8-Core, Qualcomm-Powered SBC Set to Take on Raspberry Pi, Features Embedded RP2040
The market is flooded with Raspberry Pi clones that promise faster speeds, lower prices, and more ports. However, most of these single-board computers use cheap processors from low-end brands such as RockChip and Mediatek. The new player, Thunderberry5, uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. This is the same brand found on many major brands of phones, tablets, and Arm-powered laptops.
French company MakeMyBoard’s upcoming board, the Thunderberry5, claims to be “the first Raspberry Pi-like SBC based on a Qualcomm AI-CPU”, powered by a Qualcomm QCS610 Snapdragon for the show. The Kryo 460 octa-core CPU features 2 Gold 2.2 GHz cores and 6 Silver 1.8 GHz cores. This sounds faster than the 1.5-1.8 GHz CPU on the Raspberry Pi 4 B, but we can’t be sure without testing.
The SoC’s Qualcomm AI Engine (AI Stack and Neural Processing Engine) provides power for general AI tasks, making the board an interesting platform for machine learning and robotics. The graphics role is performed by an Adreno 612 running at up to 845 MHz. The Thunderberry5 has 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB of eMMC 5.1, and the OS choices are currently Android 10 or Yocto Embedded Linux.
The curveball on this board is an embedded RP2040 microcontroller. Embedded microcontrollers are nothing new. I’ve reviewed Seeed’s Odyssey and LattePanda 3 Delta with an Intel CPU and an Arduino-compatible Atmel microcontroller. But this is the first board with his RP2040 as embedded microcontroller.
In the block diagram, we can see that “RP4020” (which is definitely a typo for RP2040) is connected to a 2 x 20 pin header GPIO labeled “HAT_conn”. I couldn’t confirm if this was pin compatible with the best Raspberry Pi HAT, so I contacted the project creators and asked for clarification. , you can see that it uses USB 2 to serial interface communication. This means it appears as a device to the underlying Linux operating system.
| SoCs | Qualcomm QCS610 Snapdragon |
| row 1 – cell 0 | Kryo 460: 64-bit octa-core, 2x Gold (2.2GHz) + 6x Silver (1.8GHz) |
| row 2 – cell 0 | GPU: Adreno 612 @ up to 845MHz |
| row 3 – cell 0 | AI: Qualcomm AI Engine / QUALCOMM AI STACK and Qualcomm® Neural Processing Engine SDK |
| RAM | LPDDR4 4GB |
| depository | 64GB eMMC 5.1, |
| screen | HDMI 1.4 1920×1200@60fps |
| row 7 – cell 0 | TFT DSI DPHY 1.2 2520×1080@60fps |
| video | 4K30 HEVC/VP9 decoding |
| row 9 – cell 0 | Encode 4k30 HEVC |
| connectivity | gigabit ethernet |
| Row 11 – Cell 0 | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi |
| Row 12 – Cell 0 | bluetooth |
| Row 13 – Cell 0 | USB3×4 |
| Row 14 – Cell 0 | USB C (5V power supply only) |
| audio | Qualcomm WCD9341 codec |
| Row 16 – Cell 0 | +Qualcomm WSA8810 speaker amplifier 1W |
| Row 17 – Cell 0 | headphone jack |
| sensor/input | microphone |
| Row 19 – Cell 0 | LSM6DSOTR Gyroscope/Accelerometer |
Other than specs and a few images, we don’t know much about this Raspberry Pi competitor, but we reached out to the creators to find out more about the Thunderberry 5. Price and release date are a mystery for now, but more info We will update this article when we know more.
