Clarification about the O6 Spec change

Dear Radxa community:

We noticed there are some discussions and dissatisfaction about the specification change of the O6 on the Radxa website.

Both Radxa and Cix teams are closely monitoring community discussions, and engineers from Cix have joined the Radxa forum to actively support users. We have regular bi-weekly open-source status meetings between Radxa and Cix, specifically addressing community-reported issues and continuously improving both hardware and software experiences.

Regarding the DRAM bandwidth (100GB/s) :

Currently, the DRAM runs at 6000MT/s (~96GB/s) . The hardware design simulations indicate that achieving 6400MT/s (>100GB/s) is feasible; however, rigorous validation and software optimization are still required to ensure system stability and performance. This is why we’ve temporarily updated the product specifications to reflect the current stable bandwidth. Once the validation process is complete and stable firmware/software enabling 6400MT/s is available, we will update the specifications accordingly.

Regarding the CPU big core clock (2.6GHz / 2.8GHz) :

The CPU cores are designed to run at up to 2.8GHz , and internal tests indicate stable operation at this frequency under typical workloads. However, Cix has adopted a more conservative approach for now, officially listing the maximum clock frequency at 2.6GHz , to guarantee stability across various scenarios and workloads. We understand users desire the maximum potential from the hardware, and we’ll actively communicate with Cix about enabling stable higher clock rates through future firmware updates.

We believe that Cix has shown commendable dedication to the open-source community, actively investing in software ecosystem improvements. With continued collaboration, the Orion O6 and its Cix SoC platform have the potential to become one of the best-supported ARM-based open-source ecosystems available.

Additionally, Cix is a sponsor of the upcoming Linaro Connect 2025 event, “Boosting the Next Wave of Arm Innovation,” taking place from 14-16 May 2025 in Lisbon, Portugal . Radxa will also be sending engineers to participate. If you’re attending, this would be a great opportunity to engage directly with engineers from both Radxa and Cix in person.

Lastly, if you have already purchased an Orion O6 board and are dissatisfied with it, Radxa supports returns and will cover the return shipping costs.

Thanks again for your understanding and continued support. We’re committed to addressing your concerns and will keep the community updated with further developments.

6 Likes

Seems to be fraud according european law. Selling something not with advertised specification.
Can you resolve this short term? Is this a hardware issue?
What about the other disappointed ones. Will you offer a discount , if we don’t ship back?
regards
Uli

No. We don’t offer discount if you don’t ship it back. If you are disappointed, just cancel your order or ship it back. We believe the O6 is still a very good value product and the upcoming software and firmware will deliver desired specification.

6 Likes

What is the planned ultimate end state with regard to open source? How much of the binary bits on the o6 will be fully open-source, and how much will perpetually be closed-source (just bl0, just certain device drivers, etc)?

2 Likes

There will be a full list of which parts are open source and which parts are not. We had a meeting with Cix management earlier in March and now they agree to open source more software stacks.

8 Likes

This is fair policy and of course I keep my thumbs up for updates and source releases.
I really can’t imagine why anybody assumed that it’s not DEV board. Anything else than we got with every new SoC and SBC’s. While not everything works still worth to jump into train and be able to test interesting things.

3 Likes

All good here. Keep on the great work. For my taste its still early days for this board, this world is crazy. My current daily driver still is a Windows Dev Kit 2023 with sc8280xp on Linux, I guess it will be replaced by the O6 eventually. I also have X1E and X1P hardware, which is arguably faster, but also not that open (and that EL2 mess is really a mess in the long run). I like the open competition.