Open Hardware: Banana Pi, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and More
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CNX Software ☛ Banana Pi BPI-M6 SBC features SenaryTech SN3680 quad-core Cortex-A73 Hey Hi (AI) processor
Banana Pi BPI-M6 is a credit-card single board computer based on SenaryTech SN3680 SoC comprised of a quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 processor, an Arm Cortex-M3 real-time core, an Imagination GE9920 GPU, and an NPU delivering up to 6.75 TOPS. The board ships with 4GB LPDDR4 RAM and 16GB eMMC flash. Its layout is fairly similar to the one of the Raspberry Pi 4 with four USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, a 40-pin GPIO header, a USB Type-C port for power, and two micro HDMI ports.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ This Raspberry Pi RP2040-based keyboard is open-source and designed for serious modularity
KittenBot has released a new modular keyboard called the AgileWhisker. At the heart of this feline-themed keyboard is one of our favorite microprocessors, the Raspberry Pi RP2040. It's designed so that you can easily attach modules to create a totally customized peripheral device. AgileWhisker is also completely open source, making it free to modify as much as you want.
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CNX Software ☛ Waveshare R7FA4 PLUS A and B boards are clones of the Arduino UNO R4 Minima and WiFi
Arduino board clones have been around for many years, but I don’t think I have ever seen clones of the new Renesas-based Arduino boards so far. Waveshare changes that with the R7FA4 PLUS A that clones with Arduino UNO R4 Minima, and the R7FA4 PLUS B board duplicating the Arduino UNO R4 WiFi.
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CNX Software ☛ STMicro ST60A3H0 and ST60A3H1 60 GHz transceiver ICs aim to replace USB cables
STMicro ST60A3H0 and ST60A3H1 are short-range 60 GHz transceiver ICs that tunnel eUSB2, I2C, SPI, UART, and GPIO signals and aim to replace USB and other cables in consumer devices such as digital cameras, wearables, portable hard drives, and small gaming terminals. They should also find their way into industrial applications such as rotating machinery where cable use may be challenging.
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Talospace ☛ Early Power11 signals in the kernel
A number of people have alerted me to some new activity around Power11 in the Linux kernel, such as this commit and a PVR (processor version register) value of 0x0F000007. It should be pointed out that all this is very preliminary work and is likely related to simulation testing; we don't even know for certain what node size it's going to be. It almost certainly does not mean such a CPU is imminent, nor does this tell us when it is. Previous estimates had said 2024-5, but the smart money says no earlier than next calendar year and probably at the later end of that timeframe.