We wrote about the Orion O6N Nano-ITX SBC yesterday, mentioning that the Orange Pi 6 Plus was in the works. The good news is that the CIX P1 (CD8180/CD8180) single board from Orange Pi is now available on AliExpress for $223.90 with 16GB RAM and $268.89 with 32GB RAM, including a heatsink with fan, and a 100W USB-C port adapter.
It’s the smallest CIX P1 board we’ve covered so far, but it still packs of lot of features including up to 64GB LPDDR5, two M.2 Key-M sockets for storage and/or AI accelerators, one M.2 Key-E socket for WiFi and Bluetooth, dual 5GbE networking, five displays interfaces via HDMI, DP, USB-C, and eDP, two 4-lane camera interfaces, and more.
Orange Pi 6 Plus specifications:
- SoC – Cix P1 (Codename: CD8180 or CD8160)
- 12-core DynamIQ processor
- 4x Cortex‑A720 big cores @ up to 2.6 GHz
- 4x Cortex‑A720 medium cores @ up to 2.4 GHz
- 4x Cortex‑A520 LITTLE cores @ up to 1.8 GHz
- Cache – 12MB shared L3 cache
- GPU – Arm Immortalis G720 MC10 with hardware ray-tracing support, graphics APIs: Vulkan 1.3, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 3.0
- VPU
- Video Decoder – Up to 8Kp60 AV1, H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8, H.263, MPEG‑4, MPEG‑2
- Video Encoder – Up to 8Kp30 H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8
- AI accelerator – Up to 30 TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU) with support for INT4/INT8/INT16, FP16/BF16, and TF32; Note: Up to 45 TOPS of AI performance with CPU+GPU+NPU
- Manufacturing Process – TSMC 6nm
- 12-core DynamIQ processor
- System Memory – 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB 128-bit LPDDR5
- Storage
- 64Mbit SPI NAND flash
- 2x M.2 M‑Key (PCIe Gen4 x4) 2280 sockets for NVMe SSD
- MicroSD card slot
- Display interfaces
- HDMI 2.0 port up to 4Kp60 (note: the specs say HDMI 1.4, but it must be wrong since the standard is limited to 4Kp30)
- DisplayPort 1.4 up to 4Kp120
- 2x USB‑C ports with DisplayPort Alt Mode up to 4Kp60
- eDP connector up to 4Kp60 + touch panel connector
- Audio
- 3.5mm (headphone+mic) audio jack
- 2x speaker connectors
- Analog microphone connector
- Camera I/F – 2x 4-lane MIPI CSI connectors
- Networking
- 2x 5Gbps Ethernet RJ45 ports supporting 10/100/1000/2500/5000 Mbps speeds
- Optional WiFi + Bluetooth module via M.2 E‑Key socket (PCIe Gen4 x2 + USB)
- USB
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) “full function” Type-C port with DP Alt Mode (4Kp60) and Power Delivery
- 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A ports
- 2x USB 2.0 Type-A ports
- 9-pin socket with USB 2.0
- Expansion
- 2x M.2 Key-M (PCIe Gen4 x4) sockets for NVMe SSD or AI accelerators
- M.2 Key-E (PCIe Gen4 x2+ USB) socket for wireless module
- 40-pin color-coded GPIO header with UART, I2C, SPI, PWM
- Misc
- Power, BOOT, and Reset buttons
- Power, System, and Charging LEDs
- Fan connector with PWM control
- 2-pin RTC connector
- Power Supply
- 20V/5A via USB-C ports
- Battery interface with charging IC (limited details provided)
- Dimensions – 115 x 100mm
- Weight – 132 grams
Orange Pi mentions support for Debian, Ubuntu, Android, Windows, and ROS2. But it’s a little optimistic, and while all these operating systems should boot, some will miss drivers to have a fully functional system, notably Windows 11. The documentation page is mostly empty with some placeholder links for now.
The Orange Pi 6 Plus requires a cooling solution to work optimally, and the company installs the heatsink+fan combo shown in the top photos. Since the board does not have a standard form factor, they also designed a metal case for it.
Official pricing communicated by email is as follows:
- $199 with 16GB RAM
- $249 with 32GB RAM
- $9.9 for the active cooling system (Pre-assembled by OrangePi before Shipping)
- $19.9 for the metal case (Optional, and it does not seem available for sale now)
- $15 for a 100W power supply (Optional)
It’s not possible to purchase the board for $199, since it’s only available as a kit with the pre-installed active cooler and a power adapter on AliExpress. If you don’t need a power adapter, you can purchase the board on an alternative AliExpress shop. The company told us they won’t sell it on Amazon for now. Both Radxa and Orange Pi advertise 64GB RAM versions of their CIX P1 boards, but these are for sale right now, likely due to the high price of 16GB LPDDR5 memory chips.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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How much max VRAM does the GPU has?
Guessing it shares system RAM.
“Up to 45 TOPS” vs Orion “Up to 30 TOPS”? For basically the same board? Weird. Untested marketing fluff?
That 30 TOPS quoted is WITHOUT the Immortalis G720 gpu helping out. Explained here already so yes it is the same:
https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/12/18/radxa-orion-o6-mini-itx-motherboard-is-powered-by-cix-p1-12-core-armv9-soc-with-a-30-tops-ai-accelerator/
Heh, yeah, I see a clarification was added now in this article. My eyes went straight to the specs in both first.
Even though I don’t use M$(/copilot). I’ll be waiting for 40TOPS dedicated NPU systems.
I think the NPU does 30 TOPS while the raw ARM cores does 15 TOPS which makes for a total of 45 TOPS if add them together
While I get what you’re saying and have seen that form of communication in the past (cpu+gpu+npu), the entire quote: “Up to <#> TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU)”, where ‘#’ is 45 or 30 respectively.
Mainline Linux kernel support for the CIX P1is still early and far from complete, premade images are alpha and require some tinkering.
If you can live with that, then it’s probably a nice board.
I wouldn’t know what to do with the NPU, though.
> I wouldn’t know what to do with the NPU, though.
For now all its value is for the vendor’s marketing department to advertise one extra number that can only possibly be verified in the vendor’s lab.
Really need a decent TRM to be made available. Radxa had indicated one would be available in Q2 but nothing has materialised.
The P1 TRM is released to Radxa already recently and Cix told us they would release the TRM public soon.
Cool! And do you know if they’re any hope to finally get the full sources for the BIOS ?
Is NPU documented in the P1 TRM you have?
Unfortunately, no.
The GPU is pretty large and has been benchmarked at 2.5 TFLOPS FP32.
200€ for the same form factor as a Mini PC? with that money I can get a beefy one second hand.
No you can’t. Not with 64GB of memory and a GPU and …
For 200€ you can have a second hand Nvidia M40 (almost the same TOPS perf) but with “only” 24GB.
not only that, for the same price you get twice the RAM in radxa’s new offering..
Hi,
I am from South india, how to but it?
Is there any dealer from India?
Please let me know how to get 32gb or 64gb model with accessories like cooling heatbsinknfan and box and power adaptor.
It can bought on Aliexpress, it looks now Aliexpress available in India again. but I don’t living in India, so I don’t know further information.
The heatsink is bundled with main unit, and USB-PD power supply(B-Type?) bundle option can also selected. I couldn’t find official chassis in the store, I hope it will be sold.
And, the 64GB RAM model looks hasn’t released yet, or may inquiry is required(like as OPi5’s 32GB model).