Good single board PCs don't appear that often, and this seems to be the situation right now. Pine64 has introduced a 5.2 "x 3.1" single board. It is powered by a Rockchip RK3566 ARM Cortex-A55 processor with a 1.8GHz core. It supports up to 8GB RAM and 128GB eMC ROM.
In addition, the single-board has a bunch of all sorts of ports, connectors and connectors. At the same time, according to the developers, the system is basic, so its price should be below $ 60, at which the advanced RockPro64 board is sold.
By the way, the company will soon release another single-board device. It will be the first RISC-V mini PC, not an ARM chip.
A little more about Quartz64 model-A
Despite the fact that this board will be much cheaper than its "older brother", it also has something to boast about. First, the performance is only 15-20% lower than that of the RockPro64. So you can use it for projects that require more or less high performance.
The lineup will be represented by boards with RAM from 2 to 8 GB LDDR4, as well as support for eMMC modules from 16 to 128 GB. Plus, the memory can be expanded with a microSD card and / or an external device can be connected to the SATA 2.0 port.
Wireless communication module with WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 is optional. But there is a gigabit Ethernet port, an HDMI port with support for video transmission up to 4K with 60 FPS, DSI, CSI and MiPi interfaces. There is a cooler header, PCIe x4 slot, and a Raspberry Pi-style 40-pin GPIO.
On a positive note for many developers, there is a separate circuit for the battery. So you can power a device based on the board both from the battery and from an external power supply.
An important point - at the same time as this board, the company introduced the model-B. It is equipped with WiFi and Bluetooth modules by default, but it has only two USB ports without SATA. There is not even a photo for this model yet, but a number of prototypes have already been released.
As for the Quartz64 model-A, things are better here - the board was not only released, but also shipped to some developers who are testing it. The purpose of testing is to verify support for basic Linux features. By the way, the system must support open-source video drivers.
Pine64 SBC with RISC-V
Yes, this system is not yet available, but some information is already available. So, it will be an entry-level board at $ 15 or less.
It will be equipped with two chips:
- Allwinner XuanTie-C906 64-bit, processor with Linux support.
- Buffalo BL602 32-bit SoC for WiFi and Bluetooth
The board is designed for IoT, educational and DIY projects. The system will allow you to quickly get acquainted with the RISC-V architecture.
