Radxa's EC20 "Mini Network Titan" Packs Real Network Appliance Power Into a Tiny Footprint
With two Ethernet ports and a quad-core processor, this aluminum-clad single-board computer is ready for network appliance workloads.
Embedded and hobbyist computing specialist Radxa has launched a new, compact single-board computer designed for network appliance use — boasting dual gigabit Ethernet and a Rockchip RK3528A quad-core processor at its heart: the EC20 Mini Network Titan.
"The Radxa E20C is an ultra-compact network computer that offers a wide range of networking capabilities," the company says of its latest launch. "[The] Radxa E20C provides a reliable and powerful platform for creators, IoT [Internet of Things] enthusiasts, hobbyists, PC DIY enthusiasts, and others to turn their ideas into reality."
The compact square-format single-board computer itself, brought to our attention by CNX Software, is powered by a Rockchip RK3528A system-on-chip — meaning it offers four Arm Cortex-A53 cores running at up to 2GHz and an Arm Mali-G450 graphics processor. By Rockchip's reckoning, there's also a neural processing unit (NPU) for on-device machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) delivering up to one tera-operations per second (TOPS) — though this is, oddly, absent from Radxa's specifications sheet.
What is present are hardware accelerators delivering up to 4k60 decoding of H.264, H.265, and AVS2 video, and up to 1080p60 encoding of H.264 and H.265 video. There's a footprint for an on-board eMMC chip with a choice of 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB modules, and a microSD Card slot for storage. Radxa has also promised variants with 1GB, 2GB or 4GB of LPDDR4 memory. A bundled metal chassis doubles as a passive heatsink.
The biggest selling point of the device, though, is its network provision: despite its diminutive dimensions, the EC20 includes two full-speed gigabit Ethernet ports — allowing the device to act as a firewall, router, or other network appliance. There's also a USB 2.0 Type-A port and a USB 2.0 Type-C for power, with a second Type-C port providing access to a dedicated debug UART bus. For software, the company is promising support for Debian Linux, OpenWrt for router use, and the OpenWrt-based iStoreOS as an alternative for general network appliance duties.
Radxa has opened orders for the machine on AliExpress at $27.88 for a version with 1GB RAM and 8GB eMMC, $34.88 for 2GB/16GB, and $48.89 for a 4GB/32GB version, all excluding shipping and each available in a choice of black or white chassis finish; while it has teased a model without eMMC storage, it had not been listed for sale at the time of writing.
More information is available on the Radxa website.