It was recently announced Banana Pi BPI-M6, a credit card-sized mini-PC that, as the name suggests, tries to follow the trend started by the popular Raspberry Pi. It goes without saying that this is a computer using an ARM processor.

Diving into the details, the Banana Pi BPI-M6 implements a SenaryTech SN3680 processor with four Cortex-A73 cores, one Cortex-M3 real-time core, one Imagination GE9920 graphics accelerator and one Neural Processing Unit with up to 6.75 trillion operations per second (TOPS).

Banana Pi BPI-M6 continues with additional hardware features and includes 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM along with 16GB of data storage in eMMC format. The board includes a 40-pin header, an M.2 2232 slot, a MIP-DSI interface and a microSD card reader.

At the connectivity level, it has four USB 3.0 Type-A (rectangular), USB Type-C (reversible) ports for power, an RJ45 connector for Ethernet, and two micro HDMI ports, one dedicated for output and the other for input. input that opens the door to using the Banana Pi BPI-M6 as a video capture device. It is capable of playing 4K video and rendering two video streams simultaneously at 1080p and 60fps using H.264 or VP8 codec..

One thing to keep in mind is that the Banana Pi BPI-M6 does not support wireless connection, so they must be supplied by the user via USB ports. Its dimensions are 92 x 60 millimeters, making it slightly larger than the Raspberry Pi Model B. Data such as the price and availability of the Raspberry Pi Model B are still unknown, but everything indicates that it will officially support Linux and Android.

ARM-based mini-PCs have been in vogue for a long time, and despite their usually small size and the fact that they are not a replacement for high-performance x86 PCs, there are quite a few models capable of performing the functions. such as a server for small and medium-sized businesses, with all the cost savings that both the equipment itself and energy consumption can bring.