While there’s already an healthy choice of ARMv8 development board such as LeMaker Hikey, or Qualcomm DragonBoard 410c, all those platforms are based on the lower end Cortex A53 64-bit ARM core, and ARM Cortex A57, let alone Cortex A72, boards are much more difficult to find, as they are much pricier and/or have limited availability. Intrinsyc may have released the first (somewhat) affordable and accessible Cortex-A72-class development board with Open-Q 820 development kit comprised of a SoM and a baseboard, as well as smartphone and tablet mobile development platforms (MDPs) based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad core Kryo processor. While Kryo is a custom ARMv8 designed by Qualcomm, and not exactly a Cortex A72 core, both have similar performance, as shown in Snapdragon 820 Antutu and Kirin 950 Antutu results.
Open-Q 820 board specifications:
- SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad core Kryo cores with 2x cores @ up to 2.2GHz, and 2x cores @ up to 1.6GHz, an Adreno 530GPU, an Hexagon 680 DSP, and a 14-bit Spectra ISP.
- System Memory – 3GB LPDDR4 @ 1866 MHz (PoP)
- Storage – 32GB UFS 2.0 Flash, micro SD slot
- Display/Video Out
- 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 4086×2160 @ 60 fps
- 2x MIPI-DSU 4-lane up to 2560×1600 (single port), or 4096×2160 (dual port) @ 60 fps
- Optional 4.5″ FWVGA (854×480) touch display
- Audio
- 1x 3.5mm ANC jack for headset
- 20-pin audio input header with 3x analog in, 3x digital in
- 20-pin audio output header with 5x analog out 1x digital out
- Qualcomm WCD9335 audio codec
- Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n/ac 2×2 MU-MIMO, Bluetooth 4.1 (QCA6174), Qualcomm IZat Gen 8C GPS (WGR7640)
- Camera – 3x MIPI-CSI 4-lane, dual ISP, up to 25MP. Optional 13MP camera module
- USB – 1x micro USB 3.0 host, 1x micro USB 2.0 OTG, 2x USB 2.0 host ports.
- Debugging – 1x UART debug via USB micro-B port
- Expansion
- 8x DIO with pins configurable as I2C, SPI, UART, or GPIO
- 1x mini-PCIe v1.2, 1x PCIe X1 slot v2.1
- Power Supply – 12V DC
- Dimension – Baseboard: 170 x 170mm; SoM: 82 x 42mm
Beside Open-Q 820 development kit, Intrinsyc also offers a smartphone MDP with a 6.2″ QHD display, and a tablet MDP with a 10.1″ 4K UHD (3840 × 2160) multi-touch display. Both will support 802.11ac with Qualcomm MU | EFX MU-MIMO technology, Blueooth 4.1, USB 3.0, and Qualcomm IZat location service. The tablet MDP has also has tri-band support, and supports multi-gigabit 802.11ad (11ad) Wi-Fi.
Intrinsyc Open-Q 820 development kit appears to be available now for $599 plus tax and shipping, the Tablet MDP for $999, and the smartphone MDP will be $799, but it’s not quite ready for sale yet, and shipping is scheduled for December 31, 2015.
Via Linux Gizmos
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Haha, when I first read the article I though just the board would be $1000 … I guess this is cheap then 😀
Well this is more like a developer thing, i’ll rather wait for the end. product.