Hardware Archive

While it’s still yet to debut, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite is looking like a big deal for ARM-powered Windows machines and, now, it’s getting a more affordable cousin in the Snapdragon X Plus. Announced today, Snapdragon X Plus is based on the same Oryon CPU as Snapdragon X Elite, just with a bit less power. The chip has 10 cores to the Elite’s 12, and is also clocked down from the Elite’s 3.8GHz to 3.4GHz. ↫ Ben Schoon at 9To5Google It really seems like it’s finally happening – ARM computers for the general public (that aren’t from Apple). I really hope that Qualcomm can deliver on its promises, and that Microsoft’s involvement means these computers will be fairly standardised so it’s easier for non-Windows platforms to support them. I’ve seen quite a few rumblings from people invited to Qualcomm’s press events for these new ARM chips that the company is delivering Linux support alongside Windows support, so that’s at least a good start. Whenever we talk about ARM coming to the generic PC market, people rightfully point out the lack of standardisation in the ARM space, so that really is the deciding factor here for people like us, who tend to not be all too interested in locked-down platforms. If every one of these machines is different enough that supporting them is a nightmare – like the world of smartphones – ARM for PCs will be dead on arrival for me because I have zero interest in buying Windows-only hardware. One thing Microsoft tends to be good at is getting at least some standardisation to stick in the PC market, and I hope they’re going to that here, too – Microsoft probably isn’t relishing supporting each individual ARM machine in Windows ‘by hand’ either. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

There is something about surprising interfaces: clapping to switch on lights is more fun than a flipping a switch. Pressing a panic-button to order a pizza is more fun than ordering via an app. Recently I came across this surprising interface: a flute controlled mouse cursor for a first person shooter. I recognize a good idea when I see one, and immediately wanted replicate the idea and make it freely available. So I got to work. ↫ Joren Six I don’t think I have ever seen something quite so unique.

Framework puts a lot of effort into making its hardware easy to fix and upgrade and into making sure that hardware can stay useful down the line when it’s been replaced by something newer. But supporting that kind of reuse and recycling works best when paired with long-term software and firmware support, and on that front, Framework has been falling short. Framework will need to step up its game, especially if it wants to sell more laptops to businesses—a lucrative slice of the PC industry that Framework is actively courting. By this summer or fall, we’ll have some idea of whether its efforts are succeeding. ↫ Andrew Cunningham at Ars Technica A very painful read, and I’m disappointed to learn that the software support from Framework has been so lacklustre – or non-existent, to be more accurate. Leaving severel security vulnerabilities in firmware unpatched is a disgrace, and puts users at risk, while promising but not delivering updates that will unlock faster Thunderbolt speeds is just shitty. They have to do better, especially since their pitch is all about repairability and longevity. This article has made me more weary of spending any money on Framework – not that I have the money for a new laptop, because reasons – and I feel more people will feel this way after reading this.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the ROCK 5 ITX coming soon and since then, samples of the Rockchip RK3588-based Radxa ROCK 5 ITX have been landing on doorsteps (or service points, screw you, UPS) of a lucky group of people and somehow I was one of those, so here’s a first look at Radxa’s latest Single Board Computer in a Mini ITX form-factor! It’s going to be a photo-heavy post and I make no apologies for that, it’s a very nice-looking PCB, with the black and gold colour scheme looking very stylish. I imagine that was a very conscious decision seeing as, as expected, they’re marketing this as a low-power desktop option and you probably don’t want a plain Jane motherboard taking pride of place in your new system, right? ↫ Bret Weber Now this – this, my friends, is exactly what the doctor ordered. I can’t wait for standard, ATX motherboard sporting ARM processors to become more common and readily available, hopefully standardised better than what we’re used to from the ARM world. I want my next (non-gaming) machines to be ARM-powered, and that means we’re going to need more of these ATX ARM boards, spanning wider performance levels.

The HP 200 LX was a successful palmtop computer introduced in 1994. HP continued to sell it through 1999, an unusually long run for a 1990s computer model. In this blog post, we’ll dig into this largely forgotten form factor and why it became such a quiet success. ↫ Dave Farquhar These devices are incredibly cool, but I disagree that they disappeared, as the blog post states. Just recently I reviewed my main laptop, a very small Chuwi MiniBook (2023) with the N100, and in that article I also listed some other similar options that are still being made and sold today, from companies like GPD and OneNetbook.

PCIe 7.0 is is the next generation interconnect technology for computers that is set to increase data transfer speeds to 128 GT/s per pin, doubling the 64 GT/s of PCIe 6.0 and quadrupling the 32 GT/s of PCIe 5.0. This would allow a 16-lane (x16) connection to support 256 GB/sec of bandwidth in each direction simultaneously, excluding encoding overhead. Such speeds will be handy for future datacenters as well as artificial intelligence and high-performance computing applications that will need even faster data transfer rates, including network data transfer rates. ↫ Anton Shilov at AnandTech PCIe 7.0 won’t hit devices until late 2020s.

Since the technology industry and associated media outlets tend to focus primarily on the latest and greatest technology and what’s right around the corner, it sometimes seems as if the only valid option when you need a new laptop, phone, desktop, or whatever is to spend top euro on the newest, most expensive incarnations of those. But what if you need, say, a new laptop, but you’re not swimming in excess disposable income? Or you just don’t want to spend 1000-2000 euro on a new laptop? The tech media tends to have an answer for this: buy something like a cheap Chromebook or an e-waste €350 Windows laptop and call it a day – you don’t deserve a nice experience. However, there’s a far better option than spending money on a shackled Chromebook or an underpowered bottom-of-the-barrel Windows laptop: buy used. Recently, I decided to buy a used laptop, and I set it up how I would set up any new laptop, to get an idea of what’s out there. Here’s how it went. For this little experiment, I first had to settle on a brand, and to be brutally honest, that was an easy choice. ThinkPads seems to be universally regarded as excellent choices for a used laptop for a variety of reasons which I’ll get to later. After weighing some of the various models, options, and my budget, I decided to go for a Lenovo ThinkPad T450s for about €150, and about a week later, the device arrived at my local supermarket for pickup. Before I settled on this specific ThinkPad, I had a few demands and requirements. First and foremost, since I don’t like large laptops, I didn’t want anything bigger than roughly 14″, and since I’m a bit of a pixel count snob, 1920×1080 was non-negotiable. Since I already have a Dell XPS 13 with an 8th Gen Core i7, I figured going 3-4 generations older seemed like it would give me at least somewhat of a generational performance difference. An SSD was obviously a must, and as long as there were expansion options, RAM did not matter to me. The T450s delivered on all of these. It’s got the 1920×1080 14″ IPS panel (there’s also a lower resolution panel, so be sure to check you’re getting the right one), a Core i5-5300U with 2 cores and 4 threads with a base frequency of 2.30GHz and a maximum boost frequency of 2.90GHz, Intel HD 5500 graphics, a 128GB SATA SSD, and 4GB of RAM. Since 4GB is a bit on the low side for me, I ordered an additional 8GB SO-DIMM right away for €35. This brought the total price for this machine to €185, which I considered acceptable. For that price, it also came with its Windows license, for whatever that’s worth. I don’t want to turn this into a detailed review of a laptop from 2015, but let’s go over what it’s like to use this machine today. The display cover is made of carbon-reinforced plastic, and the rest of magnesium. You can clearly feel this laptop is of a slightly older vintage, as it feels a bit more dinkey than I’m used to from my XPS 13 9370 and my tiny Chuwi MiniBook X (2023). It doesn’t feel crappy or cheap or anything – just not as solid as you might expect from a modern machine. It’s got a whole load of ports to work with, though, which is refreshing compared to the trend of today. On the left side, there’s a smartcard slot, USB 3.0, mini DisplayPort, another USB 3.0, and the power connector. On the right side, there’s a headphone jack, an SD card slot, another USB 3.0 port, an Ethernet jack, and a VGA port. On the bottom of the laptop is a docking port to plug it into various docking stations with additional ports and connectors. On the inside, there’s a free M.2 slot (a small 2242 one). First, I eradicated Windows from the SSD because while I’m okay with an outdated laptop, I’m not okay with an outdated operating system (subscribe to our Patreon to ensure more of these top-quality jokes). After messing around with various operating systems and distributions for a while, I got back to business and installed my distribution of choice, Fedora, but I did opt for the Xfce version instead of my usual KDE one just for variety’s sake. ThinkPads tend to be well-supported by Linux, and the T450s is no exception. Everything I could test – save for the smartcard reader, since I don’t have a smartcard to test it with – works out of the box, and nothing required any manual configuration or tweaking to work properly. Everything from trackpad gestures to the little ThinkLight on the lid worked perfectly, without having to deal with hunting for drivers and that sort of nonsense Windows users have to deal with. This is normal for most laptops and Linux now, but it’s nice to see it applies to this model as well. Using the T450s was… Uneventful. Applications open fast, there’s no stutter or lag, and despite having just 2 cores and 4 threads, and a very outdated integrated GPU, I didn’t really feel like I was missing out when browsing, doing some writing and translating (before I quit and made OSNews my sole job), watching video, those sorts of tasks. This isn’t a powerhouse laptop for video editing, gaming, or compiling code or whatever, but for everything else, it works great. After I had set everything up the way I like, software-wise, I did do some work to make the machine a bit more pleasant to use. First and foremost, as with any laptop or PC that’s a little older, I removed the heatsink assembly, cleaned off the crusty old thermal paste, and added some new, fresh paste. I then dove into the fan management, and installed zcfan, a Linux fan control daemon for ThinkPads, using its default settings, and created a systemd

If you read my scoop last week, I bet you’ve been wondering — how well could a Snapdragon chip actually run Windows games? At the 2024 Game Developers Conference, the company claimed Arm could run those titles at close to x86/64 speed, but how fast is fast? With medium-weight games like Control and Baldur’s Gate 3, it looks like the target might be: 30 frames per second at 1080p screen resolution, medium settings, possibly with AMD’s FSR 1.0 spatial upscaling enabled. ↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge Those are some rough numbers for machines Qualcomm claims can run x86 games at “close to full speed“.

I saw this on a Linus Tech Tips video today, and it’s pretty neat: the Khadas Mind is a tiny computer powered by an Intel Core i5-1340P or Core i7-1360P, but it has a souped-up PCIe connector at the bottom that allows you to hook it up to all kinds of other devices, like a graphics card, a dock, and so on. It looks slick and quite user-friendly, and according to the LTT video, the company intends to release the specs for the connector so that third parties can hook into it as well, but a promise is just that – a promise. It’s way too early to tell if this will go anywhere – past attempts would suggest that sadly, it won’t – but that doesn’t mean it’s not an incredibly awesome and seemingly workable implementation of the modular PC idea.

In a 2024 Game Developers Conference session titled “Windows on Snapdragon, a Platform Ready for your PC Games,” Qualcomm engineer Issam Khalil drove home that the unannounced laptops will use emulation to run x86/64 games at close to full speed. Those laptops may be coming fast. Qualcomm has confirmed it will launch Snapdragon X Elite systems this summer, and unannounced consumer versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 are expected in May with those chips, sources told The Verge. ↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge I’m genuinely curious to see if they can fulfill this promise. I really want widespread availability of ARM laptops. My hope is that we end up with a more standardised ARM landscape, making it easier for operating systems to support these new machines.

Computing power has emerged as a vital resource for economies around the world. China is no exception, and the country has invested heavily into domestic CPU capabilities. Loongson is at the forefront of that effort. We previously covered the company’s 3A5000 CPU, a quad core processor that delivered reasonable performance per clock, but clocked too low to be competitive. Now, we’re going to look at Loongson’s newer 3A6000 CPU. The 3A6000 is also a quad core 2.5 GHz part, but uses the newer LA664 core. Compared to the 3A5000’s LA464 cores, LA664 is a major and ambitious evolution. While Loongson has kept the same general architecture, LA664 has a larger and deeper pipeline with more execution units. To sweeten the pie, LA664 gets SMT support. When properly implemented, SMT can increase multithreaded performance with minimal die area overhead. But SMT can be challenging to get right. ↫ Chips and Cheese I’m always fascinated by China’s attempts at catching up to Intel and AMD, but at the same time, there’s no chance in hell I’d ever use any of it.

There’s a channel on YouTube called The Proper People. It’s two guys who travel all over the United States (and in a few cases, elsewhere too) exploring abandoned buildings, and recording both the exteriors and interiors for posterity, since many of these buildings suffer from massive decay and are often slated for demolition. These buildings have histories and stories that otherwise would be lost to time. They are incredibly respectful of the buildings they explore, and they will not break open locked doors or windows, and only traverse open and unlocked doors or openings borne out of natural decay. They never take anything from the sites they visit, and abhor what urban explorers call “staging”, where you move furniture and objects around to invoke or imply stories and things that aren’t there. Their videos are also very calm, muted, quiet, and only occasionally use atmospheric music for some of the more artistic shots. As a sidenote, they also happen to have the absolute best intro music of all time. One of the things you quickly notice as you see these buildings, and explore their interiors, is just how solidly made and beautifully detailed they were. Whether they’re exploring an 19th century Kirkbride mental asylum, an early 19th century power plant, or a mid-20th century hospital – they all tend to be made not just to serve a function, but also to be beautiful and solid, both inside and out. Walls, ceilings, and doorways are beautifully detailed in masonry or woodwork, light fittings are solid and ornate, and even access corridors or storage basements have gorgeous vaulted ceilings, decorated walls, and ornate pillars. The contrast to modern buildings couldn’t be starker. Buildings and workplaces of today are littered with drop ceilings, flimsy dividers, open plans, endless amounts of glass, all in styles so minimalist it just makes spaces feel cold, uninviting, and lacking in human scale. Modern buildings and interiors are temporary, ephemeral, built not for humans, but to a bottom line and some designer’s fancy – these old hospitals, factories, and even power plants are permanent, enduring, and made to human scale. They served as much as a status symbol for whatever ruthless capitalist owned the building as they did as a place for that same ruthless capitalist to extract wealth from mistreated workers. This juxtaposition, of the minimalist, soulless, flimsy and cheap-looking exteriors and interiors of modern buildings on the one hand, and the beautifully detailed, skillfully crafted, and human-scale exteriors and interiors from these older buildings on the other, is something that kept creeping back into my mind during my use of the MNT Reform. This is a device built by people who deeply care, who are very opinionated, and know exactly what they want to make – very much the opposite of the cookie-cutter dime-a-dozen laptops that flood the market today. MNT was so kind as to send me a Reform, at some risk to them because I am definitely not the kind of customer the Reform is typically aimed at. Yet, after a few months of use, I can confidently say this is one of the most unique devices I’ve ever used, and one that’s worth every cent. Let’s explore why. Brutalist hardware Let’s first dive into what, exactly, the Reform is. At its core, it’s an ARM-based laptop designed to run Linux, developed and built by a small team of people in Berlin. The Reform is unique in that it is designed to be open hardware, fully repairable and highly modular and upgradeable. It consists of a mainboard with an mPCIe slot, an M.2 slot for NVME SSDs, 16GB eMMC storage, and uniquely, a slot for a System-on-Chip module roughly the size of an SO-DIMM module that contains the processor and RAM. The keyboard and pointing device are internally connected through USB 2.0 and easily replaceable, too. The Reform is defined as much by what it does not have as by what it does have. You won’t find any surveillance devices inside the Reform – no webcam, no microphones, nothing. There have been laptops with little privacy switches or sliding covers for the webcam, but I don’t think I’ve seen a modern laptop that eschews cameras and microphones since the late ’90s. It’s one of the many examples of the Reform’s opinionated design choices. The configuration MNT sent me consists of the aforementioned mainboard, coupled with one of the processor modules they offer – in my case, the RCM4 A311D, which sports four 2.2GHz Cortex-A73 cores and two 1.8GHz Cortex-A53 cores, 4GB of LP-DDR4 RAM, and an ARM Mali G52 MP4 GPU that supports OpenGL/ES 3.1 through Panfrost. This module also supports Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 through the integrated RTL8822CS. The A311D is just one of many modules available for purchase for the Reform, and during the writing of this review, MNT also added a brand new SoC module to its lineup – the RK3588, the most powerful option available for the Reform. It packs 4 ARM Cortex-A76 cores (up to 2.4GHz) and 4 ARM Cortex-A55 cores (up to 2.2GHz), 16GB or 32GB of RAM, and 128GB or 256GB of eMMC storage. It also sports an ARM Mali-G610 MP4 4-core GPU. Like with all other modules, the drivers for the A311D in my model are completely open source. When it comes to firmware, however, the A311D is not fully open source; there’s closed-source code in the Wi-Fi firmware and the boot/TF-A firmware. The other modules all also have various bits of closed firmware, except for the RKX7 module that uses a Kintex-7 FPGA and hence comes with a hefty price tag. Using the RKX7 module, you can have a fully open source laptop, from operating system down to the firmware, which is, as far as I can tell, unique. However, the amount of closed firmware code for each of the other boards is relatively small, and in some cases – such as with the LS1028A – can be avoided, too. If you care about

It’s one of those anachronisms that is deeply embedded in modern technology. From cloud operator servers to embedded controllers in appliances, there must be uncountable devices that think they are connected to a TTY. I will omit the many interesting details of the Linux terminal infrastructure here, as it could easily fill its own article. But most Linux users are at least peripherally aware that the kernel tends to identify both serial devices and terminals as TTYs, assigning them filesystem names in the form of /dev/tty*. Probably a lot of those people remember that this stands for teletype or perhaps teletypewriter, although in practice the term teleprinter is more common. ↫ J. B. Crawford I remember first using Linux in like 2000 or 2001, and running into the abbreviation tty, and not having a single clue what that meant since I came from a DOS and Windows background. Over time I gained a lot more understanding of the structure of modern UNIX-like systems, but it’s still great to read such a detailed history of the concept.

The business arm of Raspberry Pi is preparing to make an initial public offering (IPO) in London. CEO Eben Upton tells Ars that should the IPO happen, it will let Raspberry Pi’s not-for-profit side expand by “at least a factor of 2X.” And while it’s “an understandable thing” that Raspberry Pi enthusiasts could be concerned, “while I’m involved in running the thing, I don’t expect people to see any change in how we do things.” ↫ Kevin Purdy at Ars Technica Expect changes in how they do things.