Cool Pi 4 features an eight-core CPU and an NPU

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In the SBC market where Raspberry Pi is located, there are actually Orange Pi, Nano Pi, and other choices, but they are not as big as Raspberry Pi in terms of fame and application range. However, the advantage of these Pis is that they will use more powerful chips, and now there is a single-chip computing board called Cool Pi 4, equipped with RK3588S SoC.

This Cool Pi 4 is developed by a Chinese manufacturer. Its PCB size is 85*56mm, which is the same as Raspberry Pi. The official also stated that it is compatible with the development of Raspberry Pi, but it is up to the developer to study how well this is supported and whether it can replace the original version. Currently, it can install systems such as Ubuntu, Debian, and Android. If you are interested, you can go to their official community first.

As the biggest selling point, the Rockchip RK3588S on Cool Pi 4 contains a CPU composed of 4 Cortex-A76+4 Cortex-A55. This is much stronger than the Broadcom BCM2711 SoC of Raspberry Pi 4, and it is not at the same level in terms of GPU and video decoding performance. It even has a 6Tops NPU, so this is a relatively modern specification.


In terms of onboard interface support, Cool Pi 4 has 40pin GPIO, two USB 3.0, two USB 2.0, a Gigabit LAN port, and dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0, etc., The display interface includes mini DP, MIPI SI interface, and HDMI 2.1 display output that supports up to 8K60, which is also rare on SBC.

As for the price, the Cool Pi 4 starts at $142, but it is already a 4GB memory version. Compared with the Raspberry Pi, it is indeed much more cost-effective. In addition, Cool Po can also be equipped with eMMC flash memory, which costs $29 for 64GB, but this is much faster than using microSD, and it can still be added.

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