Embedded electronics specialist Sipeed has introduced 4 new units to host its RISC-V-powered Lichee Module 4A (LM4A), starting from a multi-module cluster pc to a pill with cameras and touchscreen show — with the primary out there now and the rest launching all through September and October.
“Sipeed Lichee sequence [is the] greatest Linux sensible platform,” the corporate crowed on social media this weekend simply previous because it unveiled its quartet of latest provider units. “Lichee Pi 4A on sale, Lichee Cluster 4A on sale subsequent week, Lichee Console 4A/Lichee Pad 4A will [be] on [the] retailer Sep/Oct, and begin from $299!”
Sipeed’s LM4A SOM now has a quartet of provider board designs to sit up for, together with the freshly-launched Lichee Pi 4A. (📷: Sipeed)
The Lichee Pi 4A, to begin initially, is a system-on-module (SOM) provider board designed to show it right into a quasi-single-board pc (SBC), breaking out the commonest options of the module for simple entry. These embody two gigabit Ethernet ports, 4 USB 3.0 ports, one four-lane MIPI Show Serial Interface (DSI), one two-lane and one four-lane MIPI Digital camera Serial Interface (CSI), HDMI with 4k60 help, and a 20-pin general-purpose enter/output (GPIO) header, plus a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module for wi-fi connectivity.
The Lichee Cluster 4A, in contrast, is a bulkier affair, packing a customized motherboard in a mini-tower chassis with room for as much as seven system-on-module boards — the primary of which is given entry to devoted HDMI and gigabit Ethernet ports, with the rest sharing USB 3.0 ports and a single Ethernet port. A administration controller board, primarily based on Sipeed’s LicheeRV D1 module, will get its personal Ethernet port for distant management, too.
The Lichee Pad 4A is, if the identify wasn’t sufficient of a clue, a pill pc working a RISC-V port of Google’s Android 13 working system or Debian Linux. In addition to a ten.1″ 1920×1200 touchscreen show and 128GB of eMMC storage, the pill consists of 5 megapixel cameras entrance and rear, two USB 3.0 ports, microSD storage enlargement, a Subsequent-Technology Kind Issue (NGFF) slot with SIM card help, twin microphones and audio system with 3.5mm headphone jack, and an 8Ah battery in an aluminum alloy case.
There’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity as customary, with the choice so as to add a mobile module or an exterior interface card with twin gigabit Ethernet ports.
The Lichee Console 4A, to complete off, is a compact “netbook” model clamshell laptop computer constructed round a 7″ 1280×800 touchscreen show. There is a 72-key keyboard with IBM ThinkPad-style pointing machine, a two-megapixel front-facing digicam, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 connectivity, a microSD slot, exterior M.2 SSD enlargement capabilities, and an non-obligatory adapter for a single gigabit Ethernet port alongside built-in Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 radios.
The aluminum case hosts a 3Ah battery, with Sipeed not but releasing runtime expectations for a tool the corporate is positioning as a transportable RISC-V improvement terminal.
All of the units introduced by the corporate are designed to be powered by the Lichee Module 4A (LM4A) system-on-module, introduced by Sipeed late final yr. Constructed across the T-Head 1520 system-on-chip, the module affords 4 64-bit XuanTie C910 RISC-V processor cores working at 2.5GHz, a fifth core appearing as a digital sign processor (DSP), two gigabit PHYs, and a neural community accelerator providing a claimed 4 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of pc for on-device machine studying workloads, plus an Creativeness Applied sciences graphics processor delivering an additional 50 giga-floating level operations per second (GFLOPS).
The corporate makes daring claims in regards to the efficiency of its LM4A SOM, boasting of beating the Raspberry Pi 4. (📷: Sipeed)
At its unveiling, Sipeed promised a tool which might outperform the Raspberry Pi 4 Mannequin B single-board pc and with as much as twice the RAM at 16GB, to launch alongside 4GB and 8GB variants. This, the corporate is hoping, will probably be sufficient to tempt builders away from the Raspberry Pi platform and its proprietary Arm cores to the extra open RISC-V ecosystem — and Sipeed’s choices particularly.
Sipeed has already listed the Lichee Pi 4A on its AliExpress retailer, beginning at $119 with an LM4A module with 8GB of RAM and an 8GB eMMC and rising to $179 for a model with 16GB of RAM and 128GB eMMC. The Lichee Cluster 4A will launch subsequent week, the corporate has promised, at an as-yet unknown value level, with the Lichee Console 4A and Lichee Pad 4A releasing in September and October ranging from $299.
Extra data on all 4 units is offered on the Sipeed web site.
