After Radxa ROCK5 Pico-ITX SBC and Banana Pi RK3588 SoM and devkit, Firefly ITX3588J mini-ITX motherboard is the third hardware platform we’ve seen with Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor.
The board will be interesting to people wanting an Arm PC or workstation as the mini-ITX form factor will allow the board to be fitted to a standard enclosure, and there’s plenty of resources and I/Os with up to 32GB RAM, four SATA ports, multiple 8K/4K video outputs and inputs, dual Gigabit Ethernet, WiFI 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, and more.
Firefly ITX3588J mini-ITX motherboard specifications:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor with four Arm Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, four Arm Cortex-A55 cores, ArmMali-G610 MP4 quad-core GPU with support for OpenGL ES3.2, OpenCL 2.2, Vulkan1.1, 6 TOPS NPU, 48MP ISP, 8Kp60 video decoding, 8Kp30 video encoding
- System Memory – 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB LPDDR4/LPDDR4x/LPDDR5 memory
- Storage
- 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash
- 1x M.2 SATA 3.0 for 2242 SSD
- 4x SATA3.0 ports
- Video I/F
- Output
- HDMI 2.1 up to 8Kp60 or 4Kp120
- HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60
- 2x MIPI-DSI up to 4Kp60fps
- DP 1.4 up to 8Kp30 (multiplexed with USB3.0)
- VGA port
- Input
- 1x HDMI-IN up to 4Kp60 with support for HDCP 2.3
- 2x 2-lane MIPI-CSI input or 1x 4-lane MIPI-CSI input for camera
- Multi-channel 8K video output and 4K video input, up to four-screen output
- Output
- Audio
- 1x Speaker output (10W-8Ω D class)
- 1x Line-Out
- Digital audio output via HDMI and DP ports
- 1x Line-In, 1x MIC-in input, 1x HDMI input
- Networking
- Dual Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports, including one with PoE support up to 60W
- 2.4GHz/5GHz dual-band WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0
- Optional 5G/4G LTE modem via M.2 socket
- USB – 4x USB 3.0 ports (1A per port), 1x USB 3.0 Type-C port with DisplayPort Alt. mode (up to 2A), 4x USB 2.0 interfaces including three via headers (Up to 500mA per port)
- Serial – 1x RS485, 1x RS232
- Expansion
- 1x PCIe 3.0 x4 slot
- 8x GPIO, 4x I2C, 1x SPI, 3xADC
- Debugging – Debug interface
- Misc – 12V fan header, 12V heating header?
- Power Supply
- DC 12V~24V wide voltage input via DC jack (5.5×2.1mm)
- 12V input via a standard 8-pin ATX power interface
- 48V PoE up to 60W
- Power Consumption
- Idle – ~1.35W (12V/110mA)
- Typical – ~4.8W (12V/400mA)
- Max – ~20W (12V/1700mA)
- Dimensions – 17 x 17cm (Mini-ITX form factor); holes for 45mm heatsink
- Temperature Range – Operating: -20°C to 60°C; storage:-20°C-70°C
- Humidity – 10% – 80%
The company will provide Android 12.0, Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Debian 11, Buildroot, RTLinux, Kylin Linux, and UOS for the board. The large number of supported Linux distributions is certainly helped by the UEFI bootloader provided for the board. Note the CPU, memory, and flash storage are all on a system on module, so it should be easy to upgrade/downgrade the module’s memory/storage as needed.
The company was also one of the first to launch a Rockchip RK3399 board in 2016 with the Firefly-RK3399 SBC, and compared to the earlier platform, Rockchip RK3588 processor is said to be up to four times faster, while the GPU is up to 8 times more performant, and the AI performance delta should even be higher since RK3588 comes with a 6 TOPS NPU. That’s about what we reported with early RK3588 benchmarks although Firefly rounded up the number, and graphics performance varies a lot depending on the workload.
Firefly ITX3588J mini-ITX motherboard is still being worked on, and we do not have availability and pricing information. [Update: the motherboard costs $489 with 4GB RAM, $589 with 8GB RAM] More details may be found on the product page.
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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