Antmicro has created an open source Snapdragon 845 Baseboard for vision-based machine learning designs.

The open hardware baseboard serves as a starting point for building new solutions such as portable smart assistants, kiosks, VR/AR or smart screens, and the company also provides software, AI frameworks, over the air update (OTA) and fleet management development services.

The Snapdragon 845 Baseboard is a 100x70mm (4×2.75 in) carrier board for the Quectel SA800U-WF System on Module. The SA800U-WF features an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 System on Chip based on the Kryo 385 64-bit CPU and the Adreno 630 GPU.

• Scaleable RISC-V module for distributed AI processing
• Antmicro joins the CHIPS Alliance
• Report calls for European FPGA tools to boost open source hardware

Antmicro has worked with camera vendors including Allied Vision for camera drivers, as well as working with other vendors such as OmniVision and FRAMOS via the existing camera adapters or quickly designing a custom one. Antmicro has also been developing a variety of video conversion devices, often including FPGA or dedicated ASICs. This includes open hardware designs such as the SDI to MIPI CSI-2 bridge or the HDMI to MIPI CSI-2 bridge, which are also electrically compatible with the baseboard.

The SoC also includes radio transceivers for dual-band (2.4GHz/5GHz) WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0, while the SoM includes on-board antenna ports which simplify the antenna integration process. All the other IO-interfaces offered by the SoM are break-routed by Antmicro’s baseboard through board-to-board connectors located on the bottom side of the SoM. This approach minimizes the mechanical outline of the SoM itself and allows for stacked designs for size constrained applications such as mobile consumer electronics or wearables.

The SoM has two independent video interfaces over MIPI DSI and the baseboard exposes one of them on a generic 0.5mm pitch FFC and converts the other into HDMI with s Lontium 9611 IC, making the board compatible with a variety of displays and external monitors supporting HDMI input.