However Pine64 has additionally dabbled in RISC-V structure. The Pinecil line of sensible soldering irons have a RISC-V chip. So does the Pinecone IoT dev board. Now the corporate is making ready to launch its first single-board laptop (SBC) that will likely be its strongest RISC-V gadget up to now. Meet the Star64.
RISC-V is a royalty-free, open instruction set structure that’s been gaining steam over the previous few years and there a rising variety of merchandise that includes RISC-V processors (to not point out, a rising variety of chip makers introducing new processors primarily based on the structure).
On the coronary heart of the Star64 board is a StarFive JH7110 64-bit RISC-V processor with 4 1.5 GHz SiFive FU740 CPU cores and Creativeness BXE-4-32 graphics. In keeping with Pine64, the chip ought to ship efficiency that’s corresponding to the Rockchip RK3566 quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 chip on the coronary heart of the corporate’s Quartz64 board.
By the way, this is similar processor that powers the StarFive VisionFive 2 single-board laptop, which signifies that at the very least among the work softw builders do to assist that board will likely be useful to people utilizing the Pine64 Star64, and vice versa. Efforts already underway to port the Debian and Fedora GNU/Linux distributions to run on units with JH7110 processors.
Pine64 plans to supply two configurations of the Star64, one with 4GB of RAM and one other with 8GB. They’re anticipated to promote for round $60 and $80, respectively.
Star64 PCB structure (high) Star64 PCB structure (backside)
Each fashions anticipated to characteristic a PCIe connector, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, an HDMI port, one USB 3.0 and three USB 2.0 ports, an audio jack, and GPIO headers. The corporate plans to supply fashions with only one Ethernet port sooner or later for about $5 lower than the twin Ethernet variations.
The board additionally options an RTL8852BU wi-fi module with assist for WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, a MIPI show connector with assist for contact panel enter, a CSI digicam connector, and assist for eMMC storage in addition to a microSD card reader. The Star64 has a 12V energy port and can even provide energy to different hardw plugged into the board.
Pine64 says the board will observe the “Mannequin A” kind issue, which means it’ll measure round 133 x 80 x 19mm (5.24″ x 3.15″ x 0.75″). That makes it a bit bigger than a Raspberry Pi Mannequin B, however the additional house means there’s room for that PCIe slot and different I/O connectors.
It’s nonetheless unclear while you’ll truly be capable of get your arms on the board.
through Pine64 June 2022 Replace, July 2022 replace, and August 2022 replace
This text was first printed June 28, 2022 and most lately up to date August 28, 2022.
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