Banana Pi announces Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3 competitor with up to 8 GB of RAM

Banana Pi has unveiled a new computer-on-a-module (COM), currently dubbed the Rockchip RK3588 Development Kit. As its name suggests, the COM relies on the Rockchip RK3588, an SoC that powers the Radxa Rock 5B. For reference, the RK3588 features four ARM Cortex-A76 CPU cores, four Cortex-A55 CPU cores and a Mali-G610 MP4 GPU.

Additionally, the SoC contains an NPU with 6 TOPS of performance and can decode 8K videos. In short, the RK3588 is Rockchip's most powerful SoC yet. In a blog post, Banana Pi explains that the COM will be available with 2 GB, 4 GB or 8 GB of RAM, plus 32 GB, 64 GB or 128 GB of eMMC flash storage. Understandably, Banana Pi solders both components to the COM; neither are replaceable.

Moreover, the COM supports SATA 3.0, Ethernet, HDMI, PCIe 3.0 and USB 3.1 Type-C. However, you will need a carrier board to get the most from the COM, as you do with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module. Banana Pi adds that the COM will run Android 12 and Linux distributions, although it is yet to offer any specifics. Similarly, the company states that it will send out hardware samples upon request, so it is not ready for release just yet.

Purchase the Banana Pi M2 Zero on Amazon