BeagleY-AI: New single-board computer is open source and comes with strong AI, PCIe and triple display support

The BeagleY-AI is a new product from BeagleBoard, which is aimed specifically at makers who prefer to use open source hardware. This should confer several advantages, e.g., other boards based on the BeagleY-AI can be created by other manufacturers at lower prices or with other functions or in different sizes. Other suppliers can also be consulted, allowing specific requirements to be taken into account.

The BeagleY-AI uses a Texas Instruments AM67A SoC, which has four Cortex A53 cores. These clock at 1.4 GHz each, so it is not a particularly fast SoC. A chip with a performance of four TOPs is installed, which should give AI applications a boost, especially when powering algorithms for image recognition. 4 GB of RAM and a microSD slot are on board. A customized Debian distribution is available for download.

Screens can also be connected via microHDMI, but customers will need a suitable adapter or a rather uncommon cable, as the microHDMI standard is not very common. Touchscreens can be connected via OLDI (LVDS) and MIPI-DSI is also available. In fact, three screens can be used simultaneously. MIPI CSI is available for connecting cameras. A PCIe Express 3 port with one lane can be used via an adapter.

Three USB 3A ports are available, plus a USB-C port for power supply. As for wired and wireless connections, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.4 are available. Lastly, a GPIO strip with 40 connections is on board.

The BeagleY-AI has been developed by Seeed Studio and is priced at $70, but is not yet available. 

A possible alternative: Buy Khadas' VIM3 Pro at Amazon.