Firefly ITX3588J mini-ITX motherboard with Rockchip RK3588 SoC now has a little sister/brother based on Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor called ITX-3568JQ, and designed to power Arm PCs, cloud terminals, industrial controllers, edge computers, advanced NVR, NAS devices, and more.
The motherboard supports up to 8GB RAM, 128GB eMMC flash, offers SATA storage, dual Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6, optional 4G or 5G cellular connectivity, can handle up to three independent displays, and offers plenty of I/O options including an RS232/RS485 DB9 connector and a PCIe slot.
Firefly ITX-3568JQ specifications:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3568J quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G52-2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1, 1.0 TOPS NPU, 8MP ISP, 4Kp60 video decoding, 1080p60 H.265/H.264 video encoding
- System Memory – 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB LPDDR4
- Storage
- 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash
- 16MB SPI flash
- 1x M.2 SATA 3.0 socket for 2242 SSD
- 1x SATA3.0 port
- Video Output
- 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60
- 1x MIPI-DSI up to 1920×1080 @ 60 Hz (single-channel) or 2560×1440 @ 60 Hz (dual-channel)
- 1x LVDS interface
- 2x VGA ports up to 1080p60
- Backlight and touchscreen interfaces
- Three independent displays supported
- Camera I/F – 1x 4-lane MIPI-CSI input or optionally 2x 2-lane MIPI-CSI inputs
- Audio
- 3.5mm earphone audio jack
- 1x Speaker output (10W-8Ω D class)
- Digital audio output via HDMI
- Microphone header
- Networking
- 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports, including one with PoE support up to 60W
- 2.4GHz/5GHz dual-band WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0
- Optional 5G or 4G LTE modem via mPCIe or M.2 socket respectively
- USB – 4x USB 3.0 ports (1A per port), 3x USB 2.0 interfaces including two via headers (up to 500mA per port)
- Serial – RS485/RS232 DB9 connector
- Expansion
- 2-lane PCIe Gen3 slot
- Header with GPIO, I2C, ADC, UART, CAN Bus, 5V, 3.3V and GND
- Debugging – Debug interface
- Misc – Heating? header, JM3 cooling fan
- Power Supply
- 12V DC via DC jack (5.5×2.1mm), 1.5A or more recommended
- 12V input via a standard 8-pin ATX power interface
- 48V PoE up to 60W
- Power Consumption
- Typical – ~6W (12V/0.5A)
- Max – ~10W (12V/1A)
- Dimensions – 17 x 17cm (Mini-ITX form factor)
- Weight – About 400 grams
- Temperature – -40°C to +85°C
- Humidity – 10% – 80%
Firefly will provide support for Android 11.0, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04 and RTLinux, but the Wiki is currently empty. The mini-ITX motherboard is actually fitted with a Rockchip RK3568J system-on-module, which must be a different package than the original RK3568, just like RK3568B2 found in ODROID-M1.
The motherboard layout is quite different from the Rockchip RK3588-based ITX-3588J mini-ITX motherboard, and instead of using an MXM connector for the system-on-module, the company went with board-to-board connectors instead. The ITX3568JQ board may also be better suited to a wider range of industrial applications with a -40°C to 85°C operating temperature range instead of just -20°C to 60°C for the RK3588 board.
The ITX-3568JQ motherboard can be purchased for $339 and up on Firefly shop. 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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Still waiting on some ATX MBs with Arm CPUs with more cores and RAM to install ..
You mean likethe honeycomb?
Oh, why do you wait? Don’t you know about Ampere offering? https://www.adlinktech.com/Products/Computer_on_Modules/COM-HPC/COM-HPC_Ampere_Altra
This smells as if the mPCIe and M.2 ports for modems only carry USB signals and that SATA is provided using something like a PCIe attached ASM1061?
Why SATA via PCIe? Can’t the rk3568 do native sata?
You’re right. I’m always forgetting about the IO capabilities. There’s 3 Combo PHYs, 1 x PCIe Gen2 but also 3 x SATA:
https://eji4evk5kxx.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/RK3568-multiplexed-sata-usb-3.0-pcie.jpg
So my comment was stupid and now I guess Firefly guys made the best out of RK3568’s capabilities.
Indeed it looks like the chip offers a wide choice of options, that’s great. One more reason for adopting such much more versatile form factors than the rpi one 🙂
4x usb3 means a hub?
2x sata means only 1 usb3 available
Confused, but seems one serdes soldered to an onboard hub
Pine put both usb3 and sata on the same combophy for their rk3566 model a board, with the intention that you can select via the device tree on boot. I don’t know how well that worked out for them.
> Pine put both usb3 and sata on the same combophy
That’s what’s done on all these newer Rockchip devices.
It’s really cool to see vendors progressively going away from the RPi form factor when it comes to serious SoCs that try to provide rich I/Os. Now it will become more common to see all I/Os exposed, enclosures will not be an issue anymore, we’ll get standard connectivity and probably that vendors will have no other choice but start to adopt common boot methods as well (including from USB). I.e. these boards will become PCs boards.
Interesting while not the same formats, layout or exact chip there is the,
G3568 development board is based on Rockchip RK3568(64bit quad core) platform, which is designed by Shenzhen Graperain Technology Co., Ltd.
Available on Alibaba and unit prices
Also Rongpin RK3568 boards
So plenty of competition but will quality support follow?
I once dreamed of a similar motherboard for a personal web server. And now the load on the web servers is such that Xeon E5-1650 V2 boosted up 4.2 GHz is not enough sometimes…
Probably time to change the software then…
If it had 4 sata ports it’d make a great file server board. I guess you could add ports via pcie.
> I guess you could add ports via pcie
Of course, ASM1166 and JMS585 are both PCIe Gen3 x2 and provide an extra six or five SATA connections.
But for ‘a great file server board’ network sucks.
And no: 2 x GbE does not turn into 1 x 2Gbps since LACP does not double the bandwidth per link but only tries to distribute connections more evenly over the 1Gbps links. You would need SMB multichannel or such things to benefit from higher fileserver transfers.
The price hurt my eyes.
the 60W poe, is that to power the motherboard from a switch, or it is suppling 60W to some attached network device?