED light display system from students from the Thomas More college, Seavus smart Shopping cart, Bixi gesture controls in the car, Xped IoT systems and ST is giving away more than 5000 development boards at the Embedded World.

BeagleBone Blue with System-in-Package Octavo Systems OSD3358


BeagleBone Blue is as a new Robotics and IoT development board based around the Octavo Systems OSD3358 System-In-Package featuring a Texas Instruments AM3358 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8, 512MB of DDR3 and power management enabling easy and affordable customization and re-design of the PCB using Autodesk EAGLE. BeagleBone Blue has 2 cell (2S) onboard LiPo battery management with charger and battery level LEDs, 8 real-time software controlled PWM/PPM outputs for 6V servo motors or electronic-speed-controllers (ESCs), 4 PWM-enabled DC motor drivers, 4 quadrature encoder inputs, on-board sensors including a 9-axis IMU and barometer, a wide array of GPIO and serial protocol connectors including CAN, 4 ADC inputs, a PC USB interface, a USB 2.0 host port, a reset button, a power button, two user configurable buttons and eleven user configurable LED indicators. BeagleBone Blue can run Debian, ROS, Ardupilot, Graphical programming, Cloud9 IDE on Node.js and more to come. You can order the BeagleBone Blue for $79 at https://www.arrow.com/en/products/bbblue/beagleboardorg

Qualcomm Dragonboard 410c at Linaro Connect Budapest 2017

Posted by – March 17, 2017

Following the http://96boards.org/openhours/ session at Linaro Connect Budapest 2017, Lawrence King, Engineer, Sr. Staff/Mgr at Qualcomm Canada, talks a bit about the history of Dragonboard (since my video of an early Dragonboard filmed with him at Computex 2011) leading to the Dragonboard 410c, the ecosystem that is being built around it and some of what’s to come from Qualcomm with Dragonboard.

Nvidia Tegra X2 in Jetson TX2 Developer Kit, dual Denver2 + quad ARM Cortex-A57, Pascal GPU


Nvidia Tegra X2 features two Nvidia custom Denver 2 cores, four ARM Cortex-A57 cores with Nvidia’s Pascal GPU (made of 256 CUDA cores) made on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET+. Nvidia Tegra X2 (codenamed “Parker”) delivers up to 1.5 teraflops of performance, about 50% more performance than Nvidia Tegra X1. Enabling Artificial Intelligence (AI), for building advanced robots, drones, smart cameras, portable medical devices, enabling the processing of complex deep neural networks on the edge of the IoT world. While X1 could do 4K at 30fps encode, 4K 10bit 60p decode, X2 can encode 4K H265 at 60p and decode 4K 12bit 60p. Memory bandwidth has more than doubled from 25.6GB/s to 58.3GB/s, you can buy the Nvidia Jetson TX2 Developer Kit for $599 at https://store.nvidia.com/store?Action=DisplayPage&Locale=en_US&SiteID=nvidia&id=QuickBuyCartPage

Arrow Dragonboard 820c Extended 96Boards, the Enterprise Edition Oxalis NXP ARMv8 Layerscape LS1012A

Posted by – March 14, 2017

Arrow shows an early prototype of their upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 based extended edition 96Boards and they are showing their first Enterprise Edition 96Board named Oxalis. Based on NXPs latest ARMv8 Layerscape LS1012A Processor running at 800MHz, this board delivers up to date connectivity with two USB-3.0 ports, SATA, 2x Gigabit Ethernet and PCIe.

Arrow also has a whole bunch of other new development boards such as the Meercat, an i.MX7 based ARM Cortex-A7 board with ARM Cortex-M4 and the Chameleon, the first Intel / Altera FPGA based 96Boards. You can read Arrow’s article about maker’s experiences with the 96Boards here.

Also check back in the days to come as I will be filming Arrows presenting their latest 96Boards at the Embedded World in Nürnberg 14th-16th February, you can get your free pass here.

Robert Wolff featured in this video is the comunity manager at 96Boards hosting the weekly 96Boards Open Hours.

Freedreno enables Linux distros on Dragonboard 820c 96Boards

Posted by – March 14, 2017

Rob Clark, maker of the open source GPU driver Freedreno shows off his latest Freedreno open source GPU working on an upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 based Dragonboard 820c development board, one that is going to use an expanded 96Boards specification to add PCI-E and Gigabit Ethernet ports among other things to the development board. This Freedreno and 820 board provides a significant jump in performance for the GPU, possibly 4x to 5x between the Adreno 306 in a Dragonboard 410c and the Adreno 530 in a Snapdragon 820 based board. The availability of the Freedreno open source GPU driver on Qualcomm based development boards means that these development boards can run all sorts of Linux distributions, including Debian, not just Android. You can read more about the Dragonboard 820c here.

Oliver “Ogra” Grawert talks Ubuntu Core on Dragonboard 410c at Linaro Connect Budapest 2017


Robert Wolff of the weekly 96Boards Open Hours show interviews Oliver “Ogra” Grawert of Canonical about the status of Snappy Ubuntu Core on the 96Boards including the Dragonboard 410c and more about Ubuntu Core, Canonical’s strategy in IoT, security and updates through the Build.Snapcraft.io platform. You can watch the 96Boards Open Hours episode featuring Robert Wolff and Ogra here.

Inforce 6410Plus Snapdragon 600 Development Board

Posted by – February 24, 2017

The Inforce 6410Plus is a Snapdragon 600 based development board. The Inforce 6410Plus features compatibility with a wide array of I/O such as camera connectivity and various sensors such as accelerometer. The Inforce 6410Plus features Arduino connectivity. The Inforce 6410Plus can run either Android or Linux. The Inforce 6410Plus is aimed primarily for robotics applications.

Micro:bit CTO and CEO interview

Posted by – February 10, 2017

Johnny Austin is the CTO of the micro:bit foundation, they have distributed about 1 million units for free to every school kid age 12 in the UK, who use them to learn programming. The retail price is £13 in the UK. Micro:bit Foundation has announced three new Founding partners to join the current six. The British Council, Amazon and Lancaster University will be joining the BBC, Nominet, ARM, IET, Microsoft and Samsung. Zach Shelby is the CEO and he talks about how they are working to make the micro:bit available worldwide to everyone who wants to use it. The micro:bit is now available in 32 countries, with resellers in eleven. The micro:bit Foundation with element 14, the distributor of the BBC micro:bit, announced resellers in six new countries. This means educational organisations, teachers, kids, parents and makers will now also be able to locally purchase the BBC micro:bit in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands and Finland.

Diamond Systems ARM Computing EAGLE I/O-Rich SBCs and Carrier Boards

Posted by – January 30, 2017

Diamond Systems, a global supplier of compact, rugged, I/O-rich embedded computing solutions for real-world applications in a broad range of markets, unveiled its EAGLE family of compact, rugged ARM single-board computers and carrier boards designed to work with the Toradex Apalis family of ARM computer-on-modules (COMs), see my Toradex at ARM Techcon video here.

The product line is composed of two models, the full-size, full-featured Eagle and its smaller sized, low-cost Eaglet. For greatest convenience, customers may purchase a fully configured off the shelf solution from Diamond, including a select ARM module and heat sink installed, or they may purchase the baseboard and ARM module separately for greater configuration flexibility and lower unit cost. Development Kits, including the fully configured SBC, pre-configured Linux OS on a microSD card, and a full cable kit, are available from Diamond Systems.

Key highlights of the Eagle/Eaglet family are long product lifetime, configuration flexibility, and a wide range of I/O.

You can read the press release and access links to EAGLE product web pages, datasheets, photos here.

Since 1989, Silicon Valley-based Diamond Systems Corporation has provided compact, rugged, board- and system-level real world embedded computing solutions to companies in a broad range of markets, including transportation, energy, aerospace, defense, manufacturing, medical and research.

The company is renowned as an innovator of embedded I/O standards and technologies; it was an early adopter of PC/104 module technology, originated the FeaturePak I/O module and RSODIMM rugged memory module standards, and holds a patent for a unique analog I/O autocalibration technique.

Diamond’s extensive product line includes compact, highly integrated single board computers (SBCs); an extensive line of expansion modules for analog and digital I/O, wired and wireless communications including multiprotocol serial ports and Ethernet switches, GPS, solid-state disk, and power supply functions; and complete, rugged, system-level solutions.

Interested developers can contact Diamond Systems directly here:
Mark Wilson
Marketing Manager
mwilson@diamondsystems.com
Diamond Systems Corporation
http://diamondsystems.com