A new alternative for the Raspberry Pi was presented. The Raspberry Pi Zero Micro SBC called Kimχ Micro has a quad-core processor and an mPCIe slot for adding PCIe cards.
Kimχ Micro includes the NXP i.MX 8M Mini processor with up to 4 ARM Cortex-A53 cores. These cores can be clocked up to 1.8 GHz and are complemented by the ARM Cortex-M4F real-time core and the Vivante GC NanoUltra 3D graphics processor. The latter allows Kimχ Micro to encode and decode 1080p content at 60 FPS.
In addition, Kimχ Micro SBC contains 1 GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 8 GB of eMMC flash memory and a Micro SD card reader. There is also a serial EEPROM. Kimχ Micro also has a built-in mPCIe connection for adding PCIe cards, such as Wi-Fi cards. By the way, the board must support LTE or LoRA cards.
Kimχ Micro (preliminary) specifications:
- SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Mini single to quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.8 GHz, Cortex-M4F real-time core @ up to 400 MHz, Vivante GC NanoUltra 3D GPU + GC320 2D GPU, VPU for 1080p60 video decoding and encoding; (Single and dual-core version of NXP i.MX 8M Mini processor are also compatible)
- System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4
- Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card socket, serial EEPROM
- USB – 1x USB 2.0 Type-C port for power and data
- ExpansionmPCIe socket for wireless cards (e.g. WIFi, 4G LTE, or LoRa).
- Sparkfun Qwiic header
- 2x 60-pin high-density I/O headers with Ethernet, USB, camera, display, SAI audio, I2C, SPI, GPIO, PCIe, etc…
- Debugging – 10-pin JTAG header footprint, Cortex-M4 UART “M4” header, Cortex-A53 “Console” header
- Misc – Power button, button 1 (boot selection) and button 2 (user button), R, G, and B LEDs
- Power SupplyUSB PD via USB-C port, NX20P3483UKUSB PD and Type-C high-voltage sink/source combo switch and PTN5110NHQZ TCPC compliant USB Power Delivery (PD) PHY IC
- 5V unpopulated header
- 2-pin header for 1S LiPo Battery; on-board PMIC, charging, fuel gauge, and battery protection ICs
- Dimensions – 65 x 32 mm (FYR – Raspberry Pi Zero: 65 x 30 mm)
Industrial use of Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi-like boards
A year ago, TECHBASE released an updated version of the ModBerry M500 industrial IoT computer, replacing the aging Raspberry Pi 3 with a 3B+, giving it better performance. With the recent launch of the Raspberry Pi 4, TECHBASE has yet again, announced another upgrade to the M500, which now packs the latest single-board computer.
Over 10 million Raspberry Pi’s have been sold and the Raspberry Pi is likely to stay as a new standard in the industry. Official Raspbian OS is free operating system based on Linux Debian optimized for the Raspberry Pi comes with over 35,000 packages, pre-compiled software bundled in a nice format for easy installation. ModBerry devices are compatible with Raspberry Pi accessories, supported by Raspberry Pi Foundation. ModBerry M500 now with Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ / Raspberry Pi 4 Model B support.
