A collaborative effort between Arm China, CIX, and Radxa has produced what is claimed to be the world’s first open-source Armv9 motherboard. The new Radxa Orion O6 might be more accurately described as an SBC (single-board computer), with its SoC and the RAM quota chosen at purchase soldered in place.
The Radxa Orion O6 is a pretty significant (Mini-ITX) SBC. As such, it is packed with interfaces, ports, and expansion options (except for RAM) and has a rather powerful SoC (System on Chip). Right now, it works with a few Linux flavors, but Radxa says broader OS support, including Windows and Android, is on the way.
The power behind this SBC is the CD8180 SoC, made by CIX. This chip offers 12 CPU cores, including quad Cortex A720 cores running up to 2.8 GHz. 12MB of L3 cache is shared between the 12 cores. Arm’s Immortalis G720 provides the GPU muscle on this SoC. It is claimed to offer “desktop-level” graphics acceleration. It has a decent feature set that supports hardware ray tracing, various popular video CODECs, and APIs like Vulkan, OpenCL, and OpenGL. Of course, it is 2024, so the SoC also packs in an NPU, claiming to deliver up to 30 TOPS.
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In the intro, we mentioned that the Orion O6 has soldered RAM. Thus, unless you are a soldering ninja, you must pick a DDR5 RAM quota at purchase time and stick with it. AliExpress offered this SBC in 8, 16, 32, and 64GB ‘colors,’ but they all looked the same color to us. Radxa says the RAM type is DDR5-5500, and users will benefit from 100 GB/s bandwidth with this configuration.
Storage is another primary consideration when setting up any computer; thankfully, the Orion O6 is far more flexible. The board has a couple of M.2 slots, and we guess you could use USB-connected storage and a PCIe storage card if you didn’t want to use the x16 slot for anything else.
| Product name | Radxa Orion O6 |
|---|---|
| SoC | Cix P1 SoC |
| CPU | 4x Cortex®-A720 (Big cores) 4x Cortex®-A720 (Medium cores) 4x Cortex®-A520 (LITTLE cores) 12MB shared L3 cache |
| GPU | GPU: Arm Immortals G720 MC10 Hardware Ray-Tracing enabled Graphics APIs: Vulkan® 1.3 OpenGL® ES 3.2 OpenCL® 3.0 |
| NPU | Neural Processing Unit (NPU) Computing Power: 28.8 TOPs Precision Support: INT4/INT8/INT16 FP16/BF16 TF32 |
| Memory | RAM: LPDDR5128-bit memory bus5500MT/s transfer speedConfigurations:4GB/8GB/16GB/32GB/64GB |
| Multimedia | Hardware Decoder:Resolution: Up to 8K@60fpsFormats: AV1, H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8, H.263, MPEG-4, MPEG-2Hardware Encoder:Resolution: Up to 8K@30fpsFormats: H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8 |
| Audio | HD Audio front panel connector Standard PC case audio support |
| Video Output | 1x USB-C with DisplayPort Alt Mode – 1x HDMI port – 1x DisplayPort – 1x eDP connector – Support for concurrent quad-display operation |
| Video Input | Dual MIPI Camera Ports 2x versatile camera interfaces Configurable as 4-lane or 2-lane MIPI CSI each Ideal for AI vision applications |
| USB | USB Header Supports 2x USB 2.0 ports Standard front panel connection Dual USB Type-C Port 1: USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) + Power Delivery Port 2: USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) + DP Alt Mode (4K@60Hz) + Power Delivery Maximum resolution: 4K@120Hz USB Type-A Ports 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) 2x USB 2.0 |
| Ethernet | 2x Multi-gigabit RJ45 ports Speeds: 10/100/1000/2500/5000 Mbps |
| M.2 M Key Connector | PCIe Gen4 x4 lanes Supports high-performance NVMe SSDs |
| M.2 E Key Connector | PCIe Gen4 x2 lanes + USB Perfect for WiFi 6E + Bluetooth modules |
| PCIe Expansion | x16 physical slotGen4 x8 electrical lanesSupports graphics cards and other PCIe devices |
| Cooling System | 4-pin CPU fan header with smart PWM control Fan speed monitoring via TACH 75x75mm heatsink mounting holes |
| Real-Time Clock | On-board battery holderCR1220 battery supportPower-off time keeping |
| System Control Header | Power buttonReset buttonStatus LED indicators |
| 40-Pin GPIO Header | Yes |
| Form Factor | 170mm x 170mm |
Interestingly, the trio of companies behind the Orion O6 says this ‘motherboard’ was quickly developed. They started working on the project on July 30 this year. It powered up for the first time on September 29, and now it is said to be ready for mass production. We see all storage configurations of the Orion O6 listed for sale on AliExpress, with delivery slated for 20-40 days from now. The 8GB RAM model starts at $200. It is $240 for 16GB and $300 for 32GB, up to $450 for the 64GB SBC.
In the box, buyers will get a simple-looking heatsink and fan, an acrylic Mini ITX podium, and an I/O shield. If you want an aluminum alloy case, purchase the Development Kit option for a kit – an extra $41.
Debian and Fedora Linux are supported now, but the SBC makers say that Windows, Android, Ubuntu, Deepin, and openly in support are on the way.
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