Geniatech has added two more single board computers to its XPI family with Raspberry Pi form factor. The Geniatech XPI-S905X2 and XPI-S905X3 boards are powered by respectively Amlogic S905X2 and S905X3/S905X4 quad-core processors, ship with 2GB RAM, and sell for $35 and up depending on the choice of processor and the presence of a wireless module.
The company promotes each Raspberry Pi 3 lookalike as a “4K Single Board ARM PC” because of the 4K video playback capabilities or the Amlogic processors. Those boards provide an update to the earlier Amlogic S905X based XPI-S905X, and join Rockchip and NXP models.
Geniatech XPI-S905X3/S905X2:
- SoC (one or the other)
- Amlogic S905X2 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Mali-G31 MP2 GPU
- Amlogic S905X3/S905X4 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor with Mali-G31 MP2 GPU
- System Memory – 2GB 1GB Optional)
- Storage – 8GB eMMC flash (option for 16GB or 32GB), MicroSD card slot
- Video & audio output – HDMI 2.0/2.1 up to 4Kp60
- Video codecs
- VP9 Profile-2 up to 4Kp60
- H.265 HEVC MP-10 @ L5.1 up to 4Kp60
- AVS2-P2 Profile up to 4Kp60
- H.264 AVC [email protected] up to 4Kp60
- S905X4 only – AV1 up to 4Kp120
- Networking
- Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port
- Optional dual-band WiFi & Bluetooth 4.2 module
- USB – 3x USB 2.0 ports, 1x USB 3.0 port
- Expansion – 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible header with up to 28 GPIO, SPI, I2C, PWM, UART, 5V, 3.3V, and GND signals
- Debugging – 4-pin UART connector for serial console
- Misc – Update button
- Power Supply – 5V via Micro USB port
- Dimensions – 85 x 56 mm
The board ships with a power adapter, a “cooling fin” and an optional wireless module with 2.4/5.8GHz Wi-Fi and BT4.0. Geniatech only lists Android 9.0 operating system and says the boards are designed for education, industrial control, and more. Since other Amlogic S905X3 boards like ODROID-C4 can support Linux, one would have to assume it might not be too challenging to have it running on XPI-S905X2/3/4 boards.
Geniatech XPI-S905X2 may have been around for a while and can be purchased for $35, while XPI-S905X3 goes for $37, and XPI-S905X4 does not appear to be available in single quantities. The wireless module is available for $5 extra. You’ll find extra information and purchase links on the product page.
Thanks to theguyuk for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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10$ shipping to Romania – decent !
What do they mean with “S905X4/X3”?, you can’t explicitly choose X4 on there site, so it a gamble ?
why do they still even bother with the X2 or X3 when X4 is available?
I think it means S905X3. The way I understand it, S905X4 can only be purchased in volume.
what a pity, i would only consider buying if it is X4.
Why that? From what I See in paper x3 and x4 are (virtual) identical beide AV1 support
Probably because buying a device for video playback now that doesn’t have AV1 puts a very short expiration date on the usefullness of the device.
Do we expect that AV1 is mandatory before 2030? I have few hundred terabytes of video material and 0% is encoded in AV1…
The benefit of AV1 is for content streaming, as it uses less bandwidth.
The benefit of AV1 is lack of royalties compared to h.265. The h.265 organization is demanding a huge amount of money from Google to use h.265 in YouTube. A large enough demand to cause Google to create a competing standard, legally clear it of patents, and provide free reference implementations of it in hardware and software.
Sorry, I wasn’t aware that you ran a large streaming video platform. Those who do run such things are pushing for AV1. Note that Netflix has just enabled it for a set of devices. Google has been pushing for it on youtube. Between the two of them, that’s pretty much half the video bandwidth on the internet.
I’m not sure how big your operation is, but I doubt it means much compared to them.
It’s also possible to decode AV1 by software. No reason that something “expires” because it doesn’t support certain codecs (de)coding in hardware.
Does this chip have enough CPU to software decode 1080p60 let alone 4Kp120 AV1? If not, then yes, it will expire.
I guess this is a first world problem only. Probably your PC also does immediately expire when software or games are released that don’t run on it at full resolution.
Luckily in most parts of the world things will get used as long as they are not broken.