Ready to ROCK? Meet the single board computer you always wanted

You asked, and we listened. We at OKdo are passionate about technology and innovation, so we gathered all our forces to make a single board computer (SBC) that we, and you, always wanted — the ROCK — bringing to the table everything you’ve been asking for, as standard. We believe that tech is the key to driving positive and innovative change. Together, as a community of fellow tech professionals, we can build an exciting future and empower amazing things through technology.

Figure 1: The ROCK. Source: OKdo

Richard Curtin, the co-founder and CTO of OKdo, shares everything you need to know about the ROCK, and how we can customize and tailor it to your needs, allowing you to build the future you want and drive SBC design innovations.

Let’s meet the new SBC, solid as a ROCK

So, what is ROCK? It’s a range of reliable and low-power SBCs developed in collaboration between OKdo and Radxa. It offers class-leading capabilities, hardware and performance in a similar form factor as other popular SBCs. 

The Rock series are versatile boards formed with high-performing hardware, as standard. What’s more, the ROCK boards can be fully customized and configured just the way you want because it’s your board, in your way. This brings huge financial and environmental benefits during current supply chain challenges, allowing professional design engineers to leverage cutting-edge technology for developing high-volume end products.

It offers professionals, industrial OEMs, IoT enthusiasts, hobbyists and PC DIY enthusiasts and makers a reliable and capable platform for bringing their ideas and projects to life, supporting the most extraordinary next-generation technology applications.

Why ROCK?

OKdo ROCK was born out of our love for technology. Having listened to what you really needed in an SBC, we decided to build something different. We wanted to create a better board to allow people to build a better future for the world. Here at OKdo, we are committed to offering you the best hardware and software to maximize the potential of your design applications.

We aim to build a community of engineers passionate about tech and electronics, who want to be part of something different, be part of a community that will drive change and be “BETA” together. We believe in the power of ROCK, and we also believe our community can help make it even better.

If you get a kick out of creating, innovating, hacking and being part of bringing an awesome new product to market, then we’d love to hear from you.

Rockchip — A powerful processor at the heart of ROCK

The ROCK boards are designed around processors provided by Rockchip, a fabless semiconductor company based in China. Although Rockchip has sales of billions of dollars in China and the APAC region, they have a very modest market share position in Europe and North America. Nevertheless, they’ve gained an outstanding reputation outside of Asia and continue to grow and expand globally.

What’s great about using the publicly available processors from Rockchip is that they offer detailed product information, such as comprehensive datasheets. If you are a professional user and you’d like to internalize the technology, the bill of materials (BOM) used by Rockchip is openly available in the market.

One of the greatest advantages of Rockchip is the diversified model they use to produce their wafers in fabs. Considering the supply chain constraints that Taiwan Semiconductors have had lately, there is a significant risk of stock shortages when the production of semiconductors is solely located in Asia or in one wafer fab.

Rockchip, on the other hand, uses several different fabs to produce their wafers, meaning that they have been able to ride out the supply chain storm better than some other semiconductor companies. This was one of the main attractions when we initiated the design, manufacture and distribution partnership with Radxa, a Rockchip design partner, to solve our customers’ problems.

ROCK products are designed by a talented engineering team from Radxa in China. They’ve approached their engineering by considering how they can provide everybody, from education and makers to industrial customers, with scalable, robust platforms using next-generation technology. It has been another key differentiator that laid the foundation of our partnership with Radxa and Rockchip.

We are also expanding our semiconductor design strategy with some of the largest semiconductor suppliers in the world.

What ROCK products is OKdo bringing to the market?

Nowadays, customers who have been designing using SBCs have been impacted by severe supply chain constraints that caused projects to stagnate. To help resolve the SBC availability issue, we’re excited to partner with Radxa and bring to market a robust roadmap of ROCK products.

At first, we introduced the special edition board, the ROCK 4 SE and the ROCK 4C+, which meet most of the design and cost requirements previously satisfied by other SBC brands. But now, the next generation of SBCs, the advanced, resilient and multifunctional board, the ROCK 5B, is finally here.

Packed with incredible features, including its powerful Rockchip RK3588 SoC, the ROCK 5B is the first SBC supporting 8K displays, tailor-made for advanced multimedia applications.

Depending on your design needs, there is a board that will “ROCK” your project. Whether it’s the next-gen ROCK 5B SBC, the ROCK 3A or a ROCK CM3 Compute module, be sure you can trust that your board will be as solid as a ROCK.