The Fast New Banana Pi BPI-CM4 Is Set to Offer Drop-In Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Compatibility
Designed to offer higher performance than the official system-on-module, the BPI-CM4 is a direct replacement — almost.
SinoVoIP, the company behind the Banana Pi family of single-board computers, has unveiled a work-in-progress alternative to the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 system-on-module (SOM): the Banana Pi BPI-CM4.
"Banana Pi BPI-CM4 is a computer module with [an] Amlogic A311D [system-on-chip]," the company explains of its latest design. "[It's the] same size as [the] Raspberry Pi CM4 module, and connect interface same as Raspberry Pi CM4 — you can use it as [a Raspberry Pi] CM4 [replacement]."
The chip at the heart of the compact board is the Amlogic A311D, a six-core design with four high-performance Arm Cortex-A73 cores running at up to 2.2GHz and two lower-power Cortex-A53 cores running at up to 1.8GHz. There's an Arm Mali-G52 MP4 graphics processor with four execution and 64 shading units offering a claimed 108.8 gigaFLOPS of FP32-precision compute, a neural network accelerator for INT8 workloads offering up to five TOPS, and an on-board cryptographic engine.
Full specifications have yet to be confirmed, but SinoVoIP has stated there will be 2GB and 4GB RAM variants with 16GB of eMMC storage, with up to 128GB supported, while all models will include gigabit Ethernet connectivity, optional Wi-Fi 5/6 support, and a single PCI Express lane — just like the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 it's designed to replace.
There's one area in which the module isn't a direct replacement, however: Display support. Where the original Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 range supports two HDMI and two DSI displays, plus two CSI camera inputs, the Banana Pi version only offers a single HDMI and DSI output and a single CSI input. As a result, installation into Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 carrier boards will result in those unsupported ports being disabled.
The company has not yet confirmed pricing or availability, beyond promising that it will be "[on] public sale soon." More information is available in the official forum post.