The RK3576 already integrates a capable NPU, but Rockchip's newly released RK1820 AI accelerator opens another interesting possibility: running AI inference on an external dedicated accelerator while the main SoC handles the application logic.
Although the RK1820 SDK is still very new and public examples are extremely limited, I wanted to answer one question:
Can YOLOv8 actually run on RK1820?
The answer is yes.
In this article I'll walk through the complete deployment process, including model conversion, RKNN3 deployment, runtime initialization, and real-time webcam inference.
This isn't about achieving the highest FPS yet—the current SDK is still evolving—but rather demonstrating that RK1820 is already capable of running modern object detection models.
Workflow OverviewThe deployment pipeline consists of four major steps:
YOLOv8 (.pt)
↓
Export ONNX
↓
RKNN3 Toolkit
↓
RK1820 RKNN Model
↓
RKNN3 Lite Runtime
↓
Real-time Camera Detection
MModel DeploymentUnlike RK3588 or RK3568, the RK1820 uses the brand-new RKNN3 toolchain, which means the deployment workflow is significantly different from previous Rockchip NPUs.
- Step 1 — Export YOLOv8
The original YOLOv8 model is exported to ONNX.
model.export(
format="onnx",
opset=12,
imgsz=640
)
The exported model uses
Input:
1×3×640×640which matches the RK1820 converter requirements.
- Step 2 — Convert to RKNN3
The ONNX model is converted using RKNN3 Toolkit.
Unlike previous RKNN versions, RKNN3 generates two files:
yolov8_rk1820_fp16.rknn
yolov8_rk1820_fp16.weightBoth files are required during runtime.
- Step 3 — RKNN3 Runtime
Loading the model requires both files:
rknn.load_rknn(
model_path="yolov8_rk1820_fp16.rknn",
weight_path="yolov8_rk1820_fp16.weight"
)Runtime initialization:
rknn.init_runtime(
target="rk1820",
core_mask=0x01,
device_id=None
)One interesting difference from previous RKNN runtimes is that the RK1820 currently requires explicit target selection and NPU core configuration.
- Step 4 — Real-Time Webcam Inference
Frames are captured with OpenCV.
Each frame is
- resized to 640×640
- expanded into NCHW format
- sent directly to RK1820
outputs = rknn.inference(inputs=[img])The converted model already contains the YOLO post-processing operator, so the runtime returns detection results directly instead of the three feature maps typically produced by standard YOLO exports.
The output shape is:
(1, 256, 6)which greatly simplifies the inference pipeline.
Debugging the DeploymentSince the RKNN3 ecosystem is still very new, several issues had to be resolved before inference could succeed.
Some examples include:
- RKNN3 Toolkit version mismatch
- Missing weight file
- Runtime initialization errors
- Invalid NPU core mask
- Input tensor layout mismatch
- Incorrect post-processing assumptions
Each issue required verification using runtime inspection tools before moving to the next stage.
Although these problems were time-consuming, they helped reveal how the new RKNN3 runtime actually works internally.
PerformanceCurrent test configuration:
This performance is still lower than the integrated RK3576 NPU.
However, the primary objective of this project was not performance benchmarking but successfully demonstrating that modern YOLO models can already execute on the new RK1820 platform.
Given that the SDK is still at version 1.0.x, there is significant room for optimization in future releases.
Why This MattersRK1820 represents Rockchip's next-generation AI accelerator architecture.
Although documentation is currently limited, successfully running YOLOv8 demonstrates that:
- RKNN3 deployment is already functional
- External AI acceleration is possible on RK3576
- Existing ONNX models can be migrated with relatively small changes
- Future optimization should mainly come from SDK maturity rather than application logic
This makes RK1820 an interesting platform for edge AI developers who want to explore Rockchip's newest inference framework.
ConclusionThis project successfully deployed YOLOv8 onto the RK1820 AI accelerator and achieved real-time object detection using a USB camera.
While the current frame rate is modest, the experiment validates the complete deployment pipeline—from ONNX conversion through RKNN3 model generation to live inference on hardware.
As the RKNN3 ecosystem matures, future toolkit updates are likely to improve performance and expand support for more models.
For developers interested in exploring Rockchip's next-generation AI hardware, RK1820 is already a promising platform worth experimenting with.






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