ARM

344 Articles

Raspberry PI 4 Now Supported By Risc OS In Latest Update

November 1, 2020 by 16 Comments

Students of ARM history will know that the origins of the wildly popular processor architecture lie in the British computer manufacturer Acorn (the original “A” in “ARM”). The first mass-market ARM-based products were their Archimedes line of desktop computers. A RISC-based computer in a school or home was significantly ahead of the curve in the mid 1980s and there was no off-the-shelf software, so alongside the new chips came a new operating system that would eventually bear the name Risc OS.

It’s since become one of those unexpected pieces of retrocomputing history that refuses to die, and remains in active development with a new version 5.28 of its open-source variant just released. Best of all, after supporting the Raspberry Pi since the earliest boards, it now runs on a Raspberry Pi 4. The original ARM operating system has very much kept up with the times, and can now benefit from the extra power of the latest hardware from Cambridge. The new release deals with a host of bugs, as well as bringing speed increases, security fixes, and other improvements. For those whose first experience of a GUI came via the Archimedes in British schools, the news that the built-in Paint package has received a thorough update will bring a smile.

The attraction of Risc OS aside from its history and speed lies in its being understandable in operation for those wishing to learn about how an OS works under the hood. It’s likely that for most of us it won’t replace our desktops any time soon, but it remains an interesting diversion to download and explore. If you’d like to read more about early ARM history then we’d like to point you at our piece on Sophie Wilson, the originator of the ARM architecture.

STM32 Clones: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

October 22, 2020 by 90 Comments

Whenever a product becomes popular, it’s only a matter of time before other companies start feeling the urge to hitch a ride on this popularity. This phenomenon is the primary reason why so many terrible toys and video games have been produced over the years. Yet it also drives the world of electronics. Hence it should come as no surprise that ST’s highly successful ARM-based series of microcontrollers (MCUs) has seen its share of imitations, clones and outright fakes.

The fakes are probably the most problematic, as those chips pretend to be genuine STM32 parts down to the markings on the IC package, while compatibility with the part they are pretending to be can differ wildly. For the imitations and clones that carry their own markings, things are a bit more fuzzy, as one could reasonably pretend that those companies just so happened to have designed MCUs that purely by coincidence happen to be fully pin- and register compatible with those highly popular competing MCU designs. That would be the sincerest form of flattery.

Let’s take a look at which fakes and imitations are around, and what it means if you end up with one. Continue reading “STM32 Clones: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly” →

Thinking About Creating A Raspberry Pi Replacement?

October 20, 2020 by 66 Comments

If you’ve ever wanted to try your hand at creating a Raspberry Pi-like board for yourself, you should check out [Jay Carlson’s] review of 10 different Linux-capable SoCs. Back in the 1960s, a computer was multiple refrigerator-sized boxes with thousands of interconnections and building one from scratch was only a dream for most people. Then ICs came and put all the most important parts in a little relatively inexpensive IC package and homebrew computing became much more accessible. Systems on Chip (SoC) has carried that even further, making it easier than ever to create entire systems, like the Pi and its many competitors.

Only a few years ago, making an SoC was still a big project because the vendors often didn’t want to release documentation to the public. In addition, most of the parts use ball grid array (BGA) packaging. BGA parts can be hard to work with, and require a multilayer PC board. Sure, you can’t plug these into a typical solderless breadboard. But working with these relatively large BGAs isn’t that hard and multilayer boards are now comparatively cheap. [Jay] reports that he got cheap PCBs and used a hot plate to build each board, and has some sage advice on how to do it.

Continue reading “Thinking About Creating A Raspberry Pi Replacement?” →

Folding@Home And Rosetta, For ARM

August 2, 2020 by 19 Comments

Most readers will be aware of the various distributed computing projects that provide supercomputer-level resources to researchers by farming out the computing tasks across a multitude of distributed CPUs and GPUs. The best known of these are probably Folding@Home and Rosetta, which have both this year been performing sterling service in the quest to understand the mechanisms of the SARS COVID-19 virus. So far these two platforms have remained available nearly exclusively for Intel-derived architectures, leaving the vast number of ARM-based devices out in the cold. It’s something the commercial distributed-computing-on-your-phone company Neocortix have addressed, as they have successfully produced ARM64 clients for both platforms that will be incorporated into the official clients in due course.

So it seems that mundane devices such as mobile phones and the more capable Raspberry Pi boards will now be able to fold proteins like a boss, and the overall efforts to deliver computational research will receive a welcome boost. But will there be any other benefits? It’s a Received Opinion that ARM chips are more power-efficient than their Intel-derived cousins, but will this deliver more energy-efficient distributed computing? The answer is “probably”, but the jury’s out on that one as computationally intensive tasks are said to erode the advantage significantly.

Folding@Home was catapulted by the influx of COVID-19 volunteers into first place as the world’s largest supercomputer earlier this year, and we’re pleased to say that Hackaday readers have played their part in that story. As this is being written the July 2020 stats show our team ranked at #39 worldwide, having racked up 14,005,664,882 points across 824,842 work units. Well done everybody, and we look forward to your ARM phones and other devices boosting that figure. If you haven’t done so yet, download the client and join us..

Via HPCwire. Thanks to our colleague [Sophi] for the tip.

Bluepill Copies Code So You Don’t Have To

July 17, 2020 by 5 Comments

You really should learn to read Morse code. But if you can’t — or even if you can, and just want a break — you can always get a computer to do it. For example, [jmharvey1] has a decoder that runs on a cheap Bluepill dev board.

The device uses a touchscreen and a few common components. The whole thing cost about $16. You can see it at work along with a description of the project in the video below.

Continue reading “Bluepill Copies Code So You Don’t Have To” →

Changing System Architectures And The Complexities Of Apple’s Butterfly Approach To ISAs

July 13, 2020 by 64 Comments

Apple computers will be moving away from Intel chips to its own ARM-based design. An interesting thing about Apple as a company is that it has never felt the need to tie itself to a particular system architecture or ISA. Whereas a company like Microsoft mostly tied its fortunes to Intel’s x86 architecture, and IBM, Sun, HP and other giants preferred vertical integration, Apple is currently moving towards its fifth system architecture for its computers since the company was formed.

What makes this latest change possibly unique, however, is that instead of Apple relying on an external supplier for CPUs and peripheral ICs, they are now targeting a vertical integration approach. Although the ARM ISA is licensed to Apple by Arm Holdings, the ‘Apple Silicon’ design that is used in Apple’s ARM processors is their own, produced by Apple’s own engineers and produced by foundries at the behest of Apple.

In this article I would like to take a look back at Apple’s architectural decisions over the decades and how they made Apple’s move towards vertical integration practically a certainty.

Continue reading “Changing System Architectures And The Complexities Of Apple’s Butterfly Approach To ISAs” →

Ditching X86, Apple Starts An ARM Race

June 25, 2020 by 160 Comments

At its annual World Wide Developer Conference, Apple dropped many jaws when announcing that their Mac line will be switching away from Intel processors before the year is out. Intel’s x86 architecture is the third to grace Apple’s desktop computer products, succeeding PowerPC and the Motorola 68000 family before it.

In its place will be Apple’s own custom silicon, based on 64-bit ARM architecture. Apple are by no means the first to try and bring ARM chips to bear for general purpose computing, but can they succeed where others have failed?

Continue reading “Ditching X86, Apple Starts An ARM Race” →