Rockpi4/install

Installation

Choose and install an operation system on your ROCK Pi 4. To appropriately follow this installation guide you will need to:

• Choose an installation method
• Download necessary files
• Choose host machine
• Follow flashing instructions

Methods of Installation

In most cases, you will be presented with two options when installing your new operating system onto your ROCK Pi 4:

• eMMC USB upgrade Method
  • The firmware will be downloaded from the USB to the ROCK Pi 4 on board eMMC storage
• Running on SD Card Method
  • The firmware will be written on a SD Card that will lately be inserted onto ROCK Pi 4.

Each Method has its own benefits and requires different levels of experience.

eMMC USB upgrade Method

Rockusb is a custom USB protocal from Rockchip supported by ROCK Pi 4 and can be used for firmware installation(USB to eMMC). This method applies to advanced users who are most familiar with command line tools or modified/custom source code and need to download such updates to the board for testing/execution.

This method requires the following hardware:

• ROCK Pi 4 board with power supply
• Host machine (Linux/Mac)
• USB Type-A to Type-A cable
• USB serial to TTL cable(not required to perform flash)
• USB Mouse and/or keyboard (not required to perform flash)
• HDMI Monitor with full size HDMI cable (not required to perform flash)
• Ethernet cable (not required to perform flash)

Running on SD Card Method

The Rockchip RK3399 Soc used in ROCK Pi 4 includes 64bits hexa core processor with dual 1.8GHz Cortex-72 and qual 1.4GHz Cortex-A53, Mali T860MP4 graphics processing unit (GPU) and Internal SRAM. It has a level 1 (L1) cache and a level 2 (L2). For level 1 cache, 48KB Icache and 32KB Dcache is for each A72. 32KB Icache and 32KB Dcache is for each A53. For level 2 cache, 1024KB cache is for big cluster and 512KB cache is for little cluster.