Geekworm X1011 board adds up to four NVMe SSDs to the Raspberry Pi 5

Raspberry Pi 5 four NVMe SSD NAS

Geekworm X1011 is a new expansion board for the Raspberry Pi 5 with four M.2 sockets enabling the insertion of up to four M.2 NVMe SSDs with data pushed through the PCIe Gen2 interface of the popular SBC. We were already wondering why most people would want to connect two NVMe SSDs to the Raspberry Pi 5 when the Geekworm X1004 HAT+ was launched considering the 5GT/s limitation from the board and the PCIe switch, but the company decided to double the number of drives with the X1011 meaning each drive can achieve up to around 100 MB/s (or 400MB/s) when used simultaneously. It does look nice and fairly compact though. Geekworm X1011 specifications: Supported SBC – Raspberry Pi 5 and other SBCs with a compatible 16-pin PCIe FPC connector and mounting holes Chipset – ASMedia ASM1184e PCI express packet switch with 1x PCIe Gen2 x1 upstream port and 4x […]

SBC Case Builder v3.0 can create thousands of cases for popular SBCs and standard motherboards (mini-ITX, Pico-ITX, NUC…)

SBC Case Builder V3.0

SBC Case Builder V3.0 case design utility has just been released with the ability to create over 1,000 standard cases – not including customization – for popular SBCs from Raspberry Pi, Hardkernel, Orange Pi, Radxa, and others, as well as standard motherboards following Mini-ITX, Pico-ITX, NUC, Nano-ITX, etc.., and SBC adapters following these standards, meaning you could install a Raspberry Pi 5 into a mini-ITX case if needed. SBC Case Builder started as a command line utility for designing DIY case for SBCs relying on OpenSDAD in April 2022, but Edward Kisiel (hominoids) quickly released version 2 with a GUI in October or the same, and has now further improved the utility with the release of SBC Case Builder v3.0. Version 3.0 comes with many improvements but the main focus was to reuse existing and new PC standard form factor cases by creating SBC adapters and custom I/O Shields since […]

Raspberry Pi 5 vs Intel N100 mini PC comparison – Features, Benchmarks, and Price

Raspberry Pi 5 vs Intel N100 Mini PC

The Raspberry Pi 5 Arm SBC is now powerful enough to challenge some Intel systems in terms of performance, while Intel has made the Intel Alder Lake-N family, notably the Intel Processor N100, inexpensive and efficient enough to challenge Arm systems when it comes to price, form factor, and power consumption. So we’ll try to match the Raspberry Pi 5 to typical Intel processor N100 mini PCs with a comparison of features/specifications, performance (benchmarks), and pricing with different use cases. That’s something I’ve been wanting to look into for a while but I was busy with reviews and other obligations (Hello, Mr. Taxman!), and this weekend I had some spare time to carry on the comparison. Raspberry Pi 5 vs Intel N100 mini PC specifications I’ll start by comparing the specifications of a Raspberry Pi 5 against the ones for typical Intel Processor N100-based mini PCs also mentioning optional features […]

BIGTREETECH Pi 2 SBC and CB2 module for 3D printers now feature Rockchip RK3566 SoC with Gigabit Ethernet

BIGTREETECH Pi 2 and the BIGTREETECH CB2 Compute Modules

BIGTREETECH recently announced the release of the BIGTREETECH Pi 2 SBC and BIGTREETECH CB2 SoM, both powered by the Rockchip RK3566 SoC. These new modules are direct upgrades from the BIGTREETECH Pi v1.2 and BIGTREETECH CB1, which we covered and reviewed in our previous posts. Specially designed for 3D printers, these new modules have a similar form factor to that of a Raspberry Pi and the RPI CM4 module, and come with a set of upgraded features including support for GbE Ethernet, dual-band WiFi, up to 32GB of LPDDR4 RAM, eMMC storage, HDMI, USB, and more. BIGTREETECH Pi 2 Specifications SoC – Rockchip RK3566 CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali G52-2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 2.0 NPU – 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator VPU – 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoding, 1080p100f H.265/H.264 video encoding System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 (Customizable – 1GB/2GB/4GB/8GB) […]

Rockchip RK3588’s NPU open-source driver performs object detection at 30 FPS

Rockchip RK3588 open source NPU driver

Tomeu Vizoso has been working on an open-source driver for NPU (Neural Processing Unit) found in Rockchip RK3588 SoC in the last couple of months, and the project has nicely progressed with object detection working fine at 30 fps using the SSDLite MobileDet model and just one of the three cores from the AI accelerator. Many recent processors include AI accelerators that work with closed-source drivers, but we had already seen reverse-engineering works on the Allwinner V831’s NPU a few years ago, and earlier this year, we noted that Tomeu Vizoso released the Etvaniv open-source driver that works on Amlogic A311D’s Vivante NPU. Tomeu has now also started working on porting his Teflon TensorFlow Lite driver to the Rockchip RK3588 NPU which is closely based on NVIDIA’s NVDLA open-source IP. He started his work in March leveraging the reverse-engineering work already done by Pierre-Hugues Husson and Jasbir Matharu and was […]

ODROID-H4 – A Compact Alder Lake N-Series SBC with up to dual 2.5GbE and four SATA III ports

ODROID-H4 Ultra SBC

Hardkernel has just launched an upgrade to their ODROID-H3/H3+ Jasper Lake SBC, with the ODROID-H4, ODROID-H4+, and ODROID-H4 Ultra boards powered by Intel Processor N97 or Intel Core i3-N305 Alder Lake N-Series processors. The ODROID-H4 family supports up to 48GB DDR5-4800 memory and NVMe SSD storage, comes with up to two 2.5GbE, four SATA III ports, three 4K capable video output ports (HDMI and DisplayPort), a range of USB ports, and a 24-pin GPIO header. ODROID-H4 specifications compared to previous generation ODROID-H2+ and ODROID-H3 boards. The GPIO header offers the following interfaces for all models except for the ODROID-H2+: 2x I2C, 3x USB 2.0, 1x UART, 1x HDMI-CEC, ext. power button. The H2+ header has similar interfaces, but only one USB 2.0 and two UART. Some may note the maximum RAM capacity numbers differ from the data on Intel Ark, but the latter is not usually correct, and Hardkernel have […]

Qualcomm RB3 Gen 2 Platform with Qualcomm QCS6490 AI SoC targets robotics, IoT and embedded applications

Qualcomm RB3 Gen 2 Platform Vision Kit

Qualcomm had two main announcements at Embedded World 2024: the ultra-low-power Qualcomm QCC730 WiFi microcontroller for battery-powered IoT devices and the Qualcomm RB3 Gen 2 Platform hardware and software solution designed for IoT and embedded applications based on the Qualcomm QCS6490 processor that we’re going to cover today. The kit is comprised of a QCS6490 octa-core Cortex-A78/A55 system-on-module with 12 TOPS of AI performance, 6GB RAM, and 128GB UFS flash connected to the 96Boards-compliant Qualcomm RBx development mainboard through interposer, as well as optional cameras, microphone array, and sensors. Qualcomm QCS6490/QCM6490 IoT processor Specifications: CPU – Octa-core Kryo 670 with 1x Gold Plus core (Cortex-A78) @ 2.7 GHz, 3x Gold cores (Cortex-A78) @ 2.4 GHz, 4x Silver cores (Cortex-A55) @ up to 1.9 GHz GPU – Adreno 643L GPU @ 812 MHz with support for Open GL ES 3.2, Open CL 2.0, Vulkan 1.x, DX FL 12 DSP – Hexagon […]

Orange Pi 5 Pro – A low-cost Rockchip RK3588S SBC with up to 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, dual HDMI video output

Orange Pi 5 Pro

As mentioned in the Orange Pi Developer Conference 2024 article, the Orange Pi 5 Pro launch was just around the corner, and the latest Rockchip RK3588S SBC is now available on Amazon or Aliexpressfor $109 and up with 16GB LPDDR5 RAM, but cheaper 4GB ($60) and 8GB ($80) variants are coming soon. One would think the Orange Pi 5 Pro would be an evolution of the Orange Pi 5 SBC with LPDDR4 memory, and in some ways it is, but there are enough changes to display ports, storage, wireless, GPIO header, and even the form factor that make a direct comparison challenging. Orange Pi 5 Pro specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3588S CPU – Octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G610 MP4 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2,  OpenCL 2.2, and Vulkan 1.2 support VPU – […]

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