The Ox64 single-board computer from the company Pine64 is a RISC-V based SBC powered by Bouffalo Lab’s BL808 64-bit RISC-V CPU. With the embedded 64 MB PSRAM memory and integrated radios (Wi-Fi, BT, Zigbee), the device is a powerhouse for embedded applications. It provides a breadboard friendly form factor (same as the Raspberry Pi Pico), a MicroSD Card slot, USB 2.0, and many other peripheral interfaces for makers to integrate with sensors and other devices.
Figure 1. Pine64 Ox64 SBC.
The brain of the board, the BL808, tends to blur the lines between MCUs and SoCs. The device has an asymmetrical dual-core architecture (similar to the Arduino Portenta H7) with a 64-bit core clocked at 480 MHz and a 32-bit core clocked at 320 MHz.
The two RISC V processor cores used in the design are the C906 and E907 from the company T-Head. These cores are supported by 728 kB of SRAM and 64 MB of pSRAM. Thanks to the onboard memory management unit and the generous amount of RAM, this SoC is able to run a Linux kernel. Finally, a neural networks accelerator capable of 0,1 TOPS is embedded for AI and ML smarts.
Figure 2. Block diagram of the BL808 SoC.
The MCU is equipped with four I2C controllers, two SPI controllers, four UARTs, and a CAN interface. An ADC, DAC, touch controller, PWM units and the usual GPIO pins are also included, providing freedom to use the SoC as the maker sees fit, without limitations.
Even though it exists on the small Pine Ox64 SBC and includes RISC V processing cores, it sits somewhere between the Raspberry Pi Pico and the Raspberry Pi 4 in terms of processing capabilities, making it an interesting option for small projects requiring a reasonable amount of processing power.
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