Arduino has announced the Portenta X8, a high-performance system-on-module (SOM) with a pre-loaded Linux operating system and a total of nine processing cores spread over the CPU and microcontroller for edge AI and real-time applications.
The hybrid mix of CPU and microcontroller in the X8 provided excellent flexibility in running Linux software and performing real-time activities at the same time.
While the board itself is rather empty (apart from a USB-C connection for power, data, and video out), it slips into a carrier board (similar to the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4) to reveal its IO choices, many of which are crammed into high-density connectors on the board. USB 3, DisplayPort, 1 lane of PCIe 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, four UARTs, a micro SD card slot, four lanes of MIPI DSI for display connections, seven GPIO pins, and the Phillips I2S and I2C interfaces for digital audio and serial communication are among them.
Edge computing in manufacturing, autonomous cars, home management systems, navigation systems for smart agricultural vehicles, and even behavioral analytics for factories and offices are all possibilities for this one.
The first Portenta X8 devices are expected to be released in mid-April at a price of $239 per unit.
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