The Radxa NIO 5A is a credit card-sized single-board computer that looks a bit like a Raspberry Pi model B. It even has a Raspberry Pi-compatible 40-pin GPIO header. But this upcoming mini PC has a few features that help set it apart.
One is support for WiFi 6E. Another is a built-in MIPI-CSI connector. But the biggest difference between the NIO 5A and a Raspberry Pi is the processor. This little board is powered by a MediaTek Genio 520 chip that’s designed for IoT devices. While it has pretty decent CPU and GPU features, there’s also an NPU for hardware-accelerated AI capabilities.
While Radxa hasn’t published any details about the NIO 5A board yet, CNX Software received some pictures of the little board, which is apparently on display at the Radxa booth at Computex this week.
The most noteworthy thing about the board is its processor: MediaTek’s Genio 520 chip features:
- 2 x ARM Cortex-A78 CPU cores @ 2.2 GHz
- 6 x ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores @ 2 GHz
- Mali-G57 MC2 graphics @ 880 MHz
- 8th-gen MediaTek NPU
According to MediaTek the chip supports up to 10 TOPS of AI performance when leveraging the CPU, GPU, and NPU together. There’s also support for OpenGL, OpenCL, and Vulkan graphics and the chip supports up to 5K/60Hz (or dual 1080p) display output as well as a 4K/30Hz HEVC and H.264 video encoding and decoding.
The chipset also supports up to 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 memory and UFS 3.1 or eMMC 5.1 storage, although it’s unclear if those options will be available for Radxa’s board. The demo unit on display at Computex appears to have 8GB of RAM.
Ports and connectors include Gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, a MIPI-CSI camera connector, a fan connector, and a 16-pin PCIe Gen 2 x 1 FFC connector as well as a USB Type-C port for a 5V power input.
The board should support a range of operating systems including android, Ubuntu, and Yocto Linux.
