Radxa Preps a Compact Six-Core Answer to the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W: The Radxa Zero 2
Boasting four performance and two lower-power cores, a neural network accelerator, and 4GB of RAM, the Radxa Zero 2 packs a punch.
Embedded computing specialist Radxa is working on a follow-up to its Raspberry Pi Zero-inspired Radxa Zero, dubbed — imaginatively — the Radxa Zero 2 and boasting a six-core processor, 4GB of RAM, and up to 128GB of eMMC storage.
The original Radxa Zero launched in mid-2021, offering a device mimicking the footprint of a Raspberry Pi Zero but with a considerably more powerful Amlogic S905Y2 quad-core system-on-chip and up to 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM. With the launch of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, though, Radxa seems to have decided it's time for an update of its own: the Radxa Zero 2.
The new board is powered by the Amlogic A311D system-on-chip, a "media processor" originally designed for set-top boxes and boasting four high-performance Arm Cortex-A73 cores and two lower-power Cortex-A53 cores. Clock speed has yet to be confirmed, but Amlogic's specifications show the potential for the Cortex-A53 cores to hit 1.8GHz and the Cortex-A73 cores to run at 2.2GHz. The chip also has an Arm Mali-G52 MP4 graphics processor with four execution and 64 shading units, running at 650MHz base and 820MHz boost.
Alongside this is a neural network accelerator designed for INT8 workloads, a cryptographic engine with AES acceleration, true random number generation, and support for Arm's TrustZone security functionality, and a video engine supporting 4K resolution at 60 frames per second with hardware H.265 decode — dropping to 30 frames per second for H.264.
To this, Radxa has added 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM — the highest the SoC supports — a single HDMI output, a USB 3.0 Type-C port, and a USB 2.0 power input which doubles as a USB On-The-Go (OTG) port. There's also on-board storage - 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC modules, depending on model chosen — and a choice of on-board or external antennas for the built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios.
Buyers also have the choice of whether or not they want the Raspberry Pi-style 40-pin header pre-populated with pins, and there is a microSD slot for storage and what appears to be a MIPI CSI connector for a camera.
The Radxa Zero 2 hasn't yet been formally announced, with little information yet published to the company's wiki; pricing and availability have yet to be confirmed, as the company prepares a v1.1 revision of the board to work around some design issues including a lack of clearance around the microSD card slot.