Canonical
on 23 October 2025
Ubuntu now runs natively on the Thundercomm RUBIK Pi 3 developer board – a lightweight Pi created for AI developers which runs on the Qualcomm Dragonwing™ QCS6490 processor.
October 23, 2025 – Today Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, announced an optimized, pre-installed Ubuntu image for RUBIK Pi 3 – a powerful AI developer board built on Dragonwing QCS6490. These new, optimized Ubuntu images reduce time to market through out-of-the-box functionality, and offer official long-term support from Canonical. The new Ubuntu image is also available to download and install for current users of RUBIK Pi 3.
A rapid AI development platform, powered by Ubuntu
AI is a fast-paced industry, and time is of the essence when launching new products. These optimized Ubuntu images offer developers on RUBIK Pi 3 access to cutting-edge open source, combined with the stability and robustness that Ubuntu is known for. These new images complement RUBIK Pi 3’s ease of use and accessibility. The images work seamlessly out of the box, and are fine-tuned for hardware performance and resource efficiency.
“By delivering an optimized Ubuntu image preloaded on the powerful RUBIK Pi 3, we’re offering an integrated, securely designed, and supported foundation for AI developers, said Cindy Goldberg, VP of Silicon Alliances at Canonical. “Our partnership with Qualcomm and Thundercomm allows developers to move from a concept to a deployed solution with speed and confidence.”
“At Thundercomm, we’re committed to lowering the barriers to AI innovation,” said Ali Mesri, Sr Vice President, Business Development at Thundercomm. “With the optimized Ubuntu image on RUBIK Pi 3, developers now have a unified platform that combines Qualcomm’s performance, Canonical’s stability, and Thundercomm’s deep system integration — enabling faster, more reliable AI deployment from concept to production.”
Powerful features on an accessible board
RUBIK Pi 3 is designed to make innovative hardware more accessible to AI developers. It offers a full-stack, end-to-end solution that is performant at low power. RUBIK Pi 3 consumes less than 6.5W, whilst at the same time being equipped with a 12 tops ML accelerator, 8-core GPU, integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, 8GB LPDDR4x RAM, and 128GB UFS 2.2 storage.
Built on Dragonwing QCS6490, RUBIK Pi 3 includes access to the Qualcomm®
AI Hub with pre-optimized models, and access to the Edge Impulse MLOps platform for training and deployment. Canonical’s new optimized Ubuntu images are the latest development RUBIK Pi 3 offers – see how everything fits together in the table below:
| Feature | Description |
| Optimized Ubuntu images | Prototype, test and deploy edge AI solutions faster with the world’s most popular enterprise Linux. |
| Edge AI silicon | High-performance, low-power AI chips. |
| Qualcomm AI hub | Pre-optimized models for vision, audio, and NLP. |
| IMSDK | Intelligent Multimedia SDK, for developing HW accelerated multimedia and AI applications. |
| QIRP SDK | Qualcomm® Intelligent Robotics Product SDK for developing Robotics applications with ROS/ROS2. |
| Containers | Containerized SDKs and applications with access to HW acceleration (such as NPU, GPU, and VZPU). |
| Integrated developer environment | Qualcomm® VSCode IDE Extensions to simplify device setup and application development environment |
Download the optimized Ubuntu image for Rubik Pi 3
Visit the Thundercomm RUBIK Pi3 page to get your board and start building with the optimized Ubuntu image today.
About Canonical
Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, provides open source security, support and services. Our portfolio covers critical systems, from the smallest devices to the largest clouds, from the kernel to containers, from databases to AI. With customers that include top tech brands, emerging startups, governments and home users, Canonical delivers trusted open source for everyone. Learn more at https://canonical.com/
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