A short while in the past we reported on (opens in new tab) famous SBC producer Pine64 teasing a brand new board. This new board relies on the favored RISC-V structure slightly than the corporate’s normal Arm chips. The brand new board’s identify hadn’t but been introduced, however Pine64 revealed a riddle that, when solved, would reveal the identify. It was all very thrilling, and regardless of not really fixing the riddle, we predicted that the board’s identify would finish in 64.
Nicely we had been proper! The identify of the board is Star64 (the riddle required data of astronomy and the London Underground to get there) and due to Pine64’s July replace put up, we additionally now know the specs.
The Star 64 is corresponding to the Quartz64 mannequin A (opens in new tab), other than the presence of a StarFive JH7110 64bit RISC-V CPU. This chip options 4 SiFive FU740 1.5GHz cores and comes full with a BXE-2-32 GPU from Creativeness Applied sciences, and boards will likely be obtainable with 4GB and 8GB of RAM. Customary options embrace an open-ended PCIe port, USB 3.0 and GPIO, in addition to two gigabit Ethernet ports. A less expensive model with just one Ethernet socket is anticipated to observe.
The Star64 is in its remaining format stage, with some testing nonetheless wanted, however Pine64 reviews that the “preliminary assessment has yielded some very constructive outcomes, partly as a result of the SoC runs cool with out the necessity for passive or lively warmth dissipation, even below load”. The put up additionally notes that it’s going to nonetheless be a while earlier than the board is accessible at retail, however they’re engaged on it. The Star64 is the primary board in a complete vary of RIAC-V computing merchandise from Pine64, so the corporate clearly needs to get it proper.
Pine64’s different information features a new model of the Pinecil temperature-controlled soldering iron, which itself makes use of a RISC-V processor, and could also be obtainable by the point you learn this. Plus the delivery of the primary batch of QuartzPro64 (opens in new tab) boards to builders. This board is powered by the eight-core RK3588 chipset, and may make a really attention-grabbing addition to the maker house when it turns into usually obtainable.
