banana pie clarified (opens in new tab) The next-generation board, known as the BPI-M6, will follow the same design trends as the Raspberry Pi. (opens in new tab) It features an NPU alongside a quad-core CPU, M.2 socket and HDMI input.
It may look like just another little blue SBC, but there’s a lot going on here. The BPI-M6 adds a CPU consisting of four 64-bit Cortex-A73 cores running at 2.1 GHz and a Cortex M3 core, a 32-bit processor commonly found in microcontrollers. (opens in new tab), IoT devices, and as a motion coprocessor for Apple M9 devices such as the iPhone 6S. Given the amazing amount of work you can get out of the Raspberry Pi 4, (opens in new tab)With a 1.5GHz Cortex A-72 core, this faster and more capable CPU should be a nice upgrade, although it may need some cooling.
The Imagination GE9920 is Banana Pi’s GPU of choice for this board, with a CPU and a 6.75 TOPS NPU bundled in a package known as the VideoSmart VS680. There is also 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 16GB of eMMC Flash (up to 64GB available), a Micro SD slot, and an M.2 socket at the rear end of the board that can hold a Key E device. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards – Useful for lack of onboard wireless capabilities. Video output is up to 4K60 and can display a 4K screen via the micro-HDMI port or a 1080p screen connected via MIPI DSI.
Another micro-HDMI port is an input, showing potential uses in DIY set-top boxes and other video processing and IoT applications. The rest of the board should look familiar to your Raspberry Pi. (opens in new tab) It has 4 USB ports (all 3.0), a Gigabit Ethernet socket on one end, and 40 GPIO pins. There is also a header for PoE and power is supplied via the USB-C port.
Although there are previous Banana Pi SBCs such as the BPI-M5, there is no information about software support for the new boards yet. (opens in new tab) Images for Android, Ubuntu, Debian, and even Raspbian are available. Pricing and availability have not been announced, either. Wiki article (opens in new tab) Hardware details.
