Boardcon PICO3566: Powerful challenger to Raspberry Pi CM3+ previewed with Rockchip RK3566

The PICO3566 is a system-on-module (SoM) designed to serve as an alternative to the Raspberry Pi CM3+. Developed by Boardcon Embedded Design, the SoM supports Android 12 and Debian 11, full driver details of which can be found on the PICO3566's product listing. As its name suggests, the PICO3566 relies on the Rockchip RK3566, an SoC based on 22 nm nodes that features four ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores clocked at 1.2 GHz and a Mali-G52 MP2 GPU.

According to Boardcon, the PICO3566 will be available in a variety of memory configurations ranging from 2 GB to 8 GB of RAM and 8 GB to 128 GB eMMC of flash storage. Additionally, the company has included HDMI 2.0, 4-lane LVDS and 4-lane MIPI DSI display interfaces, as well as a 4-lane MIPI CSI or 2x 2-lane MIPI CSI camera ports. Moreover, the SoM has a Gigabit Ethernet interface (RTL8211F-CG), plus USB 2.0 OTG, USB 2.0 host and USB 3.0 interfaces.

The PICO3566 also supports PCIe Gen 2 (1x 1-lane), has a 200-pin SODIMM edge connector like the CM3+ and a 66-pin GPIO header, among other I/O. Boardcon has disclosed pricing or availability details yet, but full specifications and compatibility can be found on the company's website.

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