I built an open-source Linux-capable single-board computer with DDR3
Details
- External ID
- 46376006
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- I built an open-source Linux-capable single-board computer with DDR3
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Dec. 24, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 17
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.6288167938931297
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
I've made an ARM based single-board computer that runs Android and Linux, and has the same size as the Raspberry Pi 3!Why? I was bored during my 2-week high-school vacation and wanted to improve my skills, while adding a bit to the open-source community :PThese were the specs I ended up with: - H3 SoC - Quad-Core Cortex-A7 ARM CPU @ 1.3GHz - Mali400 MP2 GPU @ 600MHz - 512MiB of DDR3 RAM (Can be upgraded to 1GiB) - WiFi, Bluetooth & Ethernet PHY - HDMI display port - 1080p resolution - 5x USB Slots: 2x USB-A, 1x USB-C Host, 1x USB-C Host & OTG, 1x USB-C PD for power (Negotiating up to 25W. No power socket, yay!) - 32 GB of eMMC 5.1 storage (Optional) - 3.5mm audio jack - SD Card slot - Lots of GPIOI've picked the H3 CPU mainly for its low cost yet powerful capabilities, and it's pretty well supported by the Linux kernel. Plus, I couldn't find any open-source designs with this chip, so I decided to contribute a bit and fill the gap.A 4-layer PCB was used for its lower price and to make the project more challenging, but if these boards are to be mass-produced, I'd bump it up to 6 and use a solid ground plane as the bottom layer's reference plane. The DDR3 and CPU fanout was truly a challenge in a 4-layer board.The PCB was designed in KiCAD and open-source on the Github repo with all the custom symbols and footprints (https://github.com/cheyao/icepi-sbc). You can also check it out online with kicanvas: https://kicanvas.org/?github=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fchey...At large quantities, the price can probably reach less than 20$! (exc. taxes, tariffs and other costs)It has been a wild journey, even making me learn how to use crypto as I needed to pay someone to download some "confidential" files from a baidu drive...Read about more details on Github! Everything is open-source under the Solderpad license, aka do what you want: sell it, build it, modify it! :-)
Enrichment
- Theme
- lightweight and on-device AI runtimes
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Hardware & robotics
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- open-source linux single-board computer with ddr3
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Designing an ARM single-board computer with high-speed DDR3 memory traces involves physical hardware design, PCB layout with strict impedance/signal integrity matching, and board bring-up/bootloader development.
What it would actually take: Requires high-speed multi-layer PCB design in tools like KiCad or Altium, focusing on trace length matching and impedance control for high-speed DDR3 memory buses. It also requires hardware bring-up, device tree configuration, and U-Boot/Linux kernel adaptation for the Allwinner H3 SoC. This work demands physical electrical engineering, hardware fabrication access, and embedded systems firmware expertise.
Discussion
8 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: k3s, k0s, Talos, Pine A64, SG2002/LicheeRV Nano
Concerns raised: Kubesolo has no clustering capabilities, only solo operation, Memory constraints - DDR3 limited, everything needs more memory, Unclear practical use case or value proposition
Feature requests: Add socket for swappable RAM modules like laptop DIMMs, Battery gauge (MAX17043) and battery controller support, GPIO buttons for interaction
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 151 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #72 of 152 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 53 days after the earliest competitor.
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Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
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