Firefly
Firefly has launched a new device that, on paper at least, will directly clash with the Raspberry Pi 4, but which also offers several advantages over the popular Single Board Computer, such as an integrated flash memory and an NVMe slot.The ROC-RK3566-PC is equipped with a quad-core 64-bit Cortex-A55 CPU running at 1.8GHz and built on a 22nm node. The rest of the other technical features include a low-profile RJ-45 connector, up to 8GB of RAM and built-in flash memory (32 to 128GB), along with an M.2 PCIe 2.0 slot for installing SSD M .2 2242 NVMe. Everything else on the board is quite similar to what the Raspberry Pi offers, with an HDMI 2.0 port that allows you to go up to 4K and 60fps, a second screen enabled via the MIPI-DSI / RGB interface and a network card with connectivity Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0. A GPIO header is also present, but it is not compatible with Raspberry Pi, as there are fewer pins and with a smaller pitch (2.0mm). To it, however, you can connect components such as I2C, SPI, UART, PWM and more.
The RockChip RK3566 SoC is equipped with a dual-core Mali G52 2EE GPU, capable of decoding 4K video streams. 60 fps and encode in H.264 / H.265 1080p format up to 100fps. There is also an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) for use with machine learning frameworks such as Caffe and Tensorflow. The dimensions are quite small, measuring only 8.2 × 5.8 cm. Certainly could not miss a Micro SD slot and various other USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports. In case you are interested, you can find the list of complete specifications in a PDF on the Firefly website.
ROC-RK3566-PC comes with a customized operating system, Station OS, which seems to be oriented to the use of multimedia formats. The alternatives are Ubuntu 18.04 and Android 11, but presumably, once the card is in the hands of the developers, support for more operating systems will come. In case you need more power, Firefly has also announced ROC-RK3568-PC, which has similar specs but boasts a slightly faster CPU, Wi-Fi 6, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports.
Don't Miss It this incredible offer: the LABISTS kit including Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 4GB RAM, 32GB MicroSD, 5.1V 3A Type-C power supply, fan, Micro HDMI cable, USB card reader and black protective case is available on Amazon at a discounted price !