Intrinsyc Introduces Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Cortex-A72-Class Development Board, SoM and MDPs

While there’s already an healthy choice of ARMv8 development board such as LeMaker Hikey, or Qualcomm DragonBoard 410c, all those platforms are based on the lower end Cortex A53 64-bit ARM core, and ARM Cortex A57, let alone Cortex A72, boards are much more difficult to find, as they are much pricier and/or have limited availability. Intrinsyc may have released the first (somewhat) affordable and accessible Cortex-A72-class development board with Open-Q 820 development kit comprised of a SoM and a baseboard, as well as smartphone and tablet mobile development platforms (MDPs) based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad core Kryo processor. While Kryo is a custom ARMv8 designed by Qualcomm, and not exactly a Cortex A72 core, both have similar performance, as shown in Snapdragon 820 Antutu and Kirin 950 Antutu results.

Open-Q_820_Cortex_A72_Development_Board — Open-Q 820 Development Kit (Display Optional)

Open-Q 820 board specifications:

SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad core Kryo cores with 2x cores @ up to 2.2GHz, and 2x cores @ up to 1.6GHz, an Adreno 530GPU, an Hexagon 680 DSP, and a 14-bit Spectra ISP.
System Memory – 3GB LPDDR4 @ 1866 MHz (PoP)
Storage – 32GB UFS 2.0 Flash, micro SD slot
Display/Video Out
- 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 4086×2160 @ 60 fps
- 2x MIPI-DSU 4-lane up to 2560×1600 (single port), or 4096×2160 (dual port) @ 60 fps
- Optional 4.5″ FWVGA (854×480) touch display
Audio
- 1x 3.5mm ANC jack for headset
- 20-pin audio input header with 3x analog in, 3x digital in
- 20-pin audio output header with 5x analog out 1x digital out
- Qualcomm WCD9335 audio codec
Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n/ac 2×2 MU-MIMO, Bluetooth 4.1 (QCA6174), Qualcomm IZat Gen 8C GPS (WGR7640)
Camera – 3x MIPI-CSI 4-lane, dual ISP, up to 25MP. Optional 13MP camera module
USB – 1x micro USB 3.0 host, 1x micro USB 2.0 OTG, 2x USB 2.0 host ports.
Debugging – 1x UART debug via USB micro-B port
Expansion
- 8x DIO with pins configurable as I2C, SPI, UART, or GPIO
- 1x mini-PCIe v1.2, 1x PCIe X1 slot v2.1
Power Supply – 12V DC
Dimension – Baseboard: 170 x 170mm; SoM: 82 x 42mm

The company provides support for Android 6.0 Marshmallow for the board. Documentation is quite limited right now with only product briefs for the board and the SoM, but the company claims users will receive product documentation and access to complimentary tools and software updates.

Beside Open-Q 820 development kit, Intrinsyc also offers a smartphone MDP with a 6.2″ QHD display, and a tablet MDP with a 10.1″ 4K UHD (3840 × 2160) multi-touch display. Both will support 802.11ac with Qualcomm MU | EFX MU-MIMO technology, Blueooth 4.1, USB 3.0, and Qualcomm IZat location service. The tablet MDP has also has tri-band support, and supports multi-gigabit 802.11ad (11ad) Wi-Fi.

Intrinsyc Open-Q 820 development kit appears to be available now for $599 plus tax and shipping, the Tablet MDP for $999, and the smartphone MDP will be $799, but it’s not quite ready for sale yet, and shipping is scheduled for December 31, 2015.

Via Linux Gizmos

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.