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Two of the Chinese companies that crank out Raspberry Pi-like products (right down to the Fruit + Pi names) are at it again, this time with Raspberry Pi Compute Module clones.
The Orange Pi Compute Module 4 is a system-on-a-module that should be compatible with most carrier boards designed for the Raspberry Pi CM4. But while Raspberry Pi’s module features a Broadcom BCM2711 chip, the Orange Pi model has a Rockchip RK3566 processor. And the Banana Pi BPI-CM2 is a similar device, except it has a slightly higher-performance Rockchip RK3568 processor.
Since both boards follow the Raspberry Pi CM4 form-factor, they’re both 55 x 40mm (2″ x 1.6″) modules with an integrated processor, memory, storage, and two 100-pin connectors that allow for communication with a carrier board.
Here are some specs for each of the boards:
| Banana Pi BPI-CM2 | Orange Pi CM4 | |
| Processor | RK3568 4 x Cortex A55 @ 2 GHz Mali-G52 2EE GPU 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator | RK3566 4 x Cortex A55 @ 1.8 GHz Mali-G52 2EE GPU 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator |
| RAM | 2GB to 8GB LPDDR4/4X | 1GB to 8GB LPDDR4/4X |
| Storage | 8GB to 128GB eMMC | |
| Networking support | Gigabit Ethernet (RTL8211F) WiFi 5 & BT 5.0 (optional) | Gigabit Ethernet (YT8531C) WiFi 5Â & BT 5.0 LE |
| Interface | 2 x 100-pin connectors (Raspberry Pi CM4-compatible) 2 x 70 pin connectors (w/PCIe 3.0, USB 3.0, eDP, MIPI-DSI, and RGM110) | 2 x 100-pin connectors (Raspberry Pi CM4-compatible) 24-pin board-to-board connector |
A key selling point for both of these boards is that they should be compatible with most carrier boards designed for the Raspberry Pi CM4, but the additional 70-pin connectors on the Banana Pi BPI-CM2 suggest that it could also work with boards designed specifically for this module.
And the makers of the Orange Pi CM4 are already offering a carrier board designed for their module, with a bunch of ports and connectors including two MIPI-CSI interfaces fro cameras, an M.2 socket, and a 30-pin eDP interface.
The Banana Pi BPI-CM2 isn’t available for purchase yet, but you can buy the Orange Pi CM4 from Amazon or AliExpress, with prices starting as low as $23 for a model with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. The carrier board sells for $10.
Hopefully we’ll see a near-future upgrade to the Dragonbox Pyra that’s a carrier board for the BananaPi-CM2 (or other RK3568-based compute module)
working with cutie pi?
Yes the board itself will fit the CM4 slot. However getting the Rockchip SOC to work with the CutiePi’s hardware like the camera, display, microphone, gyroscope, etc is another matter. The OS image provided by CutiePi is a custom setup targeted for the Broadcom Arm chip. So it will not be an out-of-box experience and will require some messing around with configuration files, drivers, and low level commands. Maybe even recompiling your own kernel based on the current state of available software that has been released. So could be a long difficult road ahead depending on your technical expertise with linux.