Firefly-RK3399 is the first, and for now the only one, development board equipped with the latest Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core Cortex A72 & A53 processor. It’s just not available yet, but the board has now been launched on Kickstarter where it is offered for $139 to $199 depending on options.
Firefly-RK3399 board specifications:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core big.LITTLE processor with dual core ARM Cortex A72 up to 2.0 GHz and quad core Cortex A53 processor with ARM Mali-T860 MP4 GPU with OpenGL 1.1 to 3.1 support, OpenVG1.1, OpenCL and DX 11 support
- System Memory
- Standard – 2 GB DDR3
- Plus devkit – 4 GB DDR3
- Storage
- Standard – 16 GB eMMC flash, micro SD card, M.2 socket
- Plus devkit – 32 GB eMMC flash, micro SD card, M.2 socket
- Video Output & Display Interfaces
- 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 4K @ 60 Hz
- 1x DisplayPort (DP) 1.2 interface up to 4K @ 60Hz (via USB type C connector)
- 1x eDP 1.3 (4-lanes @ 10.8 Gbps)
- 1x MIPI DSI interface up to 2560×1600 @ 60 Hz
- Video Decode – 4K VP9 and 10-bit H.265 video codec support up to 60 fps
- Audio
- Via HDMI or DisplayPort
- 3.5mm headphone jack with stereo audio output and mic input
- optical S/PDIF
- 1x LINE Out and 1x speaker via GPIO header; Speaker: 1.5W or 2.5 W per channel for respectively 8Ω or 4Ω speakers
- Built-in microphone
- I2S output and input interface up to 8 channels
- Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet (RJ45) port using RTL8211E transceiver, WiFi 802.11ac 2×2 MIMO and Bluetooth 4.1 (AP6354 module)
- USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x USB 3.0 port, 1x USB 3.0 type C port
- Camera
- 2x MIPI CSI interfaces up to 13MP or 2x 8MP
- 1x DVP camera interface up to 5MP
- Debugging – 3-pin serial header
- Expansion
- 42-pin GPIO female header with access to 1x I2S, 2x ADC, 2x I2C, 1x SPI, 2x GPIO, 1x LINEOUT, 1x SPEAKER
- 1x mini PCIe for LTE, 1x PCIe 2.1 M.2 slot B-key (2x PCIe, SATA, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, HSIC, SSIC, Audio, UIM, I2C)
- SIM card slot
- Misc – RTC battery header; power & user LEDs; power, reset and recovery buttons; IR receiver
- Power Supply – 12V/2A DC (5.5×2.1mm barrel connector)
- Dimensions – 12.4 x 9.3 mm (8-layer PCB)
- Weight – Board: 89 grams; board + cooling fan and heatsink: 120 grams
The company will provide Android 6.0.1 and Ubuntu 16.04 firmware images for the board, including a dual boot image. There are also work-in-progress documentation and placeholder links to Android SDK and schematics in the product page which will hopefully soon link to the actual documents and files, as well as a work-in-progress Wiki. It may also be worth monitoring the company’s Github account.
The company aims to raise $50,000 from the crowdfunding campaign, and you’d have to pledge $139 to get “Firefly-RK3399 Development Kit” with 2GB RAM, and 16GB flash together with a 12V/2A power adapter, a USB Type C adapter, a USB to UART serial board, a USB cable, and a a cooling fan (I assume with an heatsink). After the 50 first pieces, the price goes up to $159, and if you want the “Plus development kit” with 4GB RAM and 32GB flash, you’d need to pledge $199 instead. Shipping adds $5 to $30 depending on the destination country, and delivery is planned for March 2017.
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.
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Top of the class IO interfaces. The CPU and GPU are a tad slow and there will be much faster options by March 2017 >:D.
What faster options are you thinking of, and for what price?
“The company aims to raise $50,000 from the company”
I guess you meant “from the Kickstarter”
For that price you get a Chromebook with the same SoC.
Have a nice day!
@xnc
The only RK3399 Chromebook I know of is the Samsung one @ http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/10/15/samsung-chromebook-pro-powered-by-rockchip-rk3399-soc-to-sell-for-499/
Price: $499.
yea cnxsoft is right.
Does this board support u-boot to boot vanilla linux?
or we will use only android?
sorry my bad english
@hex
Linux 16.04 firmware is also included and the source code will also be released.
Will also have VPU & GPU drivers for Linux.
“Support Android 6.0.1 & Ubuntu 16.04 Dual-Boot”
@mo123
will VPU&GPU be open source or proprietary? (ı think it is proprietary)
thanks for reply.
@Gabriel
Same price but more than twice as fast. You just have to wait. The IO interfaces on the RK3399 are great though. No one is going to match that.
@lvrp16
Are you referring to Solid-Run’s ARMADA 8040 community board?
@blu
Nope, it’s faster and cheaper but less IO.
@lvrp16
Faster and cheaper than the 8040, but with less IO, coming out in march ’17.. Hmm. Perhaps Nintendo Switch? ; ]
@lvrp16
Faster than Cortex A72 will be tough, unless you mean somethings with four or more Cortex A72/A73 cores, or it’s just not ARM, but another platform.
@hex
Normally GPU kernel space is open source, user space is closed source. VPU is also closed sourced. That’s basically the same for all ARM processors, with some exceptions, e.g. Freedreno for Adreno GPU, Etnaiviv for Vivante GPU. The open source version of the drivers often have some limitations however. I don’t know the full status of Freedreno and Etnaviv, except there are usable on boards like DragonBoard 410c and NXP i.MX6 platforms respectively.
@Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)
speak very clear, thanks cnxsoft.
you are my savior! 🙂
I hope the “Firefly-RK3399” receives the support for Kodi as the Beelink MX Mini III gets with your Amlogic S905 or the Ordin C2, so the RK stands and falls, so far there is hardly anything, so I have so far the Beelink MX Mini III so the Amlogic S905 the best box, thanks to LibreElec micro-SD version, with which also finally Dts-HD pass. is working. What is striking is nowhere more HDCP 2.2 is listed (as it was shown in the presentation), although the RK 3399 should offer like the Amlogic S905x / 912. It is nice that the… Read more »
@Leslie What you post makes no sense. Kodi dropped all Amlogic support since Kodi 17 beta 7. Rockchip devices with the latest firmware support HD Audio in Kodi since Kodi 17 beta 7, 4 days ago. You can’t compare a tv box vs a development board, it is 2 completely different things. Rockchip already added HDCP 2.2 to their firmwares months ago, the Firefly RK3288 also has it. WiFi 802.11ac 2×2 MIMO means transfers in both receiving and sending directions twice for each at 5Ghz at over 2Gbps speeds which is far better than just 5Ghz wifi in one direction… Read more »
BTW, I was just thinking that it would be useful if reviews of such boards deliberately mentioned (or just reminded the reader of) the RAM channel configuration. For instance this is a dual 32bit channel setup, and so is the RK3288. The RK3368, in contrast, is a single 32bit channel setup, and that places the RK3368 at a clear disadvantage for BW-sensitive tasks.
Some useful information for Firefly RK3399 Firefly RK3399 will have GPU & VPU Linux support. Rockchip resources: http://rockchip.wikidot.com/rk3399 Rockchip Linux development work for RK3399 https://github.com/rockchip-linux Rockchip Linux Kodi https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/10684 https://github.com/wzyy2/xbmc/commits/master Linux drivers for e.g. the GPU and VPU are available from the platform provider https://github.com/rockchip-linux/libmali #GPU acceleration https://github.com/rockchip-linux/rockchip-va-driver #VPU acceleration From Firefly’s forum “about the linux support ,we are not alone， the ROCKCHIP has started to support linux already, check this : rockchip.wikidot.com our company has a deep relationship with ROCKCHIP, regularly they use our board for develop. so , with ROCKCHIP’s help ,we can do much better.” The RK3399… Read more »
@mo123
Hopefully Rockchip tend to the RK3399 in the Firefly better than they did the RK3368 in the Geekbox, which never got a mainline kernel nor GPU support (outside of hacked android binaries). Rockchip have to regain my trust, so I’ll sit this RK devboard out, as nice as it might look on the specsheet.
@blu
There was no RK3368 Chromebook, but there will be RK3399 Chromebooks, so I’m confident Linux support will be better.
You can see many commits in arm linux kernel mailing list from chromium.org and rock-chips.com email addresses for RK3399, but so not many for RK3368.
@blu Rockchip never officially supported Linux on RK3368 and didn’t advertise RK3368 as having Linux support. Their focus is on RK3288/RK3399 Linux support where ARM provides Linux Mali drivers already for free and that is used in their Chromebooks. If you look at their Github account most of their devices will get Linux support but at different time-frames. It was Geekbox that decided to develop Linux for it and then they found out Imagination Technologies(the GPU maker) wanted to charge several hundred thousand dollars and a time frame of close to a year to do it and it wasn’t financially… Read more »
@mo123
I understand the situation with Geekbox and Imagination. Let’s say I did not originally expect much from the GPU support side, but I *did* expect more from the kernel side. I’ll gladly order this new devboard as soon as Firefly ship a 4.4 kernel. Not sooner, though. The outdated kernel of the Geekbox did make that devboard much less useful to me than I had originally anticipated.
@blu
Firefly already uses a 4.4 kernel for RK3288 Linux and should use a similar or newer kernel for RK3399.
https://github.com/T-Firefly/kernel_4.4
They and Rockchip are also working on lots of mainline Linux kernel support. Some Firefly RK3288 Reload platform commits also just merged into Linux 4.9 kernel – http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/12/12/linux-4-9-release-main-changes-arm-and-mips-architectures/
Firefly just finished Mali T860 support for Ubuntu – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1771382379/firefly-rk3399-six-core-64-bit-high-performance-pl/updates
I’m not sure about the Android kernel, but should also be much newer, 4.x I think.
@mo123
Thanks for the heads-up. And since I see you’re following the project closely, how far are Firefly along the enablement of OpenCL on the RK3399? I see they have the ICD and headers, but that’s not a guarantee OCL runs. Also, that GPU demonstration on ubuntu – is that via GLX or EGL?
@blu
The GPU demo runs EGL demo via glmark-es2. I am sure you can run demos via GLX but then the 3D rendering will not be GPU accelerated. If you need full Desktop OpenGL you need a Tegra SOC or x86.
2D Desktop acceleration should be available via glamor like on the older RK3288:
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Glamor/
see bug reports for RK3399:
https://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg51015.html
@blu
The company behind Geekbox has only 2 people. It’s a tiny operation and I wouldn’t buy any of their hardware. T-Chip is a lot better in that respect.
OpenCL support is really in ARM’s ballpark. Do not know if Rockchip purchased the IP for OpenCL Linux for the T8xx.
The boards are now also up for pre-order @ http://shop.t-firefly.com/
Firefly-RK3399: $159
Firefly-RK3399 Plus: $199
Hello this box Yundoo y8, it is possible to install kodi
Thank you
@Mikas
Yes.
Ive got the board now, but no Ubuntu Images. What does one do to run such on this board?
There is an android 6 image, and lots of tools, but I don’t want to have to build yet another pile to run an RK chip again. I’d hoped there would be support by the time the board arrived somewhere public.
@jim st
I think they are uploading Firefly-RK3399_Ubuntu16.04_201703161116.7z @ https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7HO8lbGgAqAWjd1dW52am1hbUk
But I can only see the MD5 file and readme for now.
Make a decent A72/A73 board under 100$ and I’m in.
Some news for Firefly-RK3399.
Firefly has released the face recognition SDK and Multiple video coding&decoding for Firefly-RK3399. Has anyone tried that SDK? What about the recognition rate?
Any news about this development board?
State of hw accelerated video decoding under Ubuntu 16.04?
Problems with the board under 16.04?