Comment by irusensei
10 hours ago
I think 1450 EUR for a 16GB RK3588 is hard to justify. Is the Rockchip open to begin with?
I'd go for a framework using the Roma or CIX boards if I wanted to go for an "open hardware but not really" goal.
10 hours ago
I think 1450 EUR for a 16GB RK3588 is hard to justify. Is the Rockchip open to begin with?
I'd go for a framework using the Roma or CIX boards if I wanted to go for an "open hardware but not really" goal.
RK3288 was true open source. It boots with just u-boot and no blobs. DDR init was done by u-boot code and armv7 didn't require a TEE.
RK3588 is "almost" open. It boots with mainline u-boot and device tree from the Linux kernel, but needs two blobs: the DDR training blob and the trustzone blob (BL31). It can run without a TEE OS. I recently heard that the BL31 is now open source, but I didn't look into it. Mainline kernel has support for everything, including 3d (panthor driver) and video codecs acceleration (you find it in the v4l submenu). Mainline Mesa driver (panfrost) also works, but... not great - it stutters/freezes when I move the mouse.
I believe the Mali graphics also require a blob if you want 3D acceleration.
What about in kernel binary blobs? Would something like GNUs linux-libre work on it?
other than maybe some RAM related blobs I believe the mnt stuff is completely open in both ways
framework stuff is generally neither open hardware nor open software, intel and AMD don't permit it
I thought it was an NXP i.MX? or did they make another revision
There are (were?) several SoC boards to choose from.
I have a couple of these RK3588 boards and frankly the story there is mostly pretty good, a bit better than other SBCs.
Recent Linux kernels are feasible. I'm using mostly stock Debian.
I use one as a Jellyfin/Plex/Immich/NAS server thing. Jellyfin is able to use the GPU for video decode. It works really well.
The other one is in mini-ITX form factor and I use it as a local Forgejo runner for CI jobs, and some other things.
I've managed to get a fork of Llama.cpp running that uses the NPU in these devices to (modestly) run LLMs, even. No real advantage, but neat.
I am satisfied enough that I've put an order in for the Next from these guys. Which would bring the number of RK3588 devices in the house to 3.