Virtium Embedded Artists Unveils the iMX8M Mini DX-M1, an NXP i.MX 8M Mini SOM with DEEPX NPU
Edge AI accelerator delivers a claimed 25 tera-operations per second of minimum-precision compute in a 5W power envelope.
Virtium Embedded Artists has announced a system-on-module (SOM) that combines an NXP Semiconductors i.MX 8M Mini system-on-chip with a DEEPX DX-M1 neural coprocessor delivering a claimed 25 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of minimum-precision computer for on-device machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) applications.
"By bringing the iMX8M Mini DX-M1 to market, Virtium Embedded Artists is meeting surging demand from edge and IoT [Internet of Things] device manufacturers for a ready-made hardware platform for low-power vision AI processing and embedded control," says Anders Rosvall of his company's latest design. "Now OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] can get to market faster and more easily with new product designs which offer the extra value that vision AI brings to industrial, mobility, security, and edge computing applications."
The heart of the company's iMX8M Mini DX-M1 SOM, which uses a SODIMM form factor to connect to a compatible carrier board, is NXP's i.MX 8M Mini system-on-chip; this gives it four Arm Cortex-A53 cores running at 1.8GHz and a Cortex-M4 core running at 400MHz for real-time workloads. The chip also includes 2D and 3D graphics acceleration, a 1080p-capable video codec subsystem, and is connected to 2GB of LPDDR4 memory.
Alongside the main system-on-chip is a neural coprocessor, the DEEPX DX-M1. This reaches a claimed 25 tera-operations per second (TOPS) at minimum precision with an average loaded power consumption of just 5W — and includes 4GB of LPDDR4 memory of its own, separate to the 2GB of LPDDR4 provided to the main CPU. For projects where only some systems may need on-device acceleration for machine learning and artificial intelligence workloads, the SOM is also available without the DX-M1 — while an industrial-grade variant drops the CPU's maximum operating frequency from 1.8GHz to 1.6GHz in order to offer an extended operating temperature range of -40–85°C (-40–185°F).
More information on the module is available on the Virtium Embedded Artists website; while the company is accepting orders, however, it had not made pricing publicly available at the time of writing. Shipments are expected to begin in August, the company has confirmed.