System-on-Chip

Custom PC, Issue 153

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Custom PC Issue 153My regular Hobby Tech column celebrates its third year this month, and I’d like to think it does so in style. As well as a two-page review of the Raspberry Pi 3, the column details how to build a Raspberry Pi Zero-based energy usage graph into a cheap box frame and interviews Raspberry Pi Foundation director of hardware James Adams about his designs and inspiration.

First, the Pi 3. I’ve previously written about the board in a cover feature for The MagPi and in Linux User & Developer, so there should be no major surprises in this review – beyond a focus more on the hobbyist community’s desires and concerns, given the title of the column. The interview, though, is all-new: a small, separate extract of my interview was published in The MagPi’s Raspberry Pi 3 launch issue, but the material used in Hobby Tech is fresh – including detailed information on just how that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radio module talks to the new BCM2837 SoC and the challenges of conformance testing something that has an intentional radio emitter inside.

The build was a project I worked on after picking up a cheap electricity and gas monitor for my house. While the website works well for viewing live usage and historical graphs, I wanted something that wouldn’t look out of place in the living room and hopefully remind everyone to turn things off when they leave! A cheap Raspberry Pi Zero was the perfect platform, and combine with a Pimoroni Unicorn HAT fits snugly in the back of a wooden box frame. Some paper on the front diffuses the LEDs to prevent glare and make it look less like a hack and more like a piece of furniture – though with the consequence that the photos look a little washed out compared to the bright, colourful display in the flesh – and everything else is a software concern.

All this, and interesting things written by people who aren’t me, is available from your local supermarket, newsagent, or electronically via Zinio and similar services.

Linux User & Developer, Issue 164

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Linux User & Developer Issue 164My review for this month’s Linux User & Developer magazine is of a device I’ve been playing with for a while now: the Raspberry Pi 3, the first single-board computer from the Raspberry Pi Foundation to include a 64-bit CPU and integrated radio chip.

Following my cover feature for The MagPi magazine, the Raspberry Pi 3 once again graces a magazine cover – and well it should. The switch from ARM Cortex-A7 to ARM Cortex-A53 processors cores in the new Broadcom BCM2837 system-on-chip (SoC) brings with it a considerable performance boost over the Raspberry Pi 2, which itself left the original single-core Raspberry Pi in the dust.

That’s even before discussing the integrated wireless connectivity. Boasting 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, and Bluetooth Low Energy, the Raspberry Pi 3 certainly ticks a lot of boxes on the connectivity front – even if the integrated Ethernet port still communicates with the SoC through a shared single USB channel. Best of all, the board is entirely compatible with accessories and software written for earlier models – going all the way back to the early raft of add-ons for the original Raspberry Pi.

One discovery that cropped up between the MagPi launch feature and this review, though, was heat generation: testing under my thermal camera, published on imgur for the curious, revealed that the Raspberry Pi 3 gets considerably hotter than its predecessors – over 100°C under CPU load. This leads to a couple of issues: potential burns if you poke the chip and thermal throttling which dramatically harms performance if the Pi 3 is installed in a case. Coupled with even harsher throttling – from 1.2GHz to just 600MHz – when used with marginal power supplies or low-quality micro-USB cables, there are caveats aplenty.

For the full low-down, pick up a copy of Linux User & Developer Issue 164 from your nearest supermarket, newsagent, or electronically via services such as Zinio.

Linux User & Developer, Issue 162

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Linux User & Developer Issue 162In addition to my regular four-page news spread, this month’s Linux User & Developer features a review of a maker-oriented computer-on-module (COM): the LeMaker Guitar.

The Guitar comes from the same company that brought us the Banana Pro, but while LeMaker has ditched its fruit-themed product nomenclature it’s still drawing inspiration from the same source: the Guitar the Chinese company’s equivalent to the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, based on the same SODIMM-layout module design and featuring a bundled break-out board to make the device’s features more accessible to hobbyists.

Where it improves on the Compute Module’s design is in its specifications: an Action system-on-chip (SoC) processor proves considerably more capable than the ageing BCM2835 of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, there’s more RAM, and it even has Wi-Fi connectivity – though this, sadly, is based on a module attached to the break-out board, meaning that it’s not something you’ll have available should you decide to build your own circuit with the Guitar module at its heart.

When I reviewed the device, I was particularly impressed with the performance for the price – especially given that the Compute Module is considerably more expensive than the Guitar. In the time since the review, though, retailers have significantly discounted the Compute Module ahead of the planned launch of a 64-bit, 1.2GHz Compute Module 3 later this year based on the same BCM2837 SoC as the newly-launched Raspberry Pi 3. If you’re not in a rush, in other words, it may be worth seeing how much the Compute Module 3 costs before designing anything around the Guitar.

The full review, along with my four-page news spread, can be found gracing the shelves of your nearest supermarket, newsagent, or as a series of zeroes and ones on digital distribution services including Zinio.

Micro Mart, Issue 1349

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Micro Mart Issue 1349It’s been a while since I’ve graced the pages of Dennis Publishing’s popular weekly Micro Mart, with my last being a cover feature on the ARM architecture in Issue 1235 followed by a feature on Valve’s Steam Box console plans in Issue 1251. For this latest issue, I’ve penned a review of the Raspberry Pi 2 single-board computer as kindly supplied by low-power computing specialist New IT.

As the author of the Raspberry Pi User Guide, which will be entering its fourth edition by the end of the year, I can safely say I bring a certain amount of knowledge to the table for this particular topic. The Micro Mart coverage is one of the first print reviews to be published, with a longer review due to appear in my Hobby Tech column in a future Custom PC Magazine issue.

The Raspberry Pi itself, of course, needs little introduction. In its most recent revision, properly known as the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, the team have replaced the ageing Broadcom BCM2835 single-core ARMv6 system-on-chip (SoC) processor with a specially-designed drop-in replacement: the quad-core ARMv7 BCM2836. The result is a device significantly more powerful than its predecessor, but one for which software to take full advantage of its capabilities is still thin on the ground.

If you’d like to read the full review, Micro Mart Issue 1349 is available in all good newsagents, most supermarkets, or digitally via Zinio and similar services.

Raspberry Pi User Guide, Third Edition

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Raspberry Pi User Guide Third EditionThe recent launch of the Raspberry Pi Model B+, a redesign of the popular single-board computer that addresses some issues with the original while doubling the number of USB ports and increasing the size of the GPIO header, unsurprisingly means that there’s a need for a new user guide. As a result, it should come as no surprise that J. Wiley & Sons has published the Raspberry Pi User Guide Third Edition, a revised work that adds details regarding the new Model B+.

Completed earlier this year thanks to pre-release access to a prototype Model B+ provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, the latest edition of my book includes everything a reader needs to know about the latest model. The chapter on using GPIO has been updated to include a full pin-out of the new elongated header and details on how best to use the new USB ports have been added. It’s not all about the Model B+, however: there are entirely new chapters in this edition, including one covering basic programming with Minecraft: Pi Edition from Mojang.

The release of this third edition comes surprisingly soon after the Raspberry Pi Second Edition hit shelves, but those who have already purchased the previous edition needn’t panic: unless you have a Model B+ there’s little you desperately need to know that isn’t contained in the previous release, and if you have a burning desire to use Minecraft: Pi Edition you can find a similar tutorial in my recently-published MagBook 21 Brilliant Projects for the Raspberry Pi from Dennis Publishing – along with, as the title suggests, another 20 projects that you won’t find in the User Guide.

The Raspberry Pi User Guide Third Edition is due to arrive in stock at most outlets within the next couple of weeks, with Amazon UK taking pre-orders for a 19th of September delivery date. If you can’t wait that long, the Kindle Edition is already available for immediate download. Those buying in other countries or high-street book shops should ask their retailer for ISBN 978-1118921661. As with previous editions, numerous translations will follow in the near future.

Custom PC, Issue 112

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Custom PC, Issue 112This month, my regular Mobile Tech Watch column takes a look at a name from the dim and distant past that is looking to take on ARM and Intel at their own game: MIPS Technologies.

Back in the mists of time, MIPS was a popular RISC architecture, and its low-power chips compete with ARM in the burgeoning palmtop market. I remember having a Philips Nino, a compact little Windows CE device with a greyscale liquid-crystal display and about 8MB of RAM, which was based on a MIPS-architecture chip. Lovely little thing, it was. Had a blue backlight, like a wristwatch.

But I digress.

In this month’s column, I take a look at how MIPS is trying to get back into the mobile market after a hiatus that saw it relegated to niche high-performance computing products. It’s having a certain amount of success, too: its latest chips already have design wins to rival those of Intel, although clearly aren’t making much of an impact against the giant that is ARM and its multitudinous licensees.

Incidentally, this column was originally due to be published in Issue 111, but an interview with Adapteva about the Parallella highly-parallel development platform took precedence. The piece is still germane, despite a month’s delay, although it is lacking one piece of information which only came to light after the issue had gone to press: MIPS is being acquired by low-power graphics specialist Imagination Technology, possibly as a play to produce its own system-on-chip designs with in-house CPU and GPU components.

Custom PC Issue 112 is available from pretty much any supermarket or newsagent, most corner shops, some libraries, and wherever dead-tree magazines are normally found, or can be downloaded as a string of zeroes and ones from the Zinio website.