The Dragon Q6A is a serious single-board computer (SBC) built by Radxa, aimed at edge AI, industrial IoT and smart terminals. Right off the bat, it uses the Qualcomm QCS6490 platform, an octa-core “Kryo” CPU that can clock up to 2.7 GHz. That means it has plenty of power for demanding tasks but is still efficient.
Graphically and for AI tasks, the board is also well equipped. It has the Adreno 643 graphics processor, which can handle the current graphics API such as Vulkan, OpenCL, OpenGL ES and DirectX. That gives it serious graphics and computing muscle for things like multimedia or advanced user interfaces. On the AI side, it boasts up to 12 TOPS via the 6th-generation Qualcomm AI Engine with Hexagon and fused AI accelerator architecture, pretty impressive for an SBC.
In terms of connectivity and expansion, it doesn’t slouch either. You get HDMI 2.0 for display, dual displays via MIPI-DSI, and video decode/encode up to 4K60/4K30 with HDR10/HDR10+ support. For storage, it supports M.2 NVMe (M Key 2230), onboard LPDDR5 (up to 16 GB at 5500MT/s), microSD, and eMMC/UFS modules. For networking, it has WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.4 and Gigabit Ethernet with optional PoE support (with expansion board), so it can be used in networked edge environments. And for sensors/IoT, it offers three MIPI-CSI camera interfaces (good for multi-lens setups) and a 40-pin GPIO header with UART/I2C/SPI/PWM, etc.
On the software side, it’s backed by a robust ecosystem: you can run various Linux distributions (Yocto, Ubuntu, Fedora, Armbian, Arch), and even Windows 11 IoT Enterprise. There’s also access to Qualcomm’s AI Hub with pre-optimised models, which simplifies on-device AI deployment. Radxa also maintains strong documentation and a community for support and collaboration.
Radxa has recently introduced other SBCs, including the O6N Nano-ITX, the Cubie A7A, and others. You can check those out for a better understanding of Radxa.
The Radxa Dragon Q6A is priced around $62 for the 4GB model and goes up to $124 for the 16GB version, depending on configuration and retailer. Though certain variants are presently out of stock, it is now accessible via AraceTech and AliExpress as well as Radxa’s authorised partners and certain internet retailers. Shipping costs, taxes, and memory choices could affect pricing variations. More details are available on the official product page.
Sayantan Nandy