Howchip has launched a sandwich-style, Nano-ITX form factor “ExSOM-8895 DVK” that runs Android 7.0 and Linux 4.4.13 on Samsung’s octa-core Exynos 8895 SoC with 4GB DDR4, dual UFS 2.1 storage interfaces, and MIPI-DSI and -CSI.
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[Updated: Aug. 2] — The Shakti project, based at IIT Madras, has booted Linux on its first RISC-V processor. The 22nm FinFET fabricated, 400MHz Shakti chip can run at 1.67 DMIPS/MHz, and will be commercialized by a startup called InCore.
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DARPA announced the first grants for its $1.5 billion Electronic Resurgence Initiative for accelerating chip development. More than $35 million went to a “Posh Open Source Hardware” project for developing and verifying hardware IP.
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Google unveiled a stripped-down “Edge TPU” version of its Tensor Processing Unit AI chip plus a Cloud IoT Edge stack for Arm-based IoT gateways that run Linux or Android Things. An NXP-based dev kit is due in October.
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Arm’s Cortex-A76 design offers speed/efficiency improvements including a 4x boost in AI performance, and is paired with a new Mali-G76 GPU that is also said to aid AI. Meanwhile, Arm revealed more details on its upcoming ML co-processors.
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NXP announced partnerships with Alibaba and six embedded equipment companies that are deploying its EdgeScale middleware for secure edge computing device management on Linux-driven devices based on NXP QorIQ Layerscape SoCs.
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Intel announced its embedded friendly 8th Gen Whiskey Lake U-series and Amber Lake Y-series chips, and AMD is prepping a new Threadripper and two 45W TDP Ryzen models.
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Why did Microsoft choose to launch an Arm/Linux SoC design with device-to-cloud security? A VDC analyst suggests that Azure Sphere is all about competing with Amazon FreeRTOS.
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[Updated: April 17] — Microsoft announced an “Azure Sphere” blueprint for hybrid Cortex-A/Cortex-M SoCs that run a Linux-based Azure Sphere OS and include end-to-end Microsoft security technologies and a cloud service. Products based on a MediaTek MT3620 Azure Sphere chip are due by year’s end.
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Intel announced 18 new 8th Gen “Coffee Lake” chips, including up to hexa-core Core H-series and Xeon M-series CPUs, which are appearing in Linux-ready COM Express Type 6 modules from Seco and Congatec.
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SiFive has raised $50.6 million in Series C funding, and Western Digital pledged to produce 1 billion of SiFive’s RISC-V cores. Meanwhile, the new Linux 4.16 kernel boosted RISC-V support, and there are rumors of a RISC-V project led by Google, Qualcomm, and Samsung.
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NXP’s “EdgeScale” suite of secure edge computing device management tools help deploy and manage Linux devices running on LSx QorIQ Layerscape SoCs, and connects them to cloud services.
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Aaeon has launched the “UP AI Core” — a $69 mini-PCIe version of Intel’s Movidius Neural Compute Stick for neural network acceleration that’s designed to work with the UP Squared SBC and other Ubuntu-driven x86_64 computers.
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Intel debuted a Stratix 10 TX FPGA with 58Gbps transceivers while the industry kicked the tires of major new SoCs like the AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 and anticipated Arm’s Project Trillium AI chips and Intel’s 10nm Cannon Lake and Ice Lake.
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