Introduction:

In March of this year, I attended the Embedded World Exhibition, which focuses on embedded systems. During my visit, I explored the Forlinx booth. Forlinx is renowned for developing System on Modules (SoMs) and Evaluation Boards for industrial PCs. I previously acquired an evaluation board from Forlinx last year. This year, I am excited to present the new Forlinx OK3588-C board in this video.

Presenting the OK3588-C Development Board (featuring a Rockchip RK3588)

Today, we will explore the Forlinx OK3588-C board. Allow me to switch off the camera and transition to the desktop view.

Here, I have the hardware manual for the OK3588 board. If you require this hardware manual or the necessary SDKs to develop software for this board, please contact Forlinx, and they will provide you with the required resources.

SoM Appearance Diagram:

The evaluation board comprises two primary components. Firstly, this is the physical appearance. Here, we have the System on Module (SoM) mounted on a carrier board, which connects all peripherals to the SoM.

Let's begin by examining the System on Module. This module includes the Rockchip RK3588 main processor, two DRAM ICs, and eMMC storage for non-volatile data. Various components on the module generate the required voltages for the chip's operation. The Rockchip RK3588 is a robust processor.

RK3588 Description:

Displayed here is a block diagram of the RK3588. It features a dual-cluster core configuration. One cluster consists of a quad-core Cortex-A76 processor clocked at 2.6 GHz, and the second cluster includes a quad-core Cortex-A55 processor, clocked at either 1.5 or 1.8 GHz. This setup allows for power-saving capabilities by disabling the A76 cores when full performance is not required.

Another notable feature is the high-performance Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which is advantageous for tasks related to artificial intelligence and machine learning. In the future, I hope to demonstrate the NPU's capabilities.

The chip also includes a multimedia processor supporting various video decoders, even up to 8K resolution, and an embedded Mali-G GPU. For external memory interfaces, it has two eMMC controllers and support for LPDDR4 and LPDDR5. Additionally, it includes standard system peripherals, such as USB OTG 3.1, PCIe interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet, GPIO, SPI, and I²C.

Development Board Interface Description:

The carrier board includes numerous peripherals. There is a 12V power supply, a power switch, a reset switch, up to five camera connectors, microphone and speaker connectors, USB 2.0 host, and two USB 3.1 OTG ports. These USB ports can function as either hosts or devices. It also features two HDMI ports (one input and one output), a real-time clock with a battery, eDP ports, ADC connectors, an SD card slot, a fan connector, and M.2 slots for Wi-Fi and cellular cards.

The board also includes two full-size PCIe connectors, user buttons, CAN interfaces, an RS485 interface, a USB-to-serial adapter, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. The overall setup is impressive.

Operation:

Let's power on the board. I have also connected a PCIe card to a free slot. Before proceeding, let's open the serial terminal to monitor the output.

The board is booting, and the kernel is starting successfully. Currently, we are running a minimal BusyBox root file system. In a future video, I will demonstrate how to build a custom Linux for this board. For now, this setup is sufficient.

We are running kernel version 5.10.66, built for ARM64 architecture. The board has eight processors, consisting of different Cortex-A cores. The available memory is 3.6 GB, with 155 MB currently in use. Background processes and the Mali GPU likely consume some memory.

We have eight I²C buses available, with one connected to the display connector for Display Data Channel (DDC) management.

The eMMC storage has multiple partitions. The board features seven GPIO chips and eight I²C connectors.

Lastly, I have connected a PCIe card, and the system detects it successfully. The card operates at PCIe Gen 1 speed with a link width of x1. Higher-end cards could achieve link speeds up to 8 GT/s and wider link widths.

This concludes the initial demonstration of the OK3588 board. In future videos, I will compile software for this board and provide more in-depth coverage of this compelling embedded system platform. I'm excited to showcase the full potential of the Forlinx OK3588-C development board and how it can be leveraged for a wide range of innovative projects. Stay tuned as I delve deeper into the capabilities of this board and explore how it can be leveraged for various applications.

Thank you for watching.

*This content and video was originally published by @Johannes 4GNU_Linux