Blog

Intel Architectural Event Trace (AET)

Alan Sguigna

March 8, 2020
2:57 pm

Yes, Intel Skylake-EP, also known as Skylake-SP, or Purley, or Intel Xeon Scalable Processor, is past the “line of demarcation”; which means some more of its powerful capabilities can be revealed in the public domain. I managed to get my hands on a server platform with this CPU, and looked at some of the advanced debug and trace capabilities within the silicon.

It’s JTAG’s 30th Anniversary!

Alan Sguigna

February 15, 2020
3:29 pm

Today, February 15th, 2020, marks the official 30th Anniversary of JTAG. What a wild ride it has been – from its humble beginnings for detecting short and open circuits, it has evolved to be, in some ways, the most powerful and feared technology on the planet. How did we get here?

Board Bring-Up of the i.MX6 Saber Lite

Alan Sguigna

January 26, 2020
3:47 pm

I received a bricked Saber Lite board as a gift. Before I could do anything useful with it, I had to get it to boot.

Benchmarking Yocto OpenBMC Builds Part 3: Ampere Computing on Packet

Alan Sguigna

January 12, 2020
5:40 pm

In Part 1, I compared the performance and cost of Intel Cascade Lake versus AMD Rome. In Part 2, I compared these against Amazon’s own Graviton1 CPU. In this article, I benchmarked Ampere Computing’s eMAG, available on Packet.com.

Benchmarking Yocto OpenBMC Builds on AWS Part 2: Arm64, Intel and AMD

Alan Sguigna

January 5, 2020
12:41 pm

In Part 1, I compared the performance and cost of Intel Cascade Lake versus AMD Rome. How does Amazon’s own CPU, Graviton, fare in this benchmark?

Benchmarking Yocto OpenBMC Builds on AWS Part 1: Intel Cascade Lake versus AMD Rome

Alan Sguigna

December 26, 2019
4:39 pm

As you know, I’ve done a lot of OpenBMC builds on my AMD Ryzen desktop PC, as well as my Surface Pro 6. I decided to tackle the same builds on Amazon Web Services (AWS), on virtual machines based on the Intel Cascade Lake CPU, as well as the AMD EPYC 7000. Which one is faster and cheaper?

Copying large files from Linux to Windows

Alan Sguigna

December 1, 2019
10:43 am

In my spare time, I was doing some OpenBMC Yocto builds on my Linux machines, and decided I wanted to copy these files over to my Windows PC. Little did I know how complicated this could be.

The Basys Chronicles Episode 3: Flashing the Quad SPI

Alan Sguigna

November 17, 2019
4:59 pm

In Episode 2 of the Basys Chronicles, I configured (programmed) the Artix-7 FPGA with a simple Binary-to-Decimal calculator application, through the USB-JTAG port. But, power down the Basys 3, and it goes back to the Built-In Self Test that comes with the board. This week, I flashed the calculator configuration into the nonvolatile SPI flash, making it the default boot-up configuration.

The Basys Chronicles Episode 2: A Simple Binary-to-Decimal Calculator

Alan Sguigna

November 11, 2019
7:38 pm

In the Basys Chronicles Episode 1, I started to learn about FPGA programming using Xilinx’s Vivado tool and the Digilent Basys 3 Trainer Board. Now, after a few weeks (okay, time flies; it’s been almost two months), I’ve made some good headway in understanding FPGA architecture and creating some interesting designs that do useful things.

The MinnowBoard Chronicles: A Journey into x86, UEFI, and Linux

Alan Sguigna

October 6, 2019
3:15 pm

Over the last two and a half years, I've intermittently chronicled my explorations into some fairly esoteric technical topics, using the MinnowBoard Turbot board as a platform. And yes, time flies, and I've covered a lot of ground. All 45 chapters are listed below. Enjoy!

Intel Architectural Event Trace (AET)

It’s JTAG’s 30th Anniversary!

Board Bring-Up of the i.MX6 Saber Lite

Benchmarking Yocto OpenBMC Builds Part 3: Ampere Computing on Packet

Benchmarking Yocto OpenBMC Builds on AWS Part 2: Arm64, Intel and AMD

Benchmarking Yocto OpenBMC Builds on AWS Part 1: Intel Cascade Lake versus AMD Rome

Copying large files from Linux to Windows

The Basys Chronicles Episode 3: Flashing the Quad SPI

The Basys Chronicles Episode 2: A Simple Binary-to-Decimal Calculator

The MinnowBoard Chronicles: A Journey into x86, UEFI, and Linux

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