June 3, 2019

The Beaglebone AI

This has dual cores running at 1.5 Ghz. The ARM cores are A15 (32 bit). The same IO connectors as the BBB.

A deeper look at this in 2023 -- the price is $188 and they are "end of life" according to Digikey; when available stock is sold there will be no more. Not surprising given the price tag. Doubtless they did not sell and they have little enthusiasm for making more of something that didn't sell.

Apart from the dual cores, the big deal is a pair of EVE unit cores (EVE = embedded-vision-engine). It is based on the AM5729 SoC core (Sitara).

That is not all, you also get:

A ridiculous amount of hardware that will be a challenge for anyone to figure out how to use.

The board gives you 16G of emmc flash along with 1G of RAM.
The board does provide a gigabit ethernet interface along with Wifi and Bluetooth.
There is a micro-SD slot and power is provided by USB-C.

I first heard about it via the Hackaday article (June, 2019). The price was predicted to be "around $100". As of March 2020, Digikey has plenty in stock and the price is $128. There is a 415 page datasheet.

As of March, 2020 there is an 8063 page technical manual available!

Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org