Radxa E54C High-Performance AI Edge Network Computer

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Another network device with good specs by Radxa.
Does anyone know if the generic Openwrt ARMv8 firmware will work on it.

Radxa E54C High-Performance AI Edge Network Computer

Tech Specs

SOC

  • Rockchip RK3582

CPU

  • Dual ARM Cortex-A76 and Quad ARM Cortex-A55

RAM

  • LPDDR4 (2GB/4GB/8GB/16GB/32GB)

Multimedia

  • H.264, H.265 encoder by 4K@60fps

Storage

  • Onboard 16MB SPI Flash for bootloader
  • Optional Onboard eMMC (8GB/16GB/32GB)
  • 1x microSD Card Slot
  • 1x M.2 M Key Connector with PCIe 2.1 1-lane for M.2 NVMe SSD

USB

  • 1x USB 3.0 OTG Type-C Port for Data, Display and Debug, Type-C HUB is not supported
  • 1x USB 3.0 HOST Type-A Port
  • 2x USB 2.0 HOST Type-A Ports

Ethernet

  • Four Gigabit Ethernet ports with configurable WAN/LAN modes and 4-way isolated network support (RTL8367RB-VB)

Button

  • 1x Power Button
  • 1x Maskrom Button
  • 1x User Button

Display

  • 1x HDMI 2.1 supporting up to 8K

Other

  • 1x 2-Pin 1.25mm Fan Header
  • 1x 2-Pin 1.25mm RTC Battery Connector
  • 5x LED Status Indicator Lights
  • 14-Pin 0.1" (2.54mm) header supporting: SPI, UART, I2C, 5V/3.3V Power Out

Power

  • 1x 12V DC Jack 5525
2

There is no "generic Openwrt ARMv8 firmware"[*].

Someone will have to do the necessary development to support this device, same as for any other device; right now it is not supported.

--
[*] Yes, there is ARM SystemReady (and OpenWrt images for it), which is a move into the right direction, with an UEFI+ACPI+grub boot chain and multi-platform UEFI kernels, but I haven't seen any indication that this device would follow SystemReady standards or ARM Server Base Boot Requirements (contrary to their Radxa Orion O6, which does claim to be ARM SystemReady SR (ServerReady) v2.5, using the quite different CIX P1 SOC). However, being SystemReady compliant doesn't automatically mean that OpenWrt will run on it either, as it still needs a) a new enough kernel containing the necessary SOC/ board support and b) that OpenWrt's SystemReady images actually enable all the required kernel build options (~drivers) for this device, it still requires some development to ensure that (but it makes the situation a lot easier).
Yes, theoretically any ARMv8 SOC could become SystemReady compliant, if you throw enough development efforts at it, by developing a hybrid u-boot + tiano_core bootloader chain to emulate enough of UEFI to run grub-efi/ linux in UEFI mode; this has been proven to be possible with the RPi4 - doesn't means that it's going to be easily replicable for other SOCs/ devices (it would be a great long term goal, though).

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