World's first open source armV9 board appears.

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. 🚀

The Radxa Orion O6 is a fairly substantial SBC (Mini-ITX). As such, it is packed with interfaces, ports, and expansion options (except for RAM) and features a SoC (System in Processor). Chip) quite powerful. At the moment, it supports some Linux distributions, but Radxa assures that the 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-level" 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 ninja, you'll need to pick an amount of DDR5 RAM at the time of purchase and stick with it. AliExpress offered this SBC in 'colors' of 8, 16, 32, and 64GB, but they all looked the same color 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. 💾

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Name of the product	Radxa Orion O6
SoC	SoC Cix P1
CPU	4x Cortex®-A720 (large cores) 4x Cortex®-A720 (medium cores) 4x Cortex®-A520 (small cores) 12MB shared L3 cache
GPU	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 USB-C operation screen quadruple concurrent
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
Ethernet	2x multi-gigabit RJ45 ports Speeds: 10/100/1000/2500/5000 Mbps
M.2 M Key connector	PCIe Gen4 x4 slots Supports high-speed NVMe SSDs performance
M.2 E Key connector	PCIe Gen4 x2 inputs + USB Perfect for WiFi 6E + Bluetooth modules
PCIe Expansion	Physical Slot x16 Gen4 Electrical Lanes x8 Supports graphics cards and other PCIe devices
Refrigeration system	Connector of fan 4-pin CPU fan with intelligent PWM control Fan speed monitoring via TACH Holes for mounting 75x75mm heatsink
Real Time Clock	Battery holder on board CR1220 battery Holder for maintenance of the time in shutdown
Connector of Control of the System	Power button Reset button LED status indicators
40 Pin GPIO Connector	Yeah
Form Factor	170mm x 170mm

Interestingly, the trio of companies behind the Orion O6 claims that this 'motherboard' was developed quickly. They started working on the project on July 30th this year. It was first powered on on September 29th and is now said to be ready for mass production. We see all storage configurations of the Orion O6 listed for sale on AliExpress, with delivery expected in 20-40 days. The 8GB RAM model starts at $200. It costs $240 for 16GB and $300 for 32GB, up to $450 for the 64GB SBC. 💰

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. 🌍