Orange Pi AIPro is a new single board computer for AI applications that features a new (and unnamed) Huawei Ascend AI quad-core 64-bit processor delivering up to 20 TOPS (INT8) or 8 TOPS (FP16) of AI inference performance.
The SBC comes with up to 16GB LPDDR4X and a 512Mbit SPI flash but also supports other storage options such as a microSD card, an eMMC flash module, and/or an M.2 NVMe or SATA SSD. The board also features two HDMI 2.0 ports, one MIPI DSI connector, and an AV port for video output, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 5 connectivity, a few USB ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion.
Orange Pi AIPro specifications:
- SoC – Huawei Ascend quad-core 64-bit (
I’d assume RISC-V) processor delivering up to 20 TOPS (INT8) or 8TOPS (FP16) AI performance and equipped with an unnamed 3D GPU - System Memory – 8GB or 16GB LPDDR4X 3200 Mbps
- Storage
- 512Mbit SPI flash
- MicroSD card socket
- eMMC flash module connector for up to 256GB modules
- M.2 Key-M 2280 socket for NVMe or SATA SSD
- Video Output
- 2x HDMI 2.0 ports
- 1x MIPI DSI connector
- 3.5mm AV port with composite video and audio
- Camera interfaces – 2x MIPI CSI connectors
- Audio – Built-in microphone, analog audio via AV port (see Video Output section)
- Networking
- Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port
- WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2 module plus two antenna connectors
- USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports, 1x USB 3.0 Type-C port, 1x micro USB port (for UART console)
- Expansion – 40-pin GPIO header
- Misc- Reset button, Power button, LEDs, 12V fan connector
- Power Supply
- Up to 20V (65W) via USB-C PD port
- 2-pin header for LiPo battery, on-board charging IC
- Dimensions – 107 x 68 mm
- Weight – 82 grams
Orange Pi says the board supports Ubuntu and openEuler operating systems and can be used for a range of applications such as natural language processing, real-time video analytics, augmented reality, robotics, drones, and various AIoT applications. I could not find documentation on the product page (in Chinese only), but the page points us to Huawei Ascend website which should mean it relies on the company’s MindX SDK with support for Tensorflow and Pytorch frameworks (among others) and Orange Pi Chinese’s forum.
I initially thought the AI SoC might have been the Huawei Ascend A310 released a few years ago, but the specifications are different, so it must be a new part, and Huawei likely tries not to provide too much information to prevent or delay unnecessary sanctions… [Update: another source told us the chip is the Ascend 310B with an Arm Cortex-A76 equivalent core, and the GPU should be a Mali-G57 or similar]
The board is sold on JD.com for 889 RMB ($124.80 US) or 1149 RMB ($161.30 US) respectively for the 8GB and 16GB RAM variants. I did ask Orange Pi for the exact name of the processor, but I was only told the Orange Pi AIPro would only be sold in China… So it might be hard to source unless using a forwarder or waiting for it to show up on some third-party Aliexpress stores.
Thanks to TLS 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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After the kirin 9000s, It looks like another products which was “endorsed” by Mrs. Raimondo.
Ascent -> Ascend
This news must have gotten someone excited, because I saw it on Tom’s and Liliputing first.
Five different power regulators is making this really complicated, for what it is.
When I read your comment I thought you were complaining about the SoC having 5 power domains. But no, the board literally has 5 different PMICs on there (6 if we count the charger chip on the bottom). Aren’t there PMICs that can put out 5 power domains in one package? Or is this SoC just so power-hungry?
Well, it seems like there might not be a custom PMIC for this chip, as at least the SoC and AI power stages appear to be something borrowed for a motherboard or notebook design and those are from International Rectifier/Infineon (IR35411) and can apparently deliver up to &0 Ampere. Seems like total overkill for this SoC.
Maybe the costom PMIC is too expensive to use. Just the cost-down tricks.
Yeah, no, that’s unlikely. DigiKey lists the IR35411 for US$2.42 a piece if you order 5k and Mouser has a similar price, so that’s not it.
I don’t think they can find some appropriate PMIC for more than one load.Both the core and the AI are heavy load(much more than RK3588). and We have DDR pwr up to 24GB@4266Mbps(due to 20TOPs SOC compatibility) and traditional 3.3V for NVME and 5V for USB. None of them are light stuff.
So we don’t even know for sure wich arch this is?, how are they supposed to sell it?
who knows, maybe there are people who love voltage regulators and dream about this board 🙂
Maybe you need to ask Mrs. Raimondo. Everyone who made it and use it could find all of them beyound US gov’s sanction.
[ Does anyone know, if there’s something like a searchable (text/ascii, text-based ‘web search’ content, (not even) speech2text/pocketsphinx) ) video/movie format and/or a copy(/paste)-able screencast format? (Thx) ]
[ avoiding additional computing demand with like ‘https://pyimagesearch.com/2021/09/20/language-translation-and-ocr-with-tesseract-and-python/’ or e.g. ‘sonix.ai’ through a pre-configured video/screen capture format, that already includes text related information (?) ]