Horizon X3 AI development board is powered by Sunrise 3 AI Edge Arm processor

Horizon X3 AI development board is powered by Horizon Robotics Sunrise 3 (aka X3) quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with a 5 TOPS NPU, and multiple camera support with the chip apparently designed for the automotive industry. [Update January 25, 2022: A third-party company, Finsbury Glover Hering, claiming to represent Horizon Robotics informed CNX Software the chip is not designed for the automotive market, and that Horizon’s AIoT business is actually limited to the domestic China market and not overseas.]

The devkit is comprised of a Sunrise 3 system-on-module with 1GB LPDDR4 & 16GB EMMC memory, as well as a baseboard with Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi, HDMI up to 1080p60 and MIPI DSI interface, a camera interface, and a 40-pin header for expansion.

Horizon X3 AI development board

Horizon X3 AI development board specifications:

  • SoC – Horizon Robotics Sunrise 3 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.2 GHz, one Cortex-R5 core, a 5 TOPS NPU (2x “Bernoulli” BPU)
  • System Memory – 1 GB DDR4 @ 3200 Mbps
  • Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card socket
  • Video I/F
    • 1x HDMI port up to 1080p
    • MIPI DSI interface plus touch panel interface with 720p LCD
  • Camera I/F- 1x MIPI CSI connector with 1x 4-lane, 2x 2-lane
  • Networking
    • Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port
    • 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.0 via AP6212 module
  • USB – 1x Micro USB 3.0 device port, 4x USB Type-A host ports
  • Debugging – 4-pin header for serial console (921600 bps)
  • Expansion – 40-pins Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO header
  • Power – DC jack
  • Dimensions – TBD
Sunrise 3 SoC connection block diagram
Typical Sunrise 3 solution block diagram

The board has one of the worst product pages, I’ve seen in a long time. There’s zero information about software except the “We will provide SDK of Sunrise 3 after payment”.  I understand some companies may not want to release their SDK publicly, but here they don’t provide any information at all, and we don’t even know what the board is for without further study. After asking for some details, I was just told the SDK is based on Linux. The only reason I found out it was probably for automotive application was after going on the Horizon Robotics website that also lists support for TensorFlow, pyTorch, ONNX, mxnet, and Caffe through their OpenExplorer platform. But I’m not sure it will be used here since it’s for their newer Journey 5 chip with 128 TOPS.

There are also some block diagrams thrown on the page, one for the chip itself, and the second for a system based on the chip, but I don’t think it’s for the Horizon X3 AI development board specifically, since I don’t see a connector for the DVP interface on the board.  The board is said to chip with a camera board, a USB to UART board, and an FFC cable. Again zero information about the camera, although we’re told about “12MP multi-camera” in the description, but go figure if that’s for the processor only or that mysterious camera board.

If you are still interested in that board (why?), it can be purchased on AnalogLamb for $209 plus shipping.

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6 Comments
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willy
willy
2 years ago

I seem to be counting 8 switching voltage regulators on the board, I’m curious why they need so many rails. Maybe several different voltages ? Or maybe they’ve split several of them by component.

gion
gion
2 years ago

 1 GB DDR4 @ 3200 Mbps ???

Frank Earl
Frank Earl
2 years ago

As to why… Well, you could be a poor SOB stuck with using the junk because of work…

Thankfully, they’re only as atrocious as NVidia and Ambarella for work right now. (And, yes, they’re bad…just not THIS bad…)

Theguyuk
Theguyuk
2 years ago

Cheaper on Aliexpress? ( read CNX why! Bother comment )

https://fave.co/3zvNgIg

Theguyuk
Theguyuk
2 years ago

Yeah same site has the expensive som version too.

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