Wrocław, Poland – Grinn, a full-cycle technology company specializing in the design and development of advanced IoT and embedded solutions, today launched a compact but powerful single-board computer (SBC) which will help embedded device manufacturers to meet the mounting pressure to take sophisticated and AI-ready new products to market quickly.
The new Grinn GenioBoard is a full-featured SBC in a standard 87mm x 56mm form factor, providing all the communications, graphics and power interfaces needed to access the capabilities of the Grinn GenioSOM-700 or Grinn GenioSOM-510 systems-on-module (SOMs). These products are themselves the industry’s smallest SOMs to be based on the MediaTek Genio family of applications processors which feature multiple Arm Cortex-A cores, a graphics processing unit, and a neural processing unit for AI applications.
Helping OEMs implement more new technology in less time
The launch of the Grinn GenioBoard comes in response to demand from embedded device OEMs worldwide for more application-ready hardware. New contours in the competitive landscape are emerging, requiring OEMs to experiment rapidly with AI and machine learning technologies. At the same time, many manufacturers are reporting that development cycles which traditionally extended for two to three years have today contracted to less than 12 months.
In this context, OEMs’ development teams cannot afford to spend precious months on developing from scratch the compute hardware and custom Linux® operating system on which their application will run. They need a ready-made compute platform, and the flexibility to quickly add capabilities such as an AI inference engine and wireless communications modules. The use of application-ready hardware frees developers to use their limited development window to implement the core application in which the OEM specializes.
“The Grinn GenioBoard provides the ideal tool to help OEM design engineers to thrive in the new, more time-pressured environment that they find themselves in,” said Robert Otręba, CEO of Grinn. “It not only gives them an incredibly powerful MediaTek processor and all the fast interfaces they will need, Grinn also supports the hardware with essential software to get applications up and running. This includes a Linux operating system and the Thistle Security Platform for cybersecurity protection. While other developers will be struggling to get custom hardware ready for the market, users of the GenioBoard can be working on their application’s software from Day One.”
“The GenioBoard solution utilizes many key technologies and advanced capabilities provided by the MediaTek Genio 700 platform, enabling a wide variety of benefits,” said CK Wang, VP & GM of MediaTek’s IoT business unit. “The Genio 700 makes it possible for Grinn to effectively leverage AI, IoT and connectivity to address a large number of developers, manufacturers and customers.”
Flexible AI-ready development platform
Unlike SBCs in the same form factor from competitors such as Raspberry Pi, the Grinn GenioBoard provides a ready-made embedded computing system which OEMs can use in production designs:
- It is backed by a robust component supply chain
- Operating systems are built-in – customers can choose from a custom Linux OS developed in the Yocto Project, or a commercial Debian Linux distro
- The board is supplied with CE marking and other standard certifications
- The board supports the Thistle Security Platform, which implements cybersecurity protection features via an on-board Infineon OPTIGA™ Trust M hardware security module to enable compliance with the European Cybersecurity Resilience Act
Grinn also provides OEMs with the flexibility to adapt the hardware to meet specific requirements. The board includes M.2 interfaces to external hardware devices such as an AI accelerator, and a Wi-Fi®/Bluetooth® and cellular wireless communications module. This means that developers who are not ready to implement AI in an embedded device immediately but who want to create an AI-ready design now can continue to use the Grinn GenioBoard in a later design iteration, with the freedom to add an external AI accelerator via the M.2 interface.
In addition, developers who want to modify the board design itself can use it as a reference design – Grinn has opened the schematics and CAD files for the GenioBoard design to the developer community.
Key features of the Grinn GenioBoard include:
- Single-cable USB development interface
- Single USB Type-C® Power Delivery (PD) power supply
- Raspberry Pi HAT-compatible interface
- HDMI and DisplayPort (DP) interfaces
- 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet PHY with RGMII interface
- Two USB-A 2.0 and two USB-A 3.0 interfaces
- USB-C to UART interfaces
- Two 4-lane CSI camera interfaces
- 4GB RAM and 16GB eMMC
The Grinn GenioBoard is available to order now directly from Grinn at www.genioboard.com, or from all authorized distributors of Grinn products.
