Banana Pi BPI-R64 open source router with MTK MT7622 64 bit chip design
The Banana Pi R64 is a router based development board, which can run on a variety of open source operating systems including OpenWrt,Linux. It has 4 Gigabit LAN ports, 1 Gigabit WAN, and AC wifi AP function.
==Key Features==
MediaTek MT7622,1.35GHZ 64 bit dual-core ARM Cortex-A53
Looks better than on r2,but why non-standard sata-connector and only 1 sata/usb3?
Left wifi-connector seems very close to wan-port. Hdmi seems also dropped and still no battery-connector for ups-usage. It would be nice if r2 gets an hw-update with mt7615 wifi and battery. Main-soc recently gets some patches for mainline. Wifi has no mainline-support…only a driver at 4.4-base.
Also you say 1gmac wan and gmac lan,but i guess this is also 1gmac on switch-chip (mt7530?) Because mainline-dsa only supports only 1 cpu-port
Poe is nice,but module on bottom of board maybe causes case-problems…
Mini PCIE interface support 4G module
You have a sim-slot on board…how is this used? Is here the missing usb-connected (see thread of 4g module)?
Appreciate some additional features on new version. Especially onboard support of 4G slot. However, not sure about the objective of these boards R2/W2/R64. There are plenty of the features not yet working on R2. But we already got R64 & W2 in short period of time. Not sure these hardwares are fully functional or the same story of R2.
What I don’t understand it is why to reduce the RAM to half in the R64 (when compared with the R2) when using 64 bit cores.
In the practice, 64 bit operating systems and software use more RAM that their 32 bit counterparts.
About the SATA I really can’t see a difference. In the R2 we have two ports, but they share the same PCIe line. I am using R2 machines with a software based RAID1 configurations, but I know that this will punish the performance (it is just a data protection feature). When having only one SATA port you must add external RAID facilities that will free the R2 from the extra burden.
Ok,second sata is removed for Performance…maybe same for usb (uses also 1 of 3 pcie)…Or second usb is mapped to pcie…some cards need a usb in minipcie
I can find mt7622 upstream kernel boot log in this web site and mediatek RD submitted many patches to support mt7622 chipset. Hope it can short BPI’s development time.
Could be possible that SINOVOIP it is trying to differentiate the R64 from the R2 in that way. Because with two SATA, 2GB and 4 cores, the R2 it is more similar to an application machine than a networking one.
In my case, I am developing application systems with integrated security and the extra memory permits me to do that. Limiting that hardware dimension just put the machine out of scope for that type of applications. In fact, to increase the CPU type from 32 to 64 bit but reducing the core count it is not a good enough option on concurrent CPU heavy tasks.
Those kernelci log only demonstrate it boots and detect the core CPU. It is far from detecting all feature from the board like USB, SATA or Network, etc…
Sadly it takes years to get the feature working as it should.
You can check the README for the BPI-R2 but we are still far off the design specification and the feature SINOVOIP mentioned.
I do not understand the policy of the companies Mediatek & Sunvoip. The long announced 7623n still does not have full support, but the production of a new chip and a new board is launched. Such fears were expressed on the Russian-language website in the review BPI-R2. The popularity of Broadcom is largely ensured by the full support of OpenWRT. I would like to believe that the announcement of the new board will not stop the work on BPI-R2.
Imho cpu/soc-support is complete…but peripherals used on r2 are not all working in mainline especially combo-chip for wifi/bt.
i think fm/gps is not needed on a router/nas,but wifi/bt should work…currently i’m the only person who works on it. imho some more people got r2-samples but see no work from them.
Imho r2 will sell better if other people read, most thinks work without issues.
Jackzeng try to fix some other problems (e.g. 100/10mbit support and usb-issue).
I just received 2 boards, so I am going to give it a shot together with you with getting a stable kernel and pre-build images. I’m 6 years into Linux, so I hope I can help with building images!
