Firefly’s Mini-ITX ITX-3588J (opens in new tab) prompted a number of raised eyebrows when it appeared again in March, and the spectacular, interface-rich board has now been joined by a smaller sibling, as noticed by CNX-Software program (opens in new tab): the ITX-3568JQ (opens in new tab).
Whereas it retains the 17cm x 17cm (6.7 x 6.7 inch) type issue frequent to all Mini-ITX boards, the ITX-3568JQ dials the processing down a major notch. Its Rockchip RK3568 quad-core Cortex-A55 CPU at 2 GHz and an Mali G52 GPU a a lot much less highly effective prospect than the potent combine of 4 Cortex-A72 cores, 4 A55 cores, and a Mali G610 GPU on the ITX-3588J. In consequence, it claims a complete of 1 single TOP in machine studying purposes as a substitute of the six TOPS achieved by the extra closely core-endowed, 8K-capable board.
The RAM is dialled again on the brand new board too, with a most of 8GB out there as a substitute of 32. What stays is a board nonetheless studded with ports. There are two Gigabit Ethernet sockets, which assist 60W PoE, 4 USB 3.0 ports and a single USB 2.0 port, with extra USB ports through a pin header. Storage might be connected to a SATA 3 port, a SATA 3 M.2 socket, or a single PCIe 3.0 slot, whereas as much as 128GB of eMMC flash might be connected. Video is taken care of with a single HDMI 2.0 (4K), two VGA ports (1080p), a MIPI DSI able to 1440P in dual-channel mode, and pins for an LVDS show interface.
And the interfaces hold coming. There’s RS232, RS485, I2C, UART, ADC and extra. There is a MIPI digicam connection, headphone and speaker outputs, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5. Energy comes through the PoE (Energy over Ethernet), an exterior 12V energy provide with its personal connector, or an ordinary PC case PSU. Elective modules add 5G/4G LTE connectivity.
Software program assist comes within the type of Android, Ubuntu or RTLinux, making this a possible board for a NAS, some edge computing purposes, or perhaps a standalone Ubuntu PC, although we’d want the warmer ITX-3588J board for that. The eight-core board did finally seem for retail (opens in new tab) some time after its announcement, so whereas the ITX-3568JQ board isn’t out there to buy but, we’re certain it’ll be alongside any week now.
