LattePanda Announces Sigma, a 'Hackable Single Board Server'

The LattePanda Sigma, launched today by the LattePanda team from $579, improves upon the power of the LattePanda 3 Delta with a Raptor Lake-based CPU, 16GB of LPDDR5, and an Intel Iris Xe GPU. All of this makes it a much more powerful machine than the LattePanda 3 Delta and the Raspberry Pi 4. 

The LattePanda 3 Delta was already an impressive board, much more powerful than a Raspberry Pi 4. However, the specs for the Sigma blow the Delta firmly out of the water.

The choice of a 13th-Gen Intel Raptor Lake Core i5-1340P (12 core, 16 threads) is a big upgrade from the quad-core Intel Celeron N5105 found in the LattePanda 3 Delta. The GPU also sees an upgrade, now sporting an Intel Iris Xe GPU with 80 execution units and up to 1.45 GHZ, compared to the Delta's now rather pedestrian Intel UHD GPU running between 450 and 800 MHz.

The Sigma's RAM upgrade is also welcome. While the 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM afforded by the Delta was enough for most tasks, 16GB of LPDDR5 running at 6400 MHz means we could get a big performance boost for all projects. 

What the two share, though, is an onboard Arduino Leonardo-compatible co-processor, which is located this time along the short edge of the board. In our review of the LattePanda 3 Delta, we loved the easy GPIO access, and using the Arduino IDE and Python firmware, we easily created projects. The Sigma seems to share the same pin arrangement, and while it isn't a true Arduino Uno pinout, it is functional.

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The LattePanda Sigma is pitched as a "Hackable Single Board Sever with Mighty Power," but that doesn't restrict it to just sitting in an office. The onboard Arduino Leonardo provides a GPIO interface accessible via a USB-to-serial interface. With some Arduino and Python code and a USB camera, building a powerful machine learning/computer vision project would be simple. Sure, the Sigma is larger than a Raspberry Pi 4, but it could be easily integrated into a robotics project. The CPU / GPU combo is potent and could easily be used as a low-power desktop machine with four 4K displays running simultaneously. To keep it cool, we see a combined heatsink and fan assembly dominating the board's top, taking up more space than the LattePanda 3 Delta's cooling solution.

The dual Thunderbolt 4 ports are an enticing proposition. We potentially benefit from fast data transfer speeds and potentially external GPUs. Gaming is possible, on the Intel Iris Xe GPU, heck we managed a competent session of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on the LattePanda 3 Delta, so it should be a cakewalk for Sigma.

The LattePanda Sigma is now available direct from DFRobot, starting from $579 for a base unit, $648 with a 500GB SSD and Wi-Fi 6E module.