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It is better in everything than the Raspberry Pi 5 and smaller than the iPhone
The Banana Pi line of single-board PCs is getting a new addition-the BPI-M7 model has been released with impressive amounts of RAM and internal memory for this type of computer – more than the new Raspberry Pi 5. In fact, this is a full-fledged entry-level home or office PC with modern interfaces, which takes up obscenely little space.
When is Chinese better than the original
The Banana Pi series of single-board computers includes the new BPI-M7 model. It was released less than two months after the release of the Raspberry Pi 5, which the whole world has been waiting for for more than four years, and turned out to be better at everything.
The Chinese company SinoVoIP is behind all Banana Pi single-board cards. It specializes in the production of PCs of this class and has been doing this for years – for example, in the summer of 2019. CNews wrote about the release of a highly specialized BPI-P2 Maker model for surveillance systems and various application projects.
As for the new BPI-M7, its main advantage is the ability to carry up to 32 GB of RAM "on board" – not every modern desktop and laptop has so much. In addition, the computer is fully compatible with Android 12 mobile OS, Debian Linux 10 desktop OS, and Linux 5.10 kernel.
The BPI-M7 is slightly larger than a typical credit card-sized single board-just a few millimeters
SinoVoIP will announce the price of its new product later. Currently, the company has only a few copies of the computer, but is actively preparing for its mass production.
Extraordinary opportunities
The BPI-M7 has a lot of RAM – you can choose from versions with 8, 16 and 32 GB of modern LPDDR4X, although the central processor also supports LPDDR5. The built-in drive let you down a little, but in terms of speed, not volume, it's slow eMMC memory compared to UFS chips, which can fit 64 or 128 GB of information.
But BPI-M7 is not an ordinary single-board card. The standard size for such computers is 86x56 mm, like a bank card, but this one is slightly larger – 92x62 mm. Due to this, the developers managed to find a place on it for an SSD drive, and for a full-fledged and modern one. You can connect a fast SSD M to the BPI-M7.2 2280 formats (regular computer), and there is support for the PCI-E 3.0 x4 interface. the interface has an M-key-models with B and M+B keys will not work.
If necessary, you can insert a microSD memory card into your computer. Many modern drives are of this type, like SSD M.2, easily overtake eMMS in operating speed.
Single-chip system
All components of the BPI-M7 computer are assembled around a central processor that debuted in the fall of 2021 and is manufactured using a relatively modern 8-nanometer process technology. This chip contains four ARM Cortex-A76 cores with a frequency of 2.4 GHz and the same Cortex-A55 with a frequency of 1.8 GHz, as well as a 4-core Mali-G610 MP4 video subsystem and a neural processor (NPU) with a performance of 6 TOPS to speed up artificial intelligence tasks.
The computer is literally littered with interfaces, and the most important of them is M. 2 for high-speed SSDs
Thanks to the processor, you can connect up to three monitors to your computer, and two of them can have a resolution of 8K. On one of them, connected via USB-C with support for working in DisplayPort mode, the image can be output in 8K/30 Hz format, on the second (via HDMI 2.1) - in the same resolution, but with a refresh rate of 60 Hz. The third connection option is via MIPI-DSI (4K/60 Hz).
Interfaces for every taste
The second distinguishing feature of the BPI-M7 card is a wide range of modern connection interfaces. The list of wireless modules here includes Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 802.11 ax (Wi – Fi 6) - they are implemented as a separate chip on the board, since the processor does not have these modules.
The new Banana Pi card has two RJ45 Ethernet connectors, each with 2.5 Gbps. There are two full-size USB-A 3.0 ports and a pair of USB-C ports, one of which is used only to supply power to the computer. There are also two MIPI-CSI ports for connecting cameras, a cooler connector, and a 40-pin GPIO bar.
The Banana Pi line of single-board PCs is getting a new addition-the BPI-M7 model has been released with impressive amounts of RAM and internal memory for this type of computer – more than the new Raspberry Pi 5. In fact, this is a full-fledged entry-level home or office PC with modern interfaces, which takes up obscenely little space.
When is Chinese better than the original
The Banana Pi series of single-board computers includes the new BPI-M7 model. It was released less than two months after the release of the Raspberry Pi 5, which the whole world has been waiting for for more than four years, and turned out to be better at everything.
The Chinese company SinoVoIP is behind all Banana Pi single-board cards. It specializes in the production of PCs of this class and has been doing this for years – for example, in the summer of 2019. CNews wrote about the release of a highly specialized BPI-P2 Maker model for surveillance systems and various application projects.
As for the new BPI-M7, its main advantage is the ability to carry up to 32 GB of RAM "on board" – not every modern desktop and laptop has so much. In addition, the computer is fully compatible with Android 12 mobile OS, Debian Linux 10 desktop OS, and Linux 5.10 kernel.
The BPI-M7 is slightly larger than a typical credit card-sized single board-just a few millimeters
SinoVoIP will announce the price of its new product later. Currently, the company has only a few copies of the computer, but is actively preparing for its mass production.
Extraordinary opportunities
The BPI-M7 has a lot of RAM – you can choose from versions with 8, 16 and 32 GB of modern LPDDR4X, although the central processor also supports LPDDR5. The built-in drive let you down a little, but in terms of speed, not volume, it's slow eMMC memory compared to UFS chips, which can fit 64 or 128 GB of information.
But BPI-M7 is not an ordinary single-board card. The standard size for such computers is 86x56 mm, like a bank card, but this one is slightly larger – 92x62 mm. Due to this, the developers managed to find a place on it for an SSD drive, and for a full-fledged and modern one. You can connect a fast SSD M to the BPI-M7.2 2280 formats (regular computer), and there is support for the PCI-E 3.0 x4 interface. the interface has an M-key-models with B and M+B keys will not work.
If necessary, you can insert a microSD memory card into your computer. Many modern drives are of this type, like SSD M.2, easily overtake eMMS in operating speed.
Single-chip system
All components of the BPI-M7 computer are assembled around a central processor that debuted in the fall of 2021 and is manufactured using a relatively modern 8-nanometer process technology. This chip contains four ARM Cortex-A76 cores with a frequency of 2.4 GHz and the same Cortex-A55 with a frequency of 1.8 GHz, as well as a 4-core Mali-G610 MP4 video subsystem and a neural processor (NPU) with a performance of 6 TOPS to speed up artificial intelligence tasks.
The computer is literally littered with interfaces, and the most important of them is M. 2 for high-speed SSDs
Thanks to the processor, you can connect up to three monitors to your computer, and two of them can have a resolution of 8K. On one of them, connected via USB-C with support for working in DisplayPort mode, the image can be output in 8K/30 Hz format, on the second (via HDMI 2.1) - in the same resolution, but with a refresh rate of 60 Hz. The third connection option is via MIPI-DSI (4K/60 Hz).
Interfaces for every taste
The second distinguishing feature of the BPI-M7 card is a wide range of modern connection interfaces. The list of wireless modules here includes Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 802.11 ax (Wi – Fi 6) - they are implemented as a separate chip on the board, since the processor does not have these modules.
The new Banana Pi card has two RJ45 Ethernet connectors, each with 2.5 Gbps. There are two full-size USB-A 3.0 ports and a pair of USB-C ports, one of which is used only to supply power to the computer. There are also two MIPI-CSI ports for connecting cameras, a cooler connector, and a 40-pin GPIO bar.
