Company Releases Android Development Board With Kirin 960 Octacore

LeMaker has presented a development board that features a Kirin 960 octacore. The manufacturer has developed the HiKey 960 in collaboration with Huawei and Google for use in combination with Android.

The development board is mainly aimed at Android developers who want to test functionality in combination with sensors or other hardware, but it can also be used for point-of-sale systems and robotics. Linaro reports that, in addition to LeMaker, Huawei and Google are one of the initiators behind the development; the company focuses on increasing the ARM ecosystem.

The board contains a Kirin 960-soc from Huawei, which has four Cortex A73 and four Cortex A53 cores. The GPU is the Mali G71 MP8. There is also 3GB lpddr4 and 32GB ufs storage available. There is also support for WiFi-n and Bluetooth 4.1. As for the connection options, PCI-E 2.0, 2x USB 3.0, USB 2.0 and HDMI are present, as well as a 40-pin ls and 60-pin HS connector.

The board is a lot more powerful than, for example, the RaspBerry Pi or the Arduino, but with a price of 239 dollars also a lot more expensive. According to PCWorld, the board will be released in Europe in May. Google has documentation online about using the HiKey boards in combination with Android.