Introduce ROCK 5B - ARM Desktop level SBC

ROCK 5 Series
758

eMMC has different procotol revisions and SDIO can use different bus widths as such even ODROID eMMC modules (Hardkernel invented this pseudo standard) are not compatible between all boards: https://wiki.odroid.com/accessory/emmc/reference_chart

But with a Pine64 64GB module there should be no issues.

759

thats verry cool, and for anyone interrested the 64GB pine64 emmc:

2021_1007_214252_001
2021_1007_214252_0014032×3024 3.59 MB
, and when will shipping start i preorderd it at june 1st

760

You prob need a very specific application to need eMMC on the rock5b as with such a great m.2 connector that can fit standard m.2 nvme onboard without the Rock4 extender, that is much faster and cheaper than eMMC.
Which also brings up another gripe and guess its just economies of sale but why is eMMC often more than double the price of similar size NVME?
I guess the double connector with one being electrically a dummy adds cost and board space, its the cost for capacity that always raises an eyebrow of ‘is it worth it?’ for me, but guess if you have the application its a cost you will meet.
Home-assistant or OpenHab (I have forgot which and the exact module name) do a zram/overlayfs module that loads the whole OS ephemeral that writes once on shutdown to keep persistence and can keep a budget micro sd running a long long time.
Then there are things like the RasPiKey https://thepihut.com/products/raspikey-plug-and-play-emmc-module-for-raspberry-pi and again not ‘cheap’, but I guess just functions as SD for all.

761

Maybe the specific ‘application’ could be ‘3W lower idle consumption’? Asides that he already owns the eMMC module


762

Its a hard push as with current UK electricity prices it would take approx 3 years 24/7 to break even on the price increase.

763

i have the emmc module thats why i want to use it alongside the m.2 because i want it as second drive maybe for anothe linux distro or just to store some files

764

Yeah its just my pet gripe that they don’t offer a awful lot of value and apart from onboard don’t use, but have purchased a few in the past.
I am interested what Radxa may do with a possible Rock5A cut down RK3588S and even if eMMC should be a thing.
I think I am prob stereotypical in use as if its onboard already then use, but tend to not do with a variety of other storage of micro sd, nvme, sata and usb


765

I mean, if you are using it as an actual embedded board for industrialish reasons, rather than using it as a desktop computer, the m.2 often gets used to replace whatever you’d do with mpci (which is a mess and only really used for wifi cards as a result).

For example, i use m.2 based pcie relay cards, like from ACCES I/O.
I could get boards and drive them over i2c/spi for sure, but m.2 is actually more consistently implemented from board to board and platform to platform (IE i don’t have to hook a logic analyzer up and figure out what is going wrong with SPI/I2C in this vendor’s drivers, or which 73 pins they are shared with but aren’t listed properly.). Whether it’s “we put 1mhz in a device tree/ACPI entry instead of 10mhz or whatever”, m.2 tends to be more consistent.

I agree in the “desktopish” setting, 99% of users seem like they would use it for storage cards.

The RK3588/RK3588S block layout bears this out - the you can’t use sata at the same time as m.2’s pcie IIRC (or at least, on the available 3588S boards you can’t)

766

Not true at all for RK3588 and are you really sure about RK3588s? RK356x/RK3588(s) all feature the same NaNeng Combo PIPE PHYs multiplexing this and that and with RK3568 it’s already known to work to use SATA via the USB-A ports without an USB-to-SATA bridge but just a simple breakout cable (violating USB specs ofc) and a device-tree overlay.

767

For other’s reference: I just got the email today, placed my order (coupon date was Jan 10th) and my SBC (16GB) is on its way already. Discount is applied during checkout.

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768

Coupon bought 10 Jan on 16GB version, today i got an Email. I Already paid (±160$ with delivery). 3 weeks estimated delivery.

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769

i preorderd it on june 1st and sadly no email but i preorderd it also later so i think i get the email at the end of october

770

‘Industrial’ is always a fraught path to discuss as often there are 2 very different approaches 1stly tank like hardening vs pit stop quick change.
Its been over 20 years but before I got ill I was starting to do quite a bit of commissioning on the data side of plc systems.

The Acces i/o modules sort of remind me of some of the pci/pcie cards of that time that where great but prob not what I would leave to maintenance electricians where brick type plcs where wiring loom has a quick release and so does the module.
When I was around SD Cards where still to make an appearance as they seem only used for loading purpose whilst runtime is on a industrial rated processor / ecc memory usually battery backed unit.

Being old and out of the loop I wouldn’t call acces i/o ‘industrial’ as I was a fan of low cost quick fit maintenance stock but would prob be a bit concerned about the electricians who may be doing the replacing.
I am pretty sure the automotive/industrial rated chips of the Rk3588 with specific designs would make great industrial product as would many from the RK range but they do need specific consideration to be made truly ‘industrial’, but that is personal opinion and not worth argument.

Which is all cool as the B type boards & CM tend to be general purpose that at a pinch could be used for all, but tend to be very feature rich and so increasing cost.

I have a few ‘is it worth it’ ponderings and eMMC is often one, just for me in use often I don’t use or would.
GPIO40 is another as often it isn’t 100% Pi format and the low density often means revisions play pin mux musical chairs as a community argues about missing i/o.
Why not higher density connectors that could be FPC ribbon, eMMC snap ons or just more dense 1.27mm headers that any could have more pins and feed a 2.5mm gpio40 daughter board.
My 3rd common comment is a vert, off i/o plane power connector that connects to the same buck as PD but allows 12v like a mobo for internal psu’s which is likely an addition to the B type boards.

So eMMC B type boards maybe likely, A type boards maybe not.
GPIO40 on all I tend to think is past its sell by date.
I really like the singular I/O plane of the ‘pico itx’ format as really it means we don’t need enclosures just an i/o panel, but would like a non i/o prob non pd power connector for internal psu’s at least on B boards.

Only personal musings, but raspberry seemed to be able to shave off much cost by dropping connectors for simplicity and occasionally I am thinking what is the 20% of connectors that could suit 80% of the community that may be applicable to lower cost A-type boards.
The Rock5b is pretty much set in stone so been wondering what you can shave off for a cut price Rock5a as have my fingers crossed :slight_smile:

771

I’m one day after you (11.01) so maybe tomorrow I will get possibility to make an order.

772

Allnet sent my email yesterday as well for my January 10th order. I have a second order that was placed on January 13th. Lets see how long it takes for them to get through 3 days worth of orders.
I am excited for my board to finally be shipped.

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773

I have two rk3588s boards (firefly and some other rando manufacturer). Both are like this. I had looked at the early leaked tech docs and it seemed to imply this was the only mux choice you could make.

I admit to not trying to hunt down the (presumably) now final docs to see if this is still true.

If it’s not that’s great!

774

I would believe the recipe for Rock 5A being cheaper than 5B isn’t something shaved off but a tiny addition in form of the letter s.

Speaking about RK3588s I still don’t get whether this is really an own SoC or just ‘garbage’ from the same wafers RK3588 are coming from? At least all those collected sbc-bench results where PVTM goes horribly wrong (SoCs being limited to below 400 MHz while on the highest cpufreq OPP and as such performing really crappy) are all RK3588s. See here (Rock 5A), there, there, there and there


775

I actually think you are very right about gpio40. I would rather have obvious and clear access through fpc that I can route elsewhere than play mux roulette.
Even with the relatively standard things like spi/i2c

Every 40 pin board using SPI randomly chooses chip select from 0/1 with often no way to change. I actually have stupid chip select changer PCBs I had made up to never deal with this again.

i2c these days you can get relatively standard 4 pin quick connect between boards.

I don’t want a big 40 pin connector just for these things, and it often forces dumb enclosure design or silly cable usage.

776

Yeah the low density 40pin GPIO sort of seems legacy now that often isn’t RPI 100% compat so why.
Khadas dropped the 40pin on there edge2 which soon as I saw thought yeah been thinking that for a while, not sure if they could of gone for cheaper FPC connectors though


With model A type boards I would say both and wondering what concessions, some would promote.
Dunno about the garbage from wafers as it would be unusual to offer less interfaces and retain same rated freqs, guess we will have to see how the https://www.khadas.com/edge2 does as more users test as sure they will.
Khadas often make some really nice boards but often seem to have a really nice premium.
So a lot of dunno as merely interested in what is possible cost wise with a rock5a and can not say until I see them become a thing.

I guess you do what Radxa are doing and release full fledged model-b’s and get a feel for community use and feedback.

777

True but an interesting data point is idle temperature and here all those RK3588s thingies tend to be a lot hotter than RK3588. Especially 1st entry below is a Rock 5A without any cooling, the later entries were with ‘5v standalone fan connected to the GPIO header and a small heatsink over SoC’. Also first Edge 2 result is made with Khadas’ fansink (by @CNXSoft), no idea about the later submissions.

This would hint at the CPU cores in RK3588s being fed with way higher supply voltages compared to RK3588


Device / details Clockspeed idle temp 7-zip memcpy memset
Radxa ROCK 5A 2400/2400 MHz +63.8 10620 7660 21300
Radxa ROCK 5A 2400/2400 MHz +48.1 15830 9100 27230
Radxa ROCK 5A 2400/2400 MHz +36.1 16030 10810 28150
Firefly ITX-3588J HDMI(Linux) no cpufreq support 8750 10190 15080
Firefly ITX-3588J HDMI(Linux) no cpufreq support 8760 10200 15080
Firefly ITX-3588J HDMI(Linux) no cpufreq support 8780 10020 15040
Firefly ITX-3588J HDMI(Linux) no cpufreq support +35.2 8780 10100 15080
Radxa ROCK 5A 2352/1800 MHz +36.1 4660 5790 20920
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +31.5 16450 10830 29220
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +30.5 16400 10860 28900
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +32.4 16480 10820 28870
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +41.6 15290 10890 28430
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +33.3 16350 10060 29350
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +44.4 16320 10090 29110
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +32.4 16530 10300 28970
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +30.5 16450 10140 29310
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +30.5 16440 10220 29170
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +31.5 16450 10370 27960
Radxa ROCK 5B 2304/1800 MHz +31.5 16290 10200 28610
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +30.5 16510 10050 29020
Radxa ROCK 5B 2256/1800 MHz +42.5 15900 9540 28380
Radxa ROCK 5B 2352/1800 MHz +38.8 16140 10000 27530
Radxa ROCK 5B 2304/1800 MHz +33.3 16160 9700 28700
Radxa ROCK 5B 2352/1800 MHz +35.2 16310 10470 27860
Radxa ROCK 5B 2352/1800 MHz +37.0 16280 10430 28020
Radxa ROCK 5B 2352/1800 MHz +35.2 16230 9600 27530
Radxa ROCK 5B 2304/1800 MHz +38.8 16250 10460 28500
Radxa ROCK 5B 2256/1800 MHz +49.0 16160 10460 28550
Radxa ROCK 5B 2352/1800 MHz +38.8 16390 10730 28590
Radxa ROCK 5B 2352/1800 MHz +37.0 16280 10740 28880
Radxa ROCK 5B 2352/1800 MHz +38.8 16080 9360 27480
Rockchip RK3588-EVB-KS-T1 LP4 V10 Board 2352/1800 MHz +49.9 4690 6150 21520
Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC HDMI(Linux) 2352/1800 MHz +37.0 14610 11160 28870
Firefly ITX-3588J HDMI(Linux) 2256/1800 MHz +29.6 15950 8380 26030
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +30.5 14660 10230 29240
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +29.6 14660 10090 29010
Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC HDMI(Linux) 2352/1800 MHz +42.5 14930 11040 28250
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +28.7 14670 10430 29130
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +41.6 16280 9850 28390
Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC HDMI(Linux) 2256/1800 MHz +33.3 14330 10810 28220
Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC HDMI(Linux) 2304/1800 MHz +35.2 14520 11500 29030
Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC HDMI(Linux) 2352/1800 MHz +36.1 15370 10800 28020
Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC HDMI(Linux) 2352/1800 MHz +38.8 14860 11580 28720
Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC HDMI(Linux) 2352/1800 MHz +37.9 14790 10910 28700
Khadas Edge2 2304/1800 MHz +47.2 16470 10860 29110
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +43.5 16350 9840 29120
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +35.2 14680 10230 29130
Radxa ROCK 5B 2304/1800 MHz +45.3 13780 10120 28120
Firefly ROC-RK3588S-PC HDMI(Linux) 2352/1800 MHz +31.5 13540 9400 27140
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +37.9 14640 10170 28750
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +31.5 14620 10220 29150
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +25.9 14700 9700 29320
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +25.9 14710 10120 29170
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +46.2 14460 9990 28410
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +46.2 14560 10160 28430
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +32.4 14660 10110 29170
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +33.3 14640 10280 29210
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +39.8 16440 10770 29270
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +30.5 14520 10450 28650
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +44.4 14560 10020 28580
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +31.5 14520 10130 28600
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +28.7 14260 10190 28620
Radxa ROCK 5B 2304/1800 MHz +31.5 14570 9770 28640
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +32.4 14690 10110 28650
Radxa ROCK 5B 2304/1800 MHz +30.5 14610 10050 28790
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +29.6 16300 9550 29140
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +29.6 14960 10200 28820
Khadas Edge2 2304/1800 MHz +49.9 5660 9940 27680
Khadas Edge2 2304/1800 MHz +49.0 5960 9790 27520
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +25.9 16780 9680 29380
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +30.5 15090 10160 28770
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +28.7 14700 10250 28870
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +32.4 15400 11110 28760
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +25.0 16720 9710 29340
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +33.3 17350 9910 28750
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +25.0 16640 9710 28920
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +36.1 16750 9720 27740
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +59.2 13940 10960 28800
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +36.1 17520 10020 28640
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +44.4 14440 9690 27990
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +32.4 14660 10140 28770
Radxa ROCK 5B 2352/1800 MHz +36.1 14570 10210 28650
Radxa ROCK 5B 2304/1800 MHz +50.8 14250 10100 28890
Radxa ROCK 5B 2352/1800 MHz +37.9 14630 9690 29010
Radxa ROCK 5B 2352/1800 MHz +40.7 14610 9870 28500
Radxa ROCK 5B 2304/1800 MHz +41.6 14390 10080 28480
Khadas Edge2 2352/1800 MHz +49.0 4630 6320 21800
Radxa ROCK 5B 2304/1800 MHz +34.2 14880 9690 27070
Radxa ROCK 5B 2256/1800 MHz +44.4°C 14380 9870 28530
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +43.5 17560 11010 29570
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +38.8 16350 10390 29170
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +25.9 17550 10250 29180
Radxa ROCK 5B 2304/1800 MHz +25.0 14630 10180 29110
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +24.1 14870 10220 29220
Khadas Edge2 2352/1800 MHz +39.8°C 4680 5710 21910
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +26.8 17710 10220 29030
Radxa ROCK 5B 2400/1800 MHz +45.3 16390 9700 27700