An AMD ARM 64-bit Dev Board Is Launching For $299 USD

Since last year we have been waiting for AMD to launch their "HuskyBoard" ARM development board built around their Opteron A1100 ARM 64-bit SoC. That board was originally supposed to ship in Q4'15 while now available for pre-order is a new A1100 development board that looks like it may be taking its place.

AMD had been teasing their ARM development board for nearly one year and talked of it being a low-cost ARM development board that would be in compliance with the 96Boards' Enterprise Edition specification.

There still is sadly nothing to report on the availability of HuskyBoard and am concerned that AMD may have changed their plans. Today we're hearing of the LeMaker Cello as a A1100 development board similar to the HuskyBoard. The LeMaker Cello has an AMD Opteron A1120 quad-core Cortex-A57 processor running at 1.7GHz, 2x DDR3 SO-DIMM slots, two Serial ATA 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports, one PCI Express x16 3.0 slot, etc. The AMD A1120 SoC has a 25 Watt TDP so it will also need active cooling. The LeMaker Cello should be able to mount in a mini-ITX / micro-ATX chassis.

This first lower-cost development board built around an AMD ARM SoC is set to retail for $299 USD and will begin shipping in Q2. $299 USD is a decent target for this board and is cheaper than the Jetson TX1 albeit this SoC doesn't have any integrated graphics like the beefy Maxwell on the Tegra X1.

Hopefully I'll be able to get a review sample of the LeMaker Cello for benchmarking on Phoronix or some Phoronix readers will be able to help out with their support (or view the site without ad-blockers if you are unable to join Premium or tip) so will be able to make a budget for one as it should be an interesting ARM Linux test target. You can pre-order from Lenovator.com.