banana pi News - Page 2 of 18 - CNX Software

October 20, 2025October 20, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

$165 Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro board offers 2x 10GbE SFP+ cages, 7x 10GbE/2.5GbE/GbE RJ45 ports, WiFi 7 support

The Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro is a new router board based on MediaTek Filogic 880 (MT7988A) Cortex-A73 SoC offering two 10GbE SFP+ cages/RJ45 ports combos, four 2.5GbE RJ45 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, and optional WiFi 7 support via the Banana Pi BPI-R4-MIC-BE14 dual mini PCIe module. As its name implies, it’s a Pro/upgraded version of the Banana Pi BPI-R4 board first introduced in 2023, which doubles the memory to 8GB DDR4, doubles the SPI flash’s capacity to 256MB, and adds a few networking ports, M.2 expansion slots for a total of six, and a few other minor features highlighted in bold in the specifications below. Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro specifications: SoC – MediaTek MT7988A (Filogic 880) quad-core Arm Corex-A73 processor @ 1.8GHz with AI-powered packet accelerator called TOPS (Tunnel Offload Processor System) System Memory – 8GB DDR4 Storage 8GB eMMC flash 256MB SPI NAND Flash MicroSD card slot 2x […]

August 28, 2025 by Debashis Das - 3 Comments

Xerxes Pi – A Raspberry Pi CM4/CM5 carrier board with a rack-friendly design (Crowdfunding)

Xerxes Pi A cross vendor compute module carrier board

Designed by Rapid Analysis in Australia, the Xerxes Pi is a cross-vendor compute module carrier board that fits into a 1U rack and supports Raspberry Pi CM4/CM5, Radxa CM5, Banana Pi CM4/CM5, and Orange Pi CM4/CM5 compute modules. Designed at just one-third the size of a Nano-ITX board (120 × 40 mm), it’s ideal for home lab and small business servers looking for a low-cost way to run Docker containers and other open-source software. For storage, the carrier board includes a microSD card, and an M.2 E-Key slot enables support for accelerators or peripherals. Additionally, it features an I²C/SPI header and optional PoE via add-on boards or splitters. The design is well thought out and comes with a thermally efficient design with ventilated enclosures, optional PLA or metal heatsinks, and open-source 3D printable rack cases (single or multi-board). With open schematics, 3D files, Xerxes Pi targets DIY electronics, clustered computing, edge servers, […]

August 14, 2025November 2, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-R4 Lite – A mid-range MediaTek Filogic 850 2.5GbE router board with WiFi 7 and 5G support

Mediatek Filogic 850 2.5GbE WiFi 7 5G router board

Banana Pi BPI-R4 Lite is a mid-range 2.5GbE router board based on MediaTek Filogic 850 (MT7987AV) quad-core Cortex-A53 network processor, coupled with 2GB DDR4 and 8GB eMMC flash, and equipped with four gigabit Ethernet ports, a 2.5GbE RJ45 WAN port, and a 2.5GbE SFP cage. It’s a cost-down version of the Banana Pi BPI-R4 router board powered by a Filogic 880 quad-core Cortex-A73 SoC with 10GbE support. It still supports WiFi 7 through the BPI-R4-NIC-BE14 dual mini PCIe WiFi 7 module and 4G LTE and 5G connectivity through an M.2 Key-B socket and three NanoSIM card slots. Banana Pi BPI-R4 Lite specifications: SoC – MediaTek MT7987AV (Filogic 850) quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ 2.0 GHz with Network Processing Unit (NPU) capable of up to 7.5Gbps packet processing System Memory – 2GB DDR4 (SoC supports up to 4GB) Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, microSD card Networking 2.5GbE WAN port 2.5GbE SFP […]

August 9, 2025August 9, 2025 by Debashis Das - 2 Comments

Banana Pi BPI-F4 – An industrial Edge AI SBC powered by Sunplus SP7350 SoC with 4.1 TOPS NPU

The Banana Pi BPI-F4 is a compact industrial-grade Edge AI development board built around the Sunplus SP7350 quad-core Cortex-A55 SoC with a 4.1 TOPS NPU. Compared to the SunPlus SP7021-based BPI-F2S SBC, the new BPI-F4 supports additional interfaces through terminal blocks and is suitable for AI vision, robotics, and control systems. The board supports booting from microSD or onboard eMMC and provides USB 3.0/2.0 ports, HDMI video output, Ethernet, and a MIPI CSI input for an OV5647 camera. Connectivity options include Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Other features include seven terminal blocks for GPIO, ADC, SPI, I²C, UART, and PWM, jumper-based power and USB mode selection, and automatic boot. Banana Pi BPI-F4 specifications: BPI-F4-Core board SoC – Sunplus SP7350 (C3V) CPU Quad-core Cortex-A55 @ 2.1 GHz Cortex-M4 MCU @ up to 400MHz for always-on sub-system VPU – H.264 video decoding/encoding AI Accelerator – 4.1 TOPS NPU @ 900 MHz (Sometimes […]

July 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Linux 6.16 Release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.16 on LKML: It’s Sunday afternoon, and the release cycle has come to an end. Last week was nice and calm, and there were no big show-stopper surprises to keep us from the regular schedule, so I’ve tagged and pushed out 6.16 as planned. It’s worth noting that the upcoming merge window for 6.17 is going to be slightly chaotic for me: I have multiple family events this August (a wedding and a big birthday), and with said family being spread not only across the US, but in Finland too, I’m spending about half the month traveling. That means that I will try very hard to get most of the merge window done the first week before my travels start, and I already ended upgiving a heads-up on that to the people who tend to send me the most pull requests. […]

May 25, 2025May 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

$24 Banana Pi BPI-Forge1 industrial SBC is powered by Rockchip RK3506J tri-core SoC

The Banana Pi BPI-Forge1, also known as the ArmSoM Forge1, is an industrial SBC (single board computer) powered by the Rockchip RK3506J triple-core Cortex-A7 processor designed for Smart Audio, HMI, and factory automation applications. The Forge1 is equipped with 512MB RAM, 512MB NAND flash, two Fast Ethernet ports, a MIPI DSI display connector, USB Type-A and Type-C ports, an audio jack, a 40-pin GPIO header partially compatible with Raspberry Pi HATs, and a 14-pin header with speaker output, microphone input, RS-485, and CAN Bus. Banana Pi BPI-Forge1 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3506J CPU 3x Arm Cortex-A7 core up to 1.5 GHz Arm Cortex-M0 real-time core GPU – 2D GPU only No VPU, no NPU System Memory – 512MB DDR3L Storage 512MB SPI NAND flash MicroSD card Display Interface – 2-lane MIPI DSI connector up to 1280 x 1280@ 60FPS Audio 3.5mm audio jack Speaker and Mic via expansion header Networking […]

May 5, 2025May 5, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Banana Pi BPI-CM6 is an octa-core RISC-V system-on-module compatible with Raspberry Pi CM5 carrier boards

Banana Pi BPI-CM6 is a SpacemIT K1 octa-core RISC-V system-on-module that follows the design of the Raspberry Pi CM5, and offers up to 16GB LPDDR4 RAM, up to 128GB eMMC flash, a gigabit Ethernet controller, and a WiFi 6 + Bluetooth 5.2 module. While it remains (mostly) compatible with the Raspberry Pi CM5, the BPI-CM6 exposes some additional I/Os from the K1 SoC through an additional 100-pin B2B connector. The company also offers a credit card-sized carrier board for the RISC-V SoM with HDMI, dual GbE, two M.2 PCIe x2 sockets, a few USB ports, and more. Banana Pi BPI-CM6 specifications: SoC – SpacemIT K1 CPU – 8-core X60 RISC-V processor @ 1.6 GHz GPU – Imagination IMG BXE-2-32 @ 819 MHz with support for OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.3, OpenCL 3.0; 20 GFLOPS VPU – H.265 and H.264 1080p60 decoding/encoding NPU – None, but the RISC-V cores can deliver up […]

May 2, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Felix86 is an x86-64 emulator for RISC-V hardware

Felix86 x86-64 emulator for RISC-V hardware

Some programs and most games are designed for x86 hardware, and we’ve already seen projects like box86 x86 emulator for 32-bit Arm targets and Box64 x86-64 emulator for 64-bit Arm hardware to run games on Arm hardware. The Felix86 x86-64 emulator is similar to Box64, except it targets specifically RISC-V hardware. The project is very new, but it can already run some Linux games like World of Goo 2, SuperTuxKart, and Quake OpenArena, while the Wine emulator can currently handle simple Windows games like Solitaire. You’ll find the full compatibility list on the project’s website. Felix86 features: Just-in-Time (JIT) recompiler Uses the RISC-V Vector Extension for SSE instructions Utilizes the B extension, if available, for bit manipulation instructions like bsr Supports a variety of optional extensions, such as XThead custom extensions You’ll find the source code on GitHub. Testing has mostly been done on a Banana Pi BPI-F3 SBC powered […]