Turing Machines Opens Orders for the High-Performance RK1 SOM — With a Price Hike
$10 and $20 bumps on the entry- and mid-range models dwarfed by a $50 hike on the top-end 32GB RAM variant.
Cluster computing specialist Turing Machines has opened orders for the long-awaited Turing RK1 system-on-module (SOM), designed as a more powerful alternative to the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 — but the delayed launch brings with it a price hike.
Turing Machines teased the RK1 SOM back in May 2022, alongside the launch of the Turing PI 2 cluster computing system — which boasted compatibility with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, the NVIDIA Jetson Nano, Jetson TX2 NX, and Jetson Xavier NX, along with the company's planned in-house RK1. In April this year the company confirmed finalized specifications for the RK1, and listed three models — with 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB of RAM respectively — on its web store, though unavailable to purchase.
The company has now officially flipped the switch, and the Turing RK1 is available to order in all three variants — but for a few dollars more than originally planned. Pricing unveiled in April had the 8GB model at $110, the 16GB version at $160, and the 32GB topping the table at $210; the company's pre-orders have now opened with the 8GB model at $130, 16GB at $170, and 32GB at $260 — receiving the highest hike of all.
Other than the price, the boards are as-promised: a Rockchip RK3588 system-on-chip with four Arm Cortex-A76 high-performance cores running at up to 2.4GHz and four Cortex-A55 high-efficiency cores running at up to 1.8GHz, an Arm Mali-G610 graphics processor, and a neural network coprocessor for on-device machine learning delivering a claimed six tera-operations per second (TOPS) of compute on its own. All models feature a 7W thermal design profile (TDP), the company has confirmed, and include four lanes of PCI Express Gen. 3 connectivity for external accelerators or other hardware.
The board is primarily designed for use with the Turing Pi 2 carrier, which can host up to four in a single mini-ITX chassis — though it's also compatible with any NVIDIA Jetson carrier board. On the software front, Turing Machines is promising "full support" for Canonical's Ubuntu 22.04 Linux distribution, alongside mainline support in Linux 5.15 LTS.
Those interested can learn more on the Turing Machines web shop, and place a pre-order for the three RK1 models now — with an optional active fan and heatsink cooling assembly available for an extra $10. The company has not yet, however, confirmed a shipping date.
