Brads Electronic Projects Forum

Last year, Hyperkin showed off a smartphone accessory designed around running Game Boy cartridges on a modern device: the SmartBoy. The device was teased as an April Fool’s joke, but it appears that Hyperkin weren’t joking after all. The accessory includes physical cartridge slot on the back and a reversable MicroUSB port on the bottom. It wraps the smartphone – which Hyperkin’s notes say should have a screen between 5- to 6-inch, be running at least Android 4.4 KitKat and over USB OTG (On-the-Go) – in a familiar looking plastic case including the necessary Game Boy buttons. Under the skin of the accessory is the industrial-grade 8-bit Atmel 90USB646 processor: Hyperkin are using a combination of software and hardware to emulate the original Game Boy Color. The hardware will be compatible with the original Game Boy and the newer Game Boy Color cartridges and the company are releasing the product as a SmartBoy Developer Kit, which includes the open source serial application and firmware. The idea here is that developers will be able to take a look at Hyperkin’s work and make improvements. Better yet, Hyperkin is offering a royalty percentage of the retail unit for any developer able to improve upon the product.

China has done it again — except this time with a brand new supercomputer. The Sunway TaihuLight is now the fastest system in the world, according to the twice-per-year TOP500 list, with a stunning Linpack benchmark result of 93 petaflops. That makes it three times faster than the prior champion, China’s Tianhe-2, which we’ve covered numerous times on ExtremeTech and had sat on top of the list since it first went online in 2013.