MakeMyBOARD's ThunderBERRY5 Qualcomm-Based SBC Looks to Take on Raspberry Pi 4

It's been a busy week for embedded computers and SBCs with Embedded World 2023 going on. While a lot of larger brands have taken the focus during this time there has also been activity at the hobbyist level, specifically in the realm of Raspberry Pi clones. One of these that looks to be something of a novelty is the ThunderBERRY5 from French company MakeMyBOARD. This SBC claims to be, "the first Raspberry Pi-like SBC based on Qualcomm AI-CPU," and it features a combination of Qualcomm's 8-core QCS610 SoC and an RP2040 microcontroller. MakeMyBOARD's AI claims stem from the Qualcomm SoC's built-in Hexagon 685 DSP which supports dual vector extensions for their Neural Processing SDK and deep neural network models. The previously mentioned RP2040 fits to the board via the USB2 root and hosts the 40-pin HAT connector as well as an auxiliary debugging header.

Unlike most Pi clones on the market utilizing low-cost, lower performing processors, the ThunderBERRY5 looks like it may trounce the Pi 4 B in raw CPU power as the QCS610's Kryo 460 processor features a 2+6 core configuration: two "Gold" cores at 2.2 GHz and six "SIlver" cores at 1.8 GHz. On paper this looks to have quite the advantage over the aging Pi 4 B's 1.8 GHz quad-core Broadcom BCM2711. More important than beating the Pi 4 in performance would be beating it in availability as the tiny SBC is as hard to find in stock as it is ubiquitous even many years later. On this front there is little info from MakeMyBOARD as no availability date or price information has yet been released. Still, if you were hoping for a higher performance Pi-like SBC with AI acceleration capabilities and features, this may be something to keep an eye on.