Quantum Mini devkit combines Allwinner H3 M.2 SoM with baseboard

Quantum Mini may be yet another Allwinner H3 Arm Linux development board, but what makes it special is the company used the standard M.2 Key-A 22mm form factor to create Quark-N Allwinner H3 system-on-module with storage and memory.

The kit is completed by Atom-N baseboard that takes the M.2 module and offers two USB 2.0 ports, one USB Type-C port, as well as 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, and a MicroSD port for additional storage.

Quantum Mini development kit specifications:

Quark-N SoM
- SoC – Allwinner H3 quad-core Cortex-A7 @ 1GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU
- System Memory – 512MB LPDDR3
- Storage – 16GB eMMC flash
- Interfaces exposed via M.2 connector – Ethernet, SPI, I2C, UART, GPIO, MIC, LINEOUT
- Dimensions – 31 x 22mm (6-layer PCB)
- Temperature Range – 0-80°C
Atom-N baseboard
- M.2 socket for Quark-N system-on-module
- Storage – MicroSD card slot
- Display – TFT display
- Connectivity – 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.0 via RTL8723BU module
- USB – 2x USB 2.0 Type-A ports, 1x USB Type-C port
- Audio – Microphone
- Sensor – MPU6050 motion sensor (gyroscope + accelerometer)
- Expansion – 8 pads with I2C, SPI, UART, ADC, GPIO, speaker, 5V, 3.3V, and GND
- Misc – 4x Buttons (GPIO-KEY, Uboot, Recovery, Reset)
- Dimensions – 40 x 35mm

There’s no documentation that I could find for the SoM and baseboard yet, but just like other Allwinner H3 boards, it should be able to run mainline Linux thanks to sunxi-linux community work.

The company expects Quantum Mini to be used as a microcomputer, a personal website server, for image processing, robotics applications, voice assistant, or smart home hub. I’m not sure how people would use it as a computer since there’s no display interface, except for the small TFT display part of the kit.

While I like the concept, and Quark-N may be the smallest Allwinner H3 linux board/module so far, it’s more expensive than similar boards such as NanoPi NEO Air or Orange Pi Lite, as the Quantum Mini development kit is up for pre-order on Seeed Studio for $49.99 with shipping scheduled to start on December 20.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

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.