South Korean semiconductor company Telechips is making an unexpected return to the hobbyist market with the TOPST D3-G, a single-board computer built around the company's automotive-grade TCT8050 "Dolphin3" processor. The nine-core SoC combines four Cortex-A72 cores running at 1.69 GHz, four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.45 GHz, and a Cortex-R5 real-time core at 600 MHz, delivering a combined 45,180 DMIPS. Graphics come from an Imagination Technologies PowerVR 9XTP GPU capable of 168 GFLOPS with support for Vulkan 1.2 and OpenGL ES 3.2.
The board measures 12 x 9 cm (4.7 x 3.5 inches) and ships with either 4GB or 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM alongside 32GB of eMMC storage and a microSD slot. Display connectivity stands out with a DisplayPort 1.4 output supporting up to four monitors through MST, including configurations like one 4K60 panel plus three 1080p60 displays. The D3-G also includes Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, two MIPI CSI camera connectors for up to 5MP modules, a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot, and a 40-pin GPIO header compatible with most Raspberry Pi HATs. Three CAN Bus interfaces hint at the processor's automotive origins.
Telechips provides a Linux SDK based on Yocto Project 4.0 with Ubuntu 22.04 support, though developers should note the kernel is based on Linux 5.10 LTS, which reaches end of life in December 2026. Documentation and example projects are available on the TOPST website. The Open-EP e-Paper project on GitHub already includes instructions for interfacing a 4.26-inch grayscale display with the board.
The TOPST D3-G is currently available only in South Korea, with the 4GB model priced at approximately $110 (€101) and the 8GB version at $129 (€119). Global availability is expected in the coming months.
