Disclosure: Some links on this page are monetized by the Skimlinks, Amazon, Rakuten Advertising, and eBay, affiliate programs, and Liliputing may earn a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on those links. All prices are subject to change, and this article only reflects the prices available at time of publication.
The LattePanda Mu is a 70 x 60mm (2.8″ x 2.4″) compute module with an Intel Processor N100 chip, 8GB of RAM, 64GB of onboard storage, 9 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and support for up to three displays, two SATA drives, or other hardware.
Available from DFRobot with a list price of $139, the LattePanda Mu will be available for an early bird price of $99 for the first week after launch. But keep in mind that in order to actually use this board, you’re going to need to pair it with a carrier board for ports, power supply, and other features.
The good news is that there are a few options for doing that. There’s a Lite Carrier Board that sells for $39 and a larger “Full-Function Evaluation Carrier Board” priced at $89.
LattePanda has also open sourced the carrier board designs and libraries for folks that would prefer to design and manufacture their own.
The company says part of the idea behind offering the Mu as system-on-a-module (SOM) rather than a more traditional motherboard is that it allows users to design their own carrier boards for a variety of applications depending on whether they’re looking to use the system as a router, network-attached-storage device, general purpose computer, or even a cluster board.
At the heart of the SOM is an Intel Processor N100 chip with 4 cores, 4 threads, CPU speeds up to 3.4 GHz and an Intel UHD iGPU with 24 execution units and speeds up to 750 MHz. Intel positions the chip as a 6 watt processor, but LattePanda says the TDP can be adjusted to run anywhere from 6 watts to 35 watts.
Other features include:
- 8GB LPDDR5-4800 memory
- 64GB eMMC 5.1 storage
- Up to 3 displays supported simultaneously (1 x eDP 1.4 or up to 3 HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort 1.4)
- Up to 9 PCIe 3.0 lanes
- Up to 2 SATA 3.0 connections
- Up to 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports or up to 8 USB 2.0 ports
- 4 x I2C
- 4 x UART
- Expandable to 64 GPIOs
- 9~20V power
The company notes that the board should be compatible with a wide range of operating systems including Windows and most GNU/Linux distributions.
