Chinese vendor Sipeed has announced a $72, open spec “Sipeed Tang Hex” SBC which supports Linux on a Xilinx Zynq-7020. This is coming after they recently launched a Sipeed MaxiCube dev based on a Kenryte K210 RISC-V chip, and a FPGA board called Sipeed Tang based on an a Gowin GW1N-1-LV FPGA selling for $5. The board goes by other names like the Lychee Sugar and the Litchi candy. The Sipeed Tang HEX can be purchased for $72 with shipping on Aliexpress, and it is referred to as the “Lychee HEX ZYNQ-7020 FPGA Development Board Raspberry pie Edition ZEDBOARD” on AliEXpress. You can also get it for 439 RMB ($62) on Taobao for people based in China, and on Amazon for $124.13 with free shipping.
The $72 price tag is fair considering the price of other open-spec Zynq-7000 SBCs such as MYIR Z-turn Board, which sells for $119, which features a Zynq-7020, 1GB RAM, and 512MB NAND flash, and the Z-turn Lite with less features, which sells for $75 and features a Zynq-7010 with a lower-end FPGA and 512MB RAM. However, the Xilinx Zynq-7020 (XC7Z020-1CLG484) features dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 processor and FPGA with 85K logic cells, 4.9Mb Block RAM, 220 DSP slices. The TANG Hex enables 1GB LPDDR3, 256MB NAND, and a microSD slot. It offers a 10/100Mbps Ethernet port, which is in contrast to the GbE on the Z-turn, and 4x USB 2.0 ports. For onboard interfaces, it features a UART, JTAG, and the 26-pin GPIO, which is unknown if it will support early Pi add-on boards. The board is powered by a 12V/3.5A DC jack, and it enables a power button and 2x user LEDs. There is no HDMI output/input just like the other boards.
Source: LOW COST SIPEED TANG HEX FEATURES XILINX ZYNQ-7020
