⚡ Orange Pi O1: a 16 TOPS AI SBC with dual Ethernet and 4G/5G

Orange Pi has added the O1 to its lineup, a single board computer built on the SOPHGO BM1688, an octa-core Cortex-A53 SoC @ 1.65 GHz with a RISC-V C906 coprocessor and, more importantly, a 16 TOPS INT8 neural accelerator (TPU), as CNX Software details. SOPHGO, a Chinese chipmaker long confined to smart cameras, now sees its silicon reused on SBCs by brands like Banana Pi; Orange Pi recycles this "somewhat older" chip for price.

The feature list is that of a multi-stream video box: the BM1688 decodes 16 video streams at 1080p30 (or encodes 10), a figure inherited from the video-surveillance market. The board carries 8 or 16 GB of LPDDR4X, unusually complete storage (M.2 NVMe, eMMC module, SPI flash, SATA III, microSD), HDMI 2.0 4Kp60 plus MIPI DSI, two MIPI CSI camera inputs, dual Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, an M.2 B-Key socket for 4G/5G cellular modules with SIM slot, and a 26-pin GPIO header. It measures 90 × 70 mm.

It is the combination of the 16 TOPS TPU + dual Ethernet + 4G/5G that defines the positioning: on-prem inference gateway, intelligent NVR or cellular-powered kiosk — scenarios where a Raspberry Pi 5 + AI HAT+ does not cover the connectivity side. Caveat: as CNX Software notes, Orange Pi has a habit of launching hardware before the software is ready; only an Ubuntu image was mentioned at launch, with no guarantee of a complete toolchain for the TPU.

Source: CNX Software — Orange Pi O1 SBC features 16 TOPS SOPHGO BM1688 AI SoC