The Orion 06N looks interesting, from the point of view of a current Orion O6 owner. I hope that Radxa
continues the development of this processor with CIX.
Some of what i say below may be speculation, story-telling, or the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.
I sincerly hope Radxa sticks the landing with thier new Orion O6N variant. With an up-to-date bios and firmware that enables all 12 cores for the ‘system ready’ certification.
Maybe the original O6 can get some love in the bois arena, maybe they share the same bios chip (of which I’ve pulled numerous times and replaced with various versions on new chips) ?
I’m a fan of Radxa. I’ve purchased 5 of thier SBC’s and mini-itx boards.
Thanks for your support. The O6N bios share most of the code with O6, except the EC chip was removed on O6N, the function of EC are implemented on the P1 SoC instead. Apart from that, the BIOS features are the same, we will keep maintaining both models.
The 12 core is the Windows issue, this will be fixed in the future WoA release since Microsoft team is already working on it. They’ve bought serval O6 already. You can enabled the 4x small core in the bios if you run Linux, it’s just disabled by default.
Thank you very much for these clarifications, they’re really helpful.
As a future O6N user (Nano-ITX), I’d also like to ask a question about the ARM CHINA - CIX Serie.
Initially, it was introduced as a modern and open ARM architecture, designed to encourage participation from the open-source community.
However, the documentation currently available is still quite limited, most of the information comes from academic materials and only covers small parts of the SoC in the context of high-level applications, without really addressing its lower-level architecture or features.
In addition, the decision to integrate everything into a (closed and proprietary ?) BIOS is somewhat concerning, especially considering the original open-source ambitions of the project.
I understand that this approach may simplify compatibility with Microsoft / Windows on ARM , but it also seems to move away from the initial philosophy of openness.
Beyond documentation, what also matters is giving users the ability to customize and interact directly with the SoC’s behavior , as this was part of what made the CIX P1 concept so appealing to the community.
Is this a purely technical and temporary decision, or a long-term direction that Radxa with CIX, Qualcomm, Microsoft intend to follow?
It would be great to better understand the broader vision of ARM CHINA - CIX, and whether more open documentation, tools, or customization options are planned for the future.
It’s also possible that I may have missed some recent developments or information, if that’s the case, I’d really appreciate any update or pointer in the right direction.
Hi Hip,
Thanks for your note above which un-muddles the water on the CIX P1 bios a little bit. I look forward to what RADXA is doing in the mini-itx space - I’m also running a rock5ITX.
Could anyone guide me to how I can enable the 4 small 520 cores while using the 9.0 bios? Would i have to revert to an older bios? (shouldnt need to, as bios programming should be monolithic, not a specific version depending on use-case)