Last summer, Canaan introduced the Kendryte K510 Tri-Core RISC-V AI Processor, now also known as Canaan K510, as an updated version of the Kendryte K210 with much higher 3 TOPS performance, but at the time, there was no board and SDK development.
But I have just been informed about the availability of the Canaan Kendryte K510 CRB (customer referral platform) AI development kit with camera module and LCD display, as well as a software development kit with U-Boot, Linux and AI tools that can be used to develop intelligent audio and computer vision applications.
Kendryte K510 CRB-Kit Developer Kit Specifications:
- SoC – Canaan Kendryte K510 dual-core RISC-V64 processor up to 800 MHz and 1x RISC-V DSP up to 800 MHz for up to 3 TOPS AI performance, ultra-low power wake-up VAD, H.264 video encoding up to 2 channel @ 1080p60
- System memory – 512 MB LPDDR3 @ 1600 MHz
- Storage – 16GB eMMC 5.1 flash, MicroSD card slot
- Video output – HDMI and built-in LCD display
- Video input – 2x MIPI CSI, 1x DVP interface, integrated camera card with 2 sensors
- Audio – 3.5mm audio jack
- Networking – Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port and wireless module
- USB – Micro USB OTG 2.0 port
- Debugging – USB-C to UART Interface, JTAG Header
- Extension – GPIO extension header with UART, SPI, etc…
- Miscellaneous – LEDs, reset and start buttons, on/off switch
- Power supply – 5V via USB Type-C port
Looking closer at the board, we can see the K510-CRB-V1.2 carrier board and the K510-CORE-V1.2 system-on-module.
The SDK (K510 buildroot) can be found on Github with Chinese-only instructions for now, and a relatively short K510 Technical Reference Manual (575 PDF pages) can also be found on Google Drive. The default Linux image comes with a face detection demo that can be started from the serial console.
Another Github repository has more detailed hardware and software documentation, and the company has posted a few demos such as license plate recognition and face detection on its Bilibili account (it’s the equivalent of YouTube in China) .
Some additional details can be found on the product page. The K510 CRB development kit is sold for $199 on Analoglamb. The price is relatively high, but I guess that’s for people wanting early access to the platform, and later this year we should probably get more affordable K510 dev boards.

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 on a part-time basis, before stepping down as Director of Software Engineering and starting writing daily news and reviews full-time later in 2011.
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