Radxa Cubie A5E - A compact Allwinner A527/T527 SBC with HDMI 2.0, dual GbE, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.4

Radxa Cubie A5E is an SBC powered by Allwinner A527/T527 octa-core Cortex-A55 SoC and featuring HDMI 2.0, dual GbE, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4, an M.2 socket for NVMe SSD, USB 3.0 Type-A and USB 2.0 OTG (Type-C) ports, and a 40-pin GPIO form factor in a compact 69x56mm form factor.

Long-time readers may remember the Allwinner A10-powered Cubieboard launched in 2012 as an alternative to the hard-to-get Raspberry Pi development board or the various TV boxes like the MeLE A1000 we tried to use to run Linux on Arm hardware. At the time, Allwinner SoCs became popular in SBCs but the company management eventually failed to deliver on software, so some members of CubieTech decided to split and founded Radxa to design Rockchip SBCs that looked more promising in terms of software support. It eventually ended up being a good move after a few difficult first years. However, Allwinner management has now changed and they’ve hired a team dedicated to open-source software, and that’s why Radxa has decided to launch its first Allwinner SBC with the Cubie A5E.

Cubie A5E specifications:

SoC – Allwinner T527 (industrial) / Allwinner A527 (commercial)
- CPU
  - Octa-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor with four cores @ 1.80 GHz (T527) or 2.0 GHz (A527) and four cores @ 1.42GHz
  - XuanTie E906 RISC-V core up to 200 MHz
- GPU – Arm Mali-G57 MC1 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2/2.0/1.1, Vulkan 1.1/1.2/1.3, OpenCL 2.2
- DSP – 600MHz HIFI4 Audio DSP
- AI accelerator – Optional, up to 2 TOPS NPU
System Memory – 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB LPDDR4 @ 2400 MT/s
Storage
- 128Mbit SPI flash for bootloader
- M.2 M-Key 2230 socket for NVMe SSD
- MicroSD card slot
Display interfaces
- HDMI 2.0a port
- MIPI FPC connector
Camera interface – 4-lane MIPI CSI interface
Networking
- 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports using Maxio MAE0621A transceivers, one PoE compatible
- Dual-band WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 module (BLink BL-M8800DS2)
USB – 1x USB 3.0 port, 1x USB 2.0 OTG Type-C port
Expansion – 40-pin GPIO header (loosely) compatible with Raspberry Pi GPIO header and offering additional interfaces through muxing: up to 28x GPIO, 4x I2C, HDMI I2C, 6x UART (Debug UART0 on pin 8/10), multiple I2S inputs and outputs, DMIC, multiple PWM, etc…
Misc
- FEL button
- 2x user LEDs
Power Supply – 5V/4A via USB-C connector
Dimensions – 69 x 56 mm

The specifications are very similar to the Avaota A1 open-source hardware SBC introduced last year, but the Radxa Allwinner A527/T527 SBC is offered in a smaller form factor and adds M.2 NVMe SSD support. However, it lacks DisplayPort video output, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a “multi-function” connector.

The board will run Linux, but there’s virtually no information about software support on the linux-sunxi website, just some hardware information. The product page for the Cubie A5E is not up on the Radxa website at this time either. But for reference, the Avaota A1 board runs the Debian or Ubuntu-based AvaotaOS, so it could serve as a base to get started on the new Radxa board. Eventually, the goal should be to get the Cubie A5E supported in mainline Linux. The Allwinner A527 and T527 are part of the sun55iw3 family like the Allwinner A523, and I don’t see any reference to the kernel logs for now, so there could be a lot of work…

The Radxa Cubie A5E SBC can be pre-ordered on Arace for $15 to $30 with 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of RAM. Members of the linux-sunxi mailing list as of December 31, 2024, can request a free sample by filling out a form. Samples will be shipped before the Chinese New Year holiday, or in other words before the end of this month. While an octa-core Cortex-A55 may not be super exciting, it’s a stepping stone for more powerful boards down the roadmap powered by Allwinner A733 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 AI SoC, and eventually Allwinner A838 octa-core Cortex-A78/A55 SoC (likely a 2026 story for that one).

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

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.