Hardware
Benchmarks at Phoronix and Phoronix Test Suite
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Sunday 28th of February 2021 07:21:05 PM Filed under
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Vulkan Ray-Tracing Along With Other New/Updated Benchmarks For February - Phoronix
Below is a look at all of the updates now available via OpenBenchmarking.org for Phoronix Test Suite users or if simply wanting to go to the test profile pages to gauge the CPU/GPU performance in the different real-world workloads. All these updates are available to Phoronix Test Suite users automatically if on an Internet connection when the metadata automatically updates or by running phoronix-test-suite openbenchmarking-refresh to force refresh.
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The Phoronix Test Suite Gains Vulkan Ray-Tracing Benchmarks
The versatile Phoronix Test Suite, developed and used by the Linux news website Phoronix, has gained profiles for benchmarking Vulkan ray-tracing performance using two different benchmarks as well as the JPEG XL benchmarks. There's also updates to many of the existing tests as well as a new 10.2.2 release of the Phoronix Test Suite software.
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Michael Larabel has also updated many existing benchmarks, including the ones for the commercial closed-source games Portal 2, Insurgency and Civilization VI, blender, the libavif AVIF image encoder, the dav1d AV1 video encoder, GROMACS (GROningen MAchine for Chemical Simulations), ParaView, V-RAY (commercial), Pennant (OpenMP benchmark), NWChem and the free software platform game DDraceNetwork.
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Open Hardware: Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and RISC-V/ESP32-C3
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 27th of February 2021 12:00:11 PM Filed under
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Arduino Blog » Monitor your hoverboard’s power draw with this Arduino-based meter/logger
If you look at your car’s dashboard, there’s a good chance you’ll find an efficiency rating for how you’re driving. However, what if you instead ride a hoverboard? This functionality is certainly not stock equipment, yet Niklas Roy wanted to understand the power consumption of his transporter during different riding situations. For that reason, he decided to develop a power monitor that not only graphs his stats when scooting around, but records the data for later viewing and analysis.
Roy’s handheld device is controlled by an Arduino Nano and utilizes a Hall effect ammeter for current sensing. The measurements are shown as numbers and as oscillograms on a 1.8” TFT screen, which can also be logged to the display’s built-in SD card. An RTC module provides timestamp information for these readings, which can be produced using Processing and overlaid on video.
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STM32U5 Cortex-M33 MCU gets more performance, 2D graphics accelerator, and advanced security
The new family has a higher 160 MHz clock speed, up to 2048 KB flash, up to 786 KB RAM, a 2D graphics accelerator, several peripherals have been upgraded, and a new autonomous mode lets DMA and peripherals keep working while most of the device sleeps in order to save power.
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The board also comes with 512-Mbit octal-SPI Flash memory, 64-Mbit octal-SPI PSRAM, 256-Kbit I2C EEPROM, as well as ARDUINO Uno V3, STMod+, and Pmod expansion connectors, plus an expansion connector for a camera module, and STLink-V3E embedded debugger.
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Pi Day at the Raspberry Pi Foundation
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Hello RISC-V! We got samples of the new ESP32-C3 module and it is only 13×17 mm
We got some engineering samples of ESP32-C3 modules.
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Devices: Spectrogram and Boards With (Optional) Linux
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Friday 26th of February 2021 11:31:28 PM Filed under
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Spectrogram Drawing For Fun And Coding | Hackaday
The code is a bit slow so writes its values to a file which is output by a HackRF, but it could just as easily be used by any other capable output device such as GNU Radio and a soundcard if you too want an Aphex Twin moment.
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Fanless Coffee Lake computer targets testing and analysis
No OS support was listed for the Neu-X302, but the Neu-X300 runs Linux or Win 10. The new Coffee Lake Refresh options range up to the octa-core, 1.8GHz/2.2GHz Core i7-9100TE with 35W TDP. Once again, there is a choice of Intel Q370 or Intel H310 I/O chipsets, creating two SKUs. However, there are fewer feature differences.
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Arm-based IoT gateway reaches out with WiFi, Bluetooth, LTE, and NB-IoT
Aaeon’s compact “SRG-3352C” IoT gateway is equipped with a TI AM3352, 3x USB, 2x RS-485, 2x GbE, WiFi/BT, mini-PCIe with micro-SIM, and an NB-IoT connector.
It’s always a bit troubling when vendors omit the name of an embedded system’s processor. However, Aaeon’s fanless SRG-3352C Compact Edge IoT Gateway System, which is said to be based on an 800MHz, Cortex-A8 SoC, gives away the mystery in its name: the IoT gateway no doubt features the aging TI Sitara AM3352. No OS support was listed but given the AM3352 — the lowest end model in the AM335x line, with no 3D GPU or PRU-ICSS cores — Linux is almost certainly supported.
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Embedded Artists launches 1GHz NXP i.MX RT1176 Crossover MCU module and devkit
Anders Rosvall, CTO at Embedded Artists AB, explains the i.MX RT1176 uCOM board “enables customers to move up to application-level performance without having to move to the Linux world”, and provides an update from the company’s iMX RT1064 uCOM with double the SDRAM, MIPI-DSI interface, and a 2D graphics engine. In case you wonder why a company would not want to move their application to a Linux platform, reasons include code reuse, faster real-time responsiveness, and lower power consumption.
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Cortex-A7 module debuts with optional Pico-ITX carrier
DH unveiled a “DHCOM STM32MP1” module that runs Linux on ST’s Cortex-A7/M4 SoC with up to 1GB RAM, 16GB eMMC, and WiFi/BT. “DH PicoITX2” and “DH PDK” carriers are also available.
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Open Hardware/Modding: RISC-V in Linux 5.12, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Friday 26th of February 2021 11:15:19 PM Filed under
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RISC-V With Linux 5.12 Begins Mainlining SiFive's FU740 Support, NUMA - Phoronix
Notable with RISC-V in Linux 5.12 is initial support for the SiFive FU740, the SoC design announced at the end of last year. The most notable major user coming to market at the moment with the FU740 is the HiFive Unmatched development board. The SoC with its quad-core U74-MC and single S7 embedded core is joined by four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, PCI Express x16 (at x8 speeds), NVMe M.2, Gigabit Ethernet, and 16GB of RAM to make for the most interesting RISC-V development board to date. The HiFive Unmatched is slated to still begin shipping later this quarter for about $665 USD.
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Arduino Blog » Putting a modern spin on the phenakistoscope
The phenakistoscope was invented in the 1800s as a way to view a series of moving pictures on a spinning disc. While the traditional implementation is ingenious in its own right, Nick Lim has created his own take on this venerable concept, using strobing light to break up frames instead of the slits-and-mirror arrangement of the original.
His system utilizes a repurposed CD-ROM BLDC motor to rotate the discs — which feature phenakistoscope patterns that were printed out and pasted on top — and an overhead array of strobing LEDs to make the images come to life.
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Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 industrial carrier board supports M.2 NVMe SSD, 4G LTE modem
Since the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 launch last fall, we’ve seen several interesting carrier boards for the system-on-module including Wiretrustee to build a NAS with up to four SATA drives, the compact, Arduino-sized Piunora board that also include an M.2 socket, or Over:Board mini-ITX carrier board.
Oratek brings another one specially designed for industrial use cases with TOFU Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 carrier board offering wide DC input, Gigabit Ethernet with PoE, M.2 NVMe SSD or 4G LTE modem support, among many other features.
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Open Hardware/Modding: Arduino, RPi CM4 and Pico
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Friday 26th of February 2021 12:03:23 AM Filed under
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Arduino MKR IoT Carrier embeds display, sensors, and I/Os for IoT projects
Arduino Oplà IoT Kit was launched last fall as the first open programmable IoT platform from the company. The kit included everything you need to create your own IoT devices with MKR IoT carrier with a 1.3-inch OLED color display, environmental sensors, capacitive touch buttons, Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board, external PIR motion and moisture sensors, a circular plastic enclosure, and various cables.
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Open-spec Raspberry Pi CM4 carrier has M.2 and GbE with PoE
Oratek’s $110 “Tofu” carrier for the RPi CM4 is equipped with GbE with PoE, HDMI, 3x USB, Type-C, MIPI DSI- and CSI, 7.5-28VDC input, and M.2 with micro-SIM and NVMe support.
The Oct. 2020 launch of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, which lacks pin compatibility with the RPi CM3, has attracted a new wave of companies selling carrier board alternatives to the official $35 carrier. The latest is Switzerland based Oratek, which has opened pre-orders for a Tofu board for 99 Swiss Francs (about $110), with shipments due in mid-March. The board ships with schematics, mechanical drawings, a STEP file, and other open hardware resources.
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Now you can run Unix on the tiny $4 Raspberry Pi Pico | ZDNet
Developers who have one of Raspberry Pi's latest gadgets, the Pi Pico, have a newly ported potential operating system to work with called Fuzix, a Unix-like OS for small things.
"So you can now run Unix on a $4 microcontroller," said Raspberry Pi in its blog post about the project.
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The Innovation Lab: A Space for Creative Learning
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Thursday 25th of February 2021 11:57:45 PM Filed under


The reason why we use System76 to power all the computers in the space is because I’m a big supporter of Linux in general, and System76 has been really consistent and helpful. I think the openness of System76 definitely gives the students the ability to experiment and the freedom to break stuff in a creative environment, without being too constrained by proprietary software.
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Open Hardware: Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and More
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 24th of February 2021 11:33:30 PM Filed under
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Raspberry Pi relaunches four IQAudio HATs
Raspberry Pi Ltd has relaunched four IQaudio HATs as official Pi audio add-ons with lower prices ranging from $20 to $30: the IQaudio DAC+, DAC Pro, DigiAMP+ and Codec Zero.
In December, Raspberry Pi Trading announced it had acquired IQAudio and would be relaunching their Raspberry Pi audio HATs at lower prices. As reported by MagPi, IQAudio’s four most popular HATs have now been relaunched as official Pi accessories and are available via the usual Pi resellers.
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Crowbits magnetic blocks for STEM Education work with Arduino, Micro:bit, ESP32, and Raspberry Pi (Crowdfunding)
Elecrow develops and manufactures electronics products for the maker market, and in recent years entered the STEM education market with products such as CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 education laptop that I reviewed last year.
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Arduino Blog » Arduino MKR IoT Carrier: Control what you want, how you want to!
By popular demand, we are pleased to announce that it’s now possible to buy the Arduino MKR IoT Carrier. Originally forming a key part of the Arduino Oplá IoT Kit, we’ve responded to our community to make the carrier available on it’s own, thus enabling you to benefit from having a bunch of sensors, actuators and a display all featured on the one board — making it quicker and easier to take your IoT projects to the next level.
Featuring a large set of built-in sensors and actuators as well as a useful color display, the carrier lets you focus on prototyping your IoT ideas right away by saving on the hassle of wiring and soldering these components.
The carrier can become a WiFi, LoRa, NB-IoT or GSM-compatible device by seamlessly connecting to any MKR family board. Building a user interface for these boards is easy with the embedded color OLED screen, five capacitive touch buttons, and the five RGB LEDs. The integrated sensors (temperature, humidity, pressure, RGBC light, gesture and proximity) allow you to map the environment around the carrier, and should you need to capture any other data there are over 100 additional Grove sensors that can easily be connected directly to the carrier.
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Modded Hardware: RISC-V and RasPi Stuff
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 24th of February 2021 12:49:49 PM Filed under
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ZiHintPause is the first RISC-V extension ratified under the Fast Track Architecture Extension Process
RISC-V open architecture allows designers to implement their own instructions, and some of those may become an official RISC-V extension. But the process to approve a new extension may have been suboptimal, so RISC-V International has just unveiled the Fast Track Architecture Extension Process, or Fast Track for short, that streamlines the ratification of small architecture extensions, as well as ZiHintPause, the first extension to be ratified under the new Fast Track process.
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Kiwikit Raspberry Pi Pico baseboard takes off-the-shelf modules
While it’s possible to use Raspberry Pi Pico with a breadboard or Veroboard, we’ve seen the benefits of inserting the board into a baseboard such as Maker Pi Pico providing LEDs, a MicroSD card, audio output, and the ability to add ESP-01 WiFi module or well as up to two Grove expansion modules.
Hammond Pearce decided to design his own Raspberry Pi Pico baseboard with Kiwikit board supporting some of the off-the-shelf modules and interfaces he commonly uses.
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Google kit uses RPi Zero and Coral Accelerator for machine learning
Google Creative Lab’s Alto project tasks the Coral USB Accelerator and Raspberry Pi Zero SBC to implement easy-to-understand machine learning using an open-source mini robot that you build yourself.
Google Creative Lab has unveiled a project called Alto. Alto by Google Creative Lab is a “teachable object using the Coral USB Accelerator.” “ALTO” stands for “A Little Teachable Object.” It’s designed to enable users to gain a basic handle understanding of machine learning. Alto uses the Coral USB Accelerator and Raspberry Pi to help users easily add machine learning to their hardware projects.
Google’s Alto GitHub repository contains all of the instructions and files required to build an Alto from scratch. Best of all, Alto is completely open source —the code and template for this project are all free for access. Google notes that Alto is not an official Google product, but rather a collaborative effort between Google Creative Lab and its partners at RRD Labs.
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How to get started with FUZIX on Raspberry Pi Pico
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POWER9, ARM64 and 64k page sizes
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Tuesday 23rd of February 2021 10:50:42 PM Filed under

The GNU/Linux kernel for these platforms can be compiled with either 4k or 64k page size. The distribution chooses which of these options to select. The kernel created by the distribution is included in the installation disk for the distribution.
One acute consequence of this is the relationship between Btrfs sectorsize and kernel page size. Btrfs filesystems can only be used on systems with the same page size. The Btrfs driver is being improved to remove this restriction but for users of Fedora 34 and older systems, this is a very inconvenient issue. If you need to move Btrfs filesystems between systems with different page sizes then they simply won't work.
It appears that nobody tests the kernel and amdgpu drivers on these non-standard page sizes before each official release. Consequently, if there is a problem, it is only discovered by users after the upstream release. This means that users on these platforms are always a step behind users on other platforms.
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Fuzix Unix-like operating system ported to Raspberry Pi Pico and ESP8266
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Tuesday 23rd of February 2021 10:23:31 AM Filed under

The Raspberry Pi Pico is not compatible with Linux, but now supports another Unix-like operating system known as Fuzix. Alan Cox’s Fuzix is a Unix-like operating system for older devices with less performance capacity. David Given’s two recent posts have brought to the attention about the operating system’s compatibility with ESP8266 MCU and Raspberry Pi Pico.
Fuzix operating system has a kernel which is the central core of the system. Also, it has a C compiler and a set of core applications similar to the UNIX filesystem. The Raspberry Pi Pico port comes with many benefits like a well-structured Unix filesystem with its compatibility for SD cards through the SPI interface. Hence, supporting the Fuzix operating system. The full set of Fuzix binaries is available through a serial console to UART0.
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