AMD assists open source development.

Have you ever heard of the Gizmo? It is an open source development board that was created by a nonprofit development board community called GizmoSphere. Why did I bring that up? Because AMD is about to assist them by announcing that the AMD Embedded G-Series System-on-Chip (SoC) will be powering the new Gizmo 2 development board.

Priced at USD 199, the Gizmo 2 is based on the AMD GX-210HA dual-core processor, featuring a 1.0 GHz CPU and 300 MHz GPU while only drawing 9 watts TDP on a compact, 4-inch by 4-inch board, making it more powerful than its predecessor. The Gizmo 2 is ideal for those looking to supplement or replace entry-level platforms due to its high performing development boards with 85 GFLOPS performance. The open source philosophy of the Gizmo 2 means that hardware schematics, Gerber format files and bill-of-materials (BOM) will be open-sourced to the GizmoSphere and Element14 community for those looking to design and build a custom board.

Other features of the Gizmo 2 include a HDMI video/audio output, 1 GB DDR3-1600 memory, HD audio in/out, mSATA/mini PCIe Connector, microSD card slot, Onboard Gigabit Ethernet, 2 USB 3 and USB 2 connectors, support for DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 4.2x and OpenCL 1.2, as well as Error-Correction Code (ECC) memory support.

“The AMD Embedded G-Series SoC processor combines a powerful and efficient CPU and GPU on  a single chip, making the Gizmo 2 ideal for both DIYers and professionals looking to go beyond the entry-level performance available with more of today’s DIY boards,” says Kamal Khouri, Director of Marketing of AMD Embedded Solutions. “Gizmo 2 offers cutting-edge compute performance and exceptional graphics processing, enabling the exploration of new ideas in science and technology, while encouraging innovation around multicore heterogeneous computing.”