Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro: Raspberry Pi CM4 Alternative Unveiled with Rockchip AI Processor

According to the CNX Software resource, the Banana Pi assortment now includes the BPI-CM5 Pro computing module, designed for building devices with AI functions. The new product, made on the Rockchip hardware platform, is an alternative to the Raspberry Pi CM4.

The product has dimensions 55×40 mm. The RK3576 processor is used, which contains four Cortex-A72 (2.2 GHz) and Cortex-A53 (1.8 GHz) cores, as well as an Arm Mali-G52 MC3 graphics unit with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0 and Vulkan 1.1. The built-in neuroprocessor node has AI performance up to 6 TOPS (INT8) and support for INT4/INT8/INT16/BF16/TF32. The amount of LPDDR5 RAM can be 8 or 16 GB.

Image source: Banana Pi

The Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro module has an eMMC flash chip with a capacity of 32, 64 or 128 GB. Based on the Synaptics SYN43752 controller, support for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 is implemented. The operating temperature range extends from 0 to +80 °C.

The new product can be mounted on the CM5-IO board. It is equipped with an M.2 M-key (PCIe) connector, a microSD slot, an HDMI connector (up to 8K @ 60 Hz), MIPI DSI (4 lines) and MIPI CSI (2 and 4 lines) interfaces, a 1GbE network port (RJ-45 ) with optional PoE support, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a USB Type-C connector and a 40-pin GPIO header. Dimensions are 100x80x29 mm.

The Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro module costs about $100 in a modification with 8 GB of RAM and a 64 GB eMMC chip. The kit with the CM5-IO board will cost about $140.