The powerful 8-core Rockchip RK3588S processor is typically found at the larger end of the single-board computer spectrum, but Radxa announced today: First reported by CNX SoftwareThe chip will be built into a board the same size as the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. It also has 16GB of RAM.
Called the Radxa CM5, this little board packs a lot of features and has a third high-density connector underneath. You can choose from 4GB, 8GB or 16GB of DDR4 RAM along with a powerful CPU combining 4 Arm Cortex A76 cores with 4 Cortex A55, 6 TOPS NPU and Mali G610 Odin GPU. The board also has eMMC flash up to 128 GB.
Most interesting is the presence of two PCIe interfaces. Both are single lane and meet the Gen 2.1 specification with data transferred at 5Gbps. This is complemented by Gigabit Ethernet (no PHY), USB 2, USB 3, and some SATA interfaces that share bandwidth with USB and PCIe systems. Being a compute module, all of these ports rely on being separated by some type of larger carrier board. Its form factor and pinout are said to be compatible with Compute Module 4. This means it can be used as a drop-in replacement.
Video support comes in the form of HDMI 2.1 capable of pushing 8K at 60 frames per second, with eDP sharing the bandwidth. Other screens can be connected via his MIPI as well as cameras, allowing both 2-lane and 4-lane camera interfaces. If your thirst for peripherals isn’t already satisfied, there are GPIO pins, UART, I2C, PCM, and up to 8 of his PWM channels. However, it seems to lack any kind of wireless connectivity such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, which limits its usefulness.
Software support comes in the form of Ubuntu, Debian, Android, Yocto, and Buildroot. No pricing or sales information is available yet, but Radxa says the board will be available for 10 years. A SODIMM form factor is also expected for compatibility with NVIDIA Jetson, TX2 and Xavier boards.
| raspberry pi compute module 4 | Radosa CM5 | |
| CPU | Broadcom BCM2711, Quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz | Rockchip RK3588S, Quad-core Cortex-A76 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 2.4 GHz + Quad-core Cortex-A55 64-bit SoC @ 1.8 GHz |
| sheep | up to 8GB | up to 16GB |
| Storage (eMMC) | up to 32GB | up to 128GB |
| size | 55×40mm | 55×40mm |
| video | 2x HDMI 2.0, MIPI | 1x HDMI 2.1, eDP, MIPI |
| connectivity | 1 × USB 2.0 port, 1 × PCIe 1 lane host, Gen 2 (5Gbps), 28 GPIO pins, 5x UART | 1 x USB 2.0 port, 1 x USB C 3.1 port (5Gbps), 1 x USB 3.0 host port, 2 x PCIe 1-lan host, Gen 2.1 (5Gbps), 2 x SATA ports, 1 shared with USB 3, one with USB and shared PCIe, 50 GPIO pins, 8x UART |
