Canonical Certifies DFI's GHF51 "Industrial Pi" SBC for Ubuntu, Ubuntu Core IoT Use
High-performance single-board computer one of the first to be certified under Canonical's IoT program, but it comes with a warning.
Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution, has announced a partnership with DFI on official certification of a single-board computer dubbed the "Industrial Pi:" the AMD-powered GHF51, and the EC90A-GH which it powers.
"The GHF51 is positioned as the 'Industrial Pi,' making it the first ultra-mini industrial motherboard powered by high-performance AMD Ryzen R1000 Processors," Canonical writes of the teamwork between the two companies. "The EC90A-GH is a mini fanless embedded system holding an unprecedented processing throughput despite its size. This 'Industrial Pi' defines a new level of balance between performance and cost-effectiveness. Its expandability brings a versatility adapted for industrial application development, edge computing, AI vision, and more."
While DFI is responsible for the hardware design, and AMD provides the process which powers the board, Canonical has certified the hardware for its Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core Linux operating systems — part of a wave of products which have passed a certification program the company introduced for Internet of Things (IoT) products.
The certification is only part of the story, however: Canonical itself warns that while the GHF51 has been tested with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, support may not be complete. "[The system is] pre-installed in some regions with a custom Ubuntu image that takes advantage of the system’s hardware features and may include additional software," the company's certification notice reads. "Standard images of Ubuntu may not work well, or at all."
The board itself is based on the AMD Ryzen R1000 processor, offering two Zen cores running at up to 3.5GHz and a Vega 3 graphics processor running at up to 1.2GHz with hardware H.265 encode and decode. The board is available with 4GB or 8GB of RAM and 32GB to 64GB of eMMC storage, and includes a single gigabit Ethernet port, a fully-size mini-PCIe slot, two micro-HDMI ports, and ten years of support with a 460,000 hour mean time between failure (MBTF).
More information on the board is available on the DFI website.