Lichee Pi 4A RISC-V SBC take on Raspberry Pi 4 with TH1520 processor – CNX Software

Lichee Pi 4A is a Single Tablet PC (SBC) powered by Alibaba T-Head TH1520 Quad-Core RISC-V Xuantie C910 1.8GHz processor with fancy GPU and 4 AI TOPS NPU that can rival the Raspberry Pi 4 in terms of performance and features.

We previously mentioned the Lichee Pi 4A (LPi4A) in our article about the Sipeed LM4A RISC-V System on Unity, but at the time we only had some benchmarks of the board and no pictures and specs about the SBC. Sipeed has now released photos and more detailed specs and is taking “pre-orders.” So let’s take a look.

Lichee Pi 4A specifications vs. Raspberry Pi 4 specifications.

The TH1520 used to be advertised at up to 2.5GHz, but now it appears to be down to 1.8GHz. Software support will include Debian, OpenWrt, and Android in Q1 2023, and more operating systems should be supported over time. Here again are some of the benchmarks shared in the initial announcement about the LM4A unit.

Whether the Lichee Pi 4A or Raspberry Pi 4A is faster depends on the specific application since the platforms are close to imperfect Dhrystone and CoreMarks benchmarks. It’s also likely that RISC-V’s performance will improve as the software ecosystem becomes more mature. The Imagination GPU should be faster than the VideoCore VI based on the GFLOPS numbers provided in the specs, but we still don’t know which exact GPU it will be used for.

The company had already shown a 7-unit cluster board based on the LM4A at the time of the first announcement, but it will also release the Lichee Router 4A based on the Lichee Pi 4A SBC, a 6-inch Lichee 4A and a 10.1-inch Lichee Pad 4A all with an LM4A module. .

There are no official prices on the product page, but you can pre-order any of the items mentioned in this post by purchasing one or more $10 coupons that will provide $20 off once the products launch in Q1 2023. We’re getting some pricing guidance on TwitterAs Sipeed says, the Lichee Pi 4A 8GB RAM will cost around $99, and the 16GB RAM model around $140.

Thanks to Jim and Mark for the tip.

Jean-Luc started CNX in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting writing daily news and reviews full-time later in 2011.