PINE64 Unveils the StarPro64, Launches the Quartz64-Zero, and Completes Production of the Oz64
Two new RISC-V boards on the way, and a $15 Arm board with Raspberry Pi 5-style PCI Express port already here.
Open hardware specialist PINE64 has announced a trio of new products: the StarPro64, Oz64, and Quartz64-Zero — but, as always with the company, suitable software will lag behind the hardware.
"The PINE64 project and PineStore have been committed to bringing more devices based on the RISC-V architecture since three years ago," claims PINE64's Lukasz Erecinski in the company's latest community update. "Since 2021, several devices including the Pinecil [soldering iron] — PINE64's most popular hardware — have adopted this architecture. While the Ox64 may have been the first Linux-capable single-board computer (SBC) [from PINE64] technically, the first full-fledged PINE64 RISC-V SBC was the Star64, which laid the foundation for the PineTab-V tablet introduced last year alongside its Arm sibling, the PineTab2. Although significant development is still needed for the [StarFive] JH7110 [system-on-chip], interest in the platform and RISC-V development in general remain strong, with new releases from projects like DietPi and NuttX."
To keep that momentum going, and despite the admission that software for its existing RISC-V single-board computers is still very much in the developmental stage, PINE64 is launching a trio of new RISC-V boards — starting with the StarPro64, designed as a more powerful successor to the original Star64. At its heart is the ESWIN Computing EIC7s700X, which ups the clock speed of its SiFive P550 RISC-V cores to 1.8GHz, improves the on-board neural networking processor to 19.95 tera-operations per second (TOPS) at INT8 precision; this will be paired, Erecinski says, with the buyer's choice of 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM.
The next of the new product announcements plays fast-and-loose with the definition of "new": PINE64 actually unveiled the Oz64 single-board computer back in June, as its first to feature the multi-architecture Sophgo SG2000 system-on-chip — combining Arm Cortex-A53, T-Head Xuantie C906 RISC-V, a proprietary neural processing unit, and a microcontroller based on Intel's vintage 8051 architecture. "Production of the Oz64 is already completed," Erecinski says, "and it is currently undergoing Q&A [sic] testing. Once testing will be completed the SBC will find its way into the Pine Store in the coming weeks or months."
The final model in the company's expanded line-up isn't based on the RISC-V architecture at all, but a new entry in its Arm-powered Quartz64 range: the Quartz64-Zero. Designed as a lower-cost alternative to the Quartz64 single-board computer, and fully software-compatible, the Quartz64-Zero has a Rockchip RK3566T system-on-chip with four Arm Cortex-A55 cores running at up to 1.6GHz and 1GB of RAM, a single full-size HDMI port, and a single USB port — plus a PCI Express (PCIe) connector pin-compatible with the one on the Raspberry Pi 5.
Other announcements in the community update include hope for a second production run of the PineNote, the company's ePaper tablet device, following the development of an operating system and "a genuinely-usable daily system that 'just works'," an additional PineTab-V production run scheduled for this month, a move for the PinePhone Pro from Manjaro Linux to Sailfish for its default operating system, and improved temperature regulation in the latest Pinecil IronOS firmware.
The full update is available on the PINE64 blog; the Quartz64-Zero is already available to order on the company's store for $15.