looking for YP-supported Rockchip RK3588-based eval board

looking for YP-supported Rockchip RK3588-based eval board

[Robert P. J. Day]

  (caveat: i have *no* experience with rockchip processors so i am
entirely at the mercy of people who want to make recommendations.)

  a friend wants me to advise on a good choice for a RK3588-based
evaluation board, and has already purchased a banana pi bpi-w3:

  https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009156110477.html

  that looks like a decent and fairly powerful baord, but i notice
that the banana pi is not a supported MACHINE in meta-rockchip:

  https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-rockchip/tree/conf/machine

so can anyone suggest something equivalent in terms of pure horsepower
that would be equivalent and has solid YP support? i am totally open
to good advice.

rday

Re: [yocto] looking for YP-supported Rockchip RK3588-based eval board

[me]

Hi Rday,

This one seems supported? 
https://embedded.cherry.de/jaguar-sbc-rk3588-amr-user-manual/60-software-yocto.html

Note: I have no personal experience with this one.

We have the Pine64 PineTab2 running with Yocto on LuneOS. This uses a 
bit older rk3566.

Best regards,
Herman

On 2025-11-05 16:42, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> (caveat: i have *no* experience with rockchip processors so i am
> entirely at the mercy of people who want to make recommendations.)
> 
>   a friend wants me to advise on a good choice for a RK3588-based
> evaluation board, and has already purchased a banana pi bpi-w3:
> 
>   https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009156110477.html
> 
>   that looks like a decent and fairly powerful baord, but i notice
> that the banana pi is not a supported MACHINE in meta-rockchip:
> 
>   https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-rockchip/tree/conf/machine
> 
> so can anyone suggest something equivalent in terms of pure horsepower
> that would be equivalent and has solid YP support? i am totally open
> to good advice.
> 
> rday
> 
> 
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Re: [yocto] looking for YP-supported Rockchip RK3588-based eval board

[Quentin Schulz]

Hi Robert,

On 11/5/25 4:42 PM, Robert P. J. Day via lists.yoctoproject.org wrote:
> 
>    (caveat: i have *no* experience with rockchip processors so i am
> entirely at the mercy of people who want to make recommendations.)
> 
>    a friend wants me to advise on a good choice for a RK3588-based
> evaluation board, and has already purchased a banana pi bpi-w3:
> 
>    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009156110477.html
> 
>    that looks like a decent and fairly powerful baord, but i notice
> that the banana pi is not a supported MACHINE in meta-rockchip:
> 
>    https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-rockchip/tree/conf/machine
> 
> so can anyone suggest something equivalent in terms of pure horsepower
> that would be equivalent and has solid YP support? i am totally open
> to good advice.
> 

Check all the boards including rk3588.inc in meta-rockchip.

My company manufactures two boards based on RK3588, Tiger (an SoM with 
Haikou motherboard) and Jaguar (an SBC), supported by 
https://git.embedded.cherry.de/yocto-layers/meta-cherry-es.git/. Note 
that we're still on Scarthgap, there's just so much I can do by myself 
during the working day. We're targeting companies mostly, not really 
tinkerers, so it depends what you want to do. You can contact our sales 
department if that's something you're interested in, c.f. 
https://embedded.cherry.de/jaguar-sbc-rk3588-amr-user-manual/98-contact.html

If it's for yourself as a hobbyist/tinkerer, I would highly recommend 
going for a Radxa Rock 5B, it's affordable and various features for the 
RK3588 SoC in upstream Linux are initially developed on Rock 5B (mostly 
by Collabora at the moment I believe?).

Rockchip SoCs has a vibrant (mostly upstream) community, don't hesitate 
to join the fun on IRC on libera.chat in the #linux-rockchip chan for 
example.

I help reviewing patches for meta-rockchip here and there, so if you 
have questions you can ask (either on the mailing list or on the IRC 
channel) maybe I'll have the answer.

NPU (AI HW engine) has been merged upstream in both Linux and mesa but 
we don't support it for now in Yocto. I'm planning on having a look by 
the end of the year and sending patches but anyone can do that before me 
if they wish to do so :)

You haven't said what you want to do with this board. Upstream Linux is 
almost there, mostly lacking CAN support as well as the whole camera 
stack and the various Video decoders and encoders (some supported to 
some level, some not at all) as far as I know. DP-Altmode on USB-C is 
also missing and USB3 on USB-C is finnicky with issues with orientation 
of the table (USB2 should be fine).

Cheers,
Quentin

Re: [yocto] looking for YP-supported Rockchip RK3588-based eval board

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Wed, 5 Nov 2025, Robert P. J. Day wrote:

>
>   (caveat: i have *no* experience with rockchip processors so i am
> entirely at the mercy of people who want to make recommendations.)
>
>   a friend wants me to advise on a good choice for a RK3588-based
> evaluation board, and has already purchased a banana pi bpi-w3:
>
>   https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009156110477.html
>
>   that looks like a decent and fairly powerful baord, but i notice
> that the banana pi is not a supported MACHINE in meta-rockchip:
>
>   https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-rockchip/tree/conf/machine
>
> so can anyone suggest something equivalent in terms of pure horsepower
> that would be equivalent and has solid YP support? i am totally open
> to good advice.

  i will also point out that i see some mention that the RK3588 is not
fully open source, while the earlier RK3399 is:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40497232

so there's that, too.

rday

Re: [yocto] looking for YP-supported Rockchip RK3588-based eval board

[Quentin Schulz]

On 11/5/25 6:04 PM, Robert P. J. Day via lists.yoctoproject.org wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Nov 2025, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> 
>>
>>    (caveat: i have *no* experience with rockchip processors so i am
>> entirely at the mercy of people who want to make recommendations.)
>>
>>    a friend wants me to advise on a good choice for a RK3588-based
>> evaluation board, and has already purchased a banana pi bpi-w3:
>>
>>    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009156110477.html
>>
>>    that looks like a decent and fairly powerful baord, but i notice
>> that the banana pi is not a supported MACHINE in meta-rockchip:
>>
>>    https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-rockchip/tree/conf/machine
>>
>> so can anyone suggest something equivalent in terms of pure horsepower
>> that would be equivalent and has solid YP support? i am totally open
>> to good advice.
> 
>    i will also point out that i see some mention that the RK3588 is not
> fully open source, while the earlier RK3399 is:
> 
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40497232
> 

Outdated info, only the first stage bootloader (TPL also called DDR bin 
by Rockchip; it runs in EL3, who knows what it does) is closed-source 
still. BL31 (TF-A) can be replaced by upstream TF-A.

The first stage is being reverse-engineered right now by some people 
from oreboot I believe. If and how this will come out is a different topic.

Note that the ARM Mali GPU also requires a blob (from linux-firmware), 
so do all Mali GPUs based on the CSF "architecture" (which is probably 
every recent version and upcoming). Open-source drivers 
(panthor/panfrost in Linux kernel and mesa) though.

Cheers,
Quentin

Re: [yocto] looking for YP-supported Rockchip RK3588-based eval board

[Scott Murray]

On Wed, 5 Nov 2025, Quentin Schulz via lists.yoctoproject.org wrote:

>
>
> On 11/5/25 6:04 PM, Robert P. J. Day via lists.yoctoproject.org wrote:
> > On Wed, 5 Nov 2025, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>    (caveat: i have *no* experience with rockchip processors so i am
> >> entirely at the mercy of people who want to make recommendations.)
> >>
> >>    a friend wants me to advise on a good choice for a RK3588-based
> >> evaluation board, and has already purchased a banana pi bpi-w3:
> >>
> >>    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009156110477.html
> >>
> >>    that looks like a decent and fairly powerful baord, but i notice
> >> that the banana pi is not a supported MACHINE in meta-rockchip:
> >>
> >>    https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-rockchip/tree/conf/machine
> >>
> >> so can anyone suggest something equivalent in terms of pure horsepower
> >> that would be equivalent and has solid YP support? i am totally open
> >> to good advice.
> >
> >    i will also point out that i see some mention that the RK3588 is not
> > fully open source, while the earlier RK3399 is:
> >
> > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40497232
> >
>
> Outdated info, only the first stage bootloader (TPL also called DDR bin by
> Rockchip; it runs in EL3, who knows what it does) is closed-source still. BL31
> (TF-A) can be replaced by upstream TF-A.
>
> The first stage is being reverse-engineered right now by some people from
> oreboot I believe. If and how this will come out is a different topic.
>
> Note that the ARM Mali GPU also requires a blob (from linux-firmware), so do
> all Mali GPUs based on the CSF "architecture" (which is probably every recent
> version and upcoming). Open-source drivers (panthor/panfrost in Linux kernel
> and mesa) though.

One other thing to note is the camera related IP blocks are really only
supported with Rockchip's own layer with its old forks of the kernel,
U-boot, etc.  Based on this presentation on Rockchip camera support at
OSS EU:

https://elinux.org/images/2/20/Osseu25-mriesch-rk35-camera.pdf

mainline support is probably a long ways off, sadly.

With respect to specific boards, we have folks using the FriendlyElec
NanoPC-T6 for AGL demos, and it's seemed reasonable.

Scott