ODROID-N2 Offer Six Cortex-A73/A53 Cores For $65~82, Good Performance In Linux Benchmarks

Hardkernel's newest single board computer is the ODROID-N2 that they sent over a few weeks ago for benchmarking. The ODROID-N2 is built around the Amlogic S922X SoC and features four Cortex-A73 cores and two Cortex-A53 cores, options for 2GB or 4GB of DDR4 system memory, eMMC connectivity, Gigabit Ethernet, and four USB 3.0 ports for starting out just above $60 USD.

The ODROID-N2's use of an Amlogic S922X big.LITTLE design makes for an interesting setup with the four Cortex-A73 cores clocking up to 1.8GHz and the two Cortex-A53 cores able to hit 1.9GHz. This SoC uses the Mali G52 Bifrost GPU, which eventually should see nice driver support via the open-source Panfrost graphics driver stack.

The ODROID-N2 employs DDR4 memory offering much greater performance potential than the ODROID-N1 and others relying upon DDR3 system memory. The aluminum heatsink on the bottom of the SBC is designed for ensuring sufficient cooling potential of the SoC and RAM. The SoC being placed on the bottom of the PCB is a bit of an usual design compared to most budget ARM SBCs we see but works out well with the metal heatsink serving as a nice base.

Connectivity for the ODROID-N2 includes HDMI 2.1, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 3.0 host ports, micro-USD 2.0 OTG port, 40-pin GPIO header, and a DC power jack.

The ODROID-N2 officially supports Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Android 9 Pie BSPs at this time though it's likely more Linux distributions will be supporting the N2 as the year progresses. The Ubuntu 18.04 LTS AArch64 image for the ODROID-N2 is using a Linux 4.9-based kernel.

The ODROID-N2 with 2GB of RAM is priced at around $65 USD while the 4GB version is positioned at just above $80 USD. Hardkernel kindly sent over the ODROID-N2 for benchmarking on Phoronix.