8-Core, Qualcomm-Powered SBC Set to Take on Raspberry Pi, Features Embedded RP2040

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The upcoming Thunderberry5 promises faster performance than a Pi 4, with better AI.

The Thunderberry5 SBC
(Image credit: Make My Board / Luigi Grasso)

The market is filled with Raspberry Pi clones that promise to be faster, cheaper or have more ports. However, most of these single-board computers use cheap processors from lower-end brands such as RockChip and Mediatek. A new player, the Thunderberry5, uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, the same brand found in many major brand phones, tablets and Arm-powered laptops.

An upcoming board from French company MakeMyBoard, Thunderberry5 claims to be "the first Raspberry Pi-like SBC based on Qualcomm AI-CPU" and powering the show is a Qualcomm QCS610 Snapdragon. The Kryo 460 Octa-core CPU is powered by two Gold 2.2 GHz cores, and six Silver 1.8 GHz cores. That sounds like it would be faster than the 1.5 to 1.8-GHz CPU in the Raspberry Pi 4 B, but we wouldn't know for sure without testing.

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Les Pounder
Les Pounder
Associate Editor

Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • usertests
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryo#Kryo_400_Series
    The Kryo 400 Series CPUs features semi-custom Gold Prime/Gold and Silver cores derivative of ARM's Cortex-A76 and Cortex-A55 respectively, arranged in configurations with DynamIQ. Qualcomm reveal their semi-custom Cortex-A76 have larger out-of-order execution window (reorder buffer) and data prefetchers more optimised in floating point workloads.

    2x 2.2 GHz (default) Cortex-A76 equivalent + 6x 1.8 GHz Cortex-A55 should easily beat 4x 1.8 GHz (the new default clock speed) Cortex-A72. But it's the Adreno 612 GPU and OS support that will make or break it.
    Reply
  • eye4bear
    I checked Amazon just this past weekend and still only a few Raspberry PI units all at 4-5x MSRP. I am beginning to think they do not care about consumer units anymore, because everyone I know who is looking to buy a SBC is not waiting. Seems almost like another Blackberry in the making.
    Reply
  • Change_Ever
    The SoC is old and weak. It's not anywhere near as powerful as the SM8150 or the RK3588. Consider a used Samsung Galaxy S10/+/e or any RK3588/s SBC.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    That sounds like it would be faster than the 1.5 to 1.8-GHz CPU in the Raspberry Pi 4 B, but we wouldn't know for sure without testing.
    Lame.
    My info agrees with @usertests. The A76's are each probably twice as fast as the Pi's A72's, given both running at stock clocks. The A55's are then just bonus. Still, in the era of Rockchip RK3588 boards, that's not going to cut it.

    Its saving grace may, in fact, be its Adreno GPU. According to mesamatrix.net, Adreno has far & away the best open source drivers of any mobile GPU (see "freedreno"). Mali's open source drivers are much worse than the Pi's "v3d" drivers, meaning you basically have to use their proprietary, closed-source drivers for any more than the most basic functionality.

    Unfortunately, knowing Qualcomm, it's not going to be cheap. I expect it to be DOA, now that we can buy faster RK3588S boards with M.2 NVMe slots for (almost certainly) less money.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    eye4bear said:
    I checked Amazon just this past weekend and still only a few Raspberry PI units all at 4-5x MSRP. I am beginning to think they do not care about consumer units anymore,
    I don't think it's a matter of caring. I think they're truly struggling to cope with demand.

    About 3 months ago, Eben Upton stated:
    "in the latter-half of 2023 we can expect stock levels to return to pre-pandemic normality."

    Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-5-after-2023
    Reply
  • Setnev
    Raspberry Pi isn't out of relevance just yet for one purpose only: price. Until the competition can come out with a board of comparable performance for the same price, they'll never topple the golden standard. This board looks nice on paper, but a processor that comes with licensing fees paid by the developer isn't going to come cheap. The value certainly isn't made with a $0.99 microcontroller on the board that is readily available to the average consumer.
    Reply
  • Steve Nord_
    Qualcomm alt-OS energy eh? The 4 GB RAM is...I mean Ghidra is too big, right? Seems like a decent engine to connect some lab equipment over MIPI. Microtome a cryo frozen fruit fly brain slice, procedurally compress or alter it, uplink chunks, do microsurgery, see if the fly screenwrites Franzen or Shakespeare on li'l chunky keyboards.
    Using it to ROP some other Qualcomm kit makes sense too, offload from an ARM laptop a bit I suppose. Get my Sprint LG V40 keys, thing!
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Setnev said:
    Raspberry Pi isn't out of relevance just yet for one purpose only: price. Until the competition can come out with a board of comparable performance for the same price, they'll never topple the golden standard.
    Doesn't matter if you can't actually find it in stock, or with scalper markups.

    Here's a faster alternative with decent hardware quality, from a company that's been building ARM-based SBCs since well before the first Raspberry Pi:

    https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-n2l-with-4gbyte-ram/

    That's the cost-reduced version, having 4 GB, for only $69. I bought a full-fat N2+ ($83) from them (direct) and shipping to the USA took a while but was still cheaper than buying one from AmeriDroid.

    And did I mention it's faster than Pi 4 and has eMMC?
    Reply