Skip to main content

Personal AArch64 Systems

There are a few affordable ARMv8 AArch64 systems becoming available.

Raspberry Pi​

The original Raspberry Pi uses a 32-bit processor (ARMv7), but the Raspberry Pi 3 (and the revised version of the Raspberry Pi 2) use a quad-core, Cortex-A53 64-bit processor. Note that, in order to use this board in 64-bit mode, you will need to use a 64-bit operating system.

96 Boards​

96Boards is a family of boards that have the same board size and connector layout. For more information, see the 96boards website.

Consumer Edition (CE)​

The CE boards are credit-card sized and are based on the type of chips used in consumer electronic devices such as media players, tablets, and smartphones. They do not have ethernet or SATA ports, but wired network devices and disks can be attached via USB. Note that some of these boards have USB limitations also.

These are some of the boards available:

  • HiKey - This is a 64-bit HiSilicon Kirin 620 board with eight Cortex-A53 cores, 1GB RAM, HDMI video, USB, WiFi, and Bluetooth. The LeMaker version costs about US$75.
  • Dragonboard 410c - This is a 64-bit Samsung Snapdragon 410 board with four Cortex-A53 cores, 1gb ram, HDMI video, USB, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, FM radio, and audio. The price is ~US$75.

Enterprise Edition (EE)​

These boards are 12x16 cm and are based on the type of chips used in enterprise server systems. They do not have graphics or wireless connectivity, but these features can be added through USB or PCIe interfaces.

Other Boards​

A number of other boards are available, including the Pine A64 and Cubbie family. It is recommended that you check OS compatibility before purchasing any of these boards (see the Ubuntu and/or Fedora project web sites for compatible ARN64 boards), because the Linux version supplied with the boards may be non-standard or out-of-date.