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Rockchip RK3588S processor, a cost-down version of Rockchip RK3588 SoC with fewer interfaces, has made its way into Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC SBC (single board computer) about the size of a credit card and equipped with up to 32GB RAM.
The compact SBC also comes with up to 128GB eMMC flash, and offers support for NVMe storage, up to four video outputs through HDMI, USB-C and MIPI DSI interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, and more.
Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC specifications:
Software support is the same as for its more expensive big brother, the ITX3358J mini-ITX motherboard, with Android 12.0, Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Debian 11, Buildroot, RTLinux, Kylin Linux, UOS, and others, thanks in part to UEFI boot support.
ROC-RK3588S-PC board should be particularly interesting to people wanting to leverage the higher performance of the Cortex-A76/A55 processor, Arm Mali-G610 GPU, and/or 6 TOPS AI accelerator within paying the premium asked for full-featured Rockchip RK3588 boards. It may not meet the requirements of people wanting high-speed NVMe storage since the RK3588S processor does without the 4-lane PCIe 3.0 found on RK3588, and instead, the board has to fall back to a PCIe 2.0/2.1 interface up to 5 Gbps.
The board appears to be under development, and pricing has not been disclosed, but to be competitive, the ROC-RK3588S-PC SBC with 4GB RAM should probably sell for significantly less than the $129 (regular price) asked for Rock5 Model B Pico-ITX SBC when fitted with 4GB RAM. $99 would be nice, but we’ll have to wait and see. A few more details may be found on the product page.
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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Nice board layout. Hope the price is sane. And easy way to obtain case.
OOT: Heard that Tom Cubie will send the Rock5 to TKaiser. Curious about that too and when Rock5 launch date.
There are already real life tests, reviews of RK3588 online. Some people expect a lot.
Also you can watch Michael Wang run Mekotronics R58X Rockchip RK3588 Debian 11 OS
for over 10 days now. So not sure what you’re expecting special.
I like the idea of putting USB2 on headers. They take a lot less board area, can be placed anywhere, and the jacks to go with them have been around as a standard, cheap PC accessory for decades. The USB3 header is too big to use for the same purpose, so I don’ t miss not seeing that. But putting USB2.0 on headers is a direction I’d like to see SBCs head. That along with better power input (4.5V to 20V input with a barrel jack of standard dimentions of 5.5×2.5mm) are things that would make SBCs a lot more… Read more »
LPDDR5? ?
Copy&Paste from RK3588/RK3588S block diagram and datasheet.
If actually only $99 then that’s nice…
When thinking of I/O RK3588S is already such a joke. But then exposing the only Gen2 PCIe lane in a M.2 slot limited to 42 mm length is even more amusing. Good luck finding a 2242 NVMe SSD ?
And of course at least two USB Hi-Speed ports are behind an internal USB hub.
Really wondering about potential use cases… some Android thingy dedicated to surveillance?
I think that this nice form factor will allow it to adopt the same enclosure as the Station-M2 one, which is excellent for a bring-everywhere device as well as one you can stick under a shelf or against another machine. And it doesn’t have the SPI NOR so it should hopefully not present the same issues with rockchip’s broken flashing tools that love to brick your device whenever they can. I like it, but I’ll probably like it better when it really starts to support mainline.
