The Radxa Orion O6 is priced from $200 for the 8GB RAM model.
A collaborative effort between Arm China, CIX and Radxa has resulted in what is claimed to be the world's first open source Armv9 motherboard. The new Radxa Orion O6 It could more accurately be described as a SBC (single board computer), as its SoC and chosen amount of RAM are soldered on at the time of purchase. 🚀
La Radxa Orion O6 es un SBC (Mini-ITX) bastante importante. Como tal, está repleta de interfaces, puertos y opciones de expansión (excepto para la RAM) y cuenta con un SoC (Sistema en Chip) bastante potente. En este momento, es compatible con algunas distribuciones de Linux, pero Radxa asegura que el Support for more operating systems, including Windows and Android, is on the way. 🔜
The engine behind this SBC is the CD8180 SoC, manufactured by CIX. This chip offers 12 CPU cores, including four Cortex A720 cores that run at up to 2.8 GHz. 12 MB of L3 cache is shared between the 12 cores. GPU Arm's Immortalis G720 provides the graphics power in this SoC, which is said to offer "desktop-grade" graphics acceleration. Its feature set is quite good, with support for ray tracing in hardware, several popular video CODECs and APIs such as Vulkan, OpenCL and OpenGL. Of course, it's 2024, so this SoC also includes an NPU, claiming to deliver up to 30 TOPS. 💪
In the introduction, we mentioned that the Orion O6 has soldered RAM. So, unless you're a soldering iron ninja, you'll need to choose a quantity of DDR5 RAM at the time of purchase and stick with it. AliExpress offered this SBC in 8, 16, 32, and 64GB colors, but they all looked the same to us.
Radxa lists the RAM type as DDR5-5500, and users will benefit from 100GB/s bandwidth with this configuration. ⚡Storage is another primary consideration when setting up any computer; thankfully, the Orion O6 is much more flexible in this regard. The board features a pair of M.2 slots, and USB-attached storage and a PCIe storage card could be used if you don't want to use the x16 slot for anything else. 💾
GPU: Arm Immortals G720 MC10 Ray-Tracing Acceleration in hardware Graphics APIs: Vulkan® 1.3 OpenGL® ES 3.2 OpenCL® 3.0
NPU
Neural Processing Unit (NPU) Power of Calculation: 28.8 TOPs Precision Support: INT4/INT8/INT16 FP16/BF16 TF32
Memory
RAM: LPDDR5128-bit memory bus5500MT/s transfer rate Configurations: 4GB/8GB/16GB/32GB/64GB
Multimedia
Decoder of hardware: Resolution: Up to 8K@60fps Formats: AV1, H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8, H.263, MPEG-4, MPEG-2 Hardware encoder: Resolution: Up to 8K@30fps Formats: H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8
Audio
HD Audio Front Panel Connector Standard support for PC case audio
Video Output
1x USB-C with DisplayPort Alternate Mode – 1x HDMI port – 1x DisplayPort – 1x eDP connector – Support for concurrent quad-display operation
Video Entry
Dual MIPI Camera Ports 2x versatile camera interfaces Configurable as 4-way or 2-way MIPI CSI each Ideal for applications AI vision
USB
USB Connector Supports 2x USB 2.0 ports Standard Front Panel Connection Dual USB Type-C Ports Port 1: USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) + Power Delivery Port 2: USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) + DP Alternate Mode (4K@60Hz) + Power Delivery Maximum Resolution: 4K@120Hz USB Type-A Ports 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) 2x USB 2.0
Curiosamente, el trío de empresas detrás de la Orion O6 afirma que esta ‘placa madre' se desarrolló rápidamente. Empezaron a trabajar en el proyecto el 30 de julio de este año. Se encendió por primera vez el 29 de septiembre y ahora se dice que está lista para la producción en masa. Vemos todas las configuraciones de almacenamiento de la Orion O6 listadas para la venta en AliExpress, con entrega prevista en 20-40 días. El modelo de 8 GB de RAM comienza en $200. Cuesta $240 para 16 GB y $300 para 32 GB, hasta $450 por el SBC de 64 GB. 💰
At checkout, buyers will receive a heat sink and a fan simple-looking case, a Mini ITX acrylic podium and an I/O cover. If you want an aluminum alloy case, please purchase the Development Kit option, which adds an extra $41. 🛠️
Debian and Fedora Linux are currently supported, but the SBC makers claim that Windows, Android, Ubuntu, Deepin and more are in the works. 🌍