Banana Pi's BPI-CM6 Is a SpacemiT K1-Based RISC-V Computer-on-Module with Two TOPS of AI Compute
Compact eight-core RISC-V module, pin compatible with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and Compute Module 5, launching soon.
Embedded computing specialist Banana Pi has announced a new computer-on-module, designed to be compatible with Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and Compute Module 5 carriers with reduced functionality or specific carriers with full functionality — and featuring a SpacemiT eight-core RISC-V CPU with artificial intelligence (AI) acceleration.
"Banana Pi BPI-CM6 is a industrial grade RISC-V core board," Banana Pi explains of the module. "It [is a] design with SpacemiT K1 eight-core RISC-V chip, [and the] CPU integrates 2.0 TOPS [Tera-Operations Per Second] AI computing power. 8/16G[B] DDR and 8/16/32/128G[B] eMMC. Designed with board to board connectors for enhanced stability, same as Raspberry Pi CM4."
The BPI-CM6, brought to our attention by Linux Gizmos, is a computer-on-module designed to be compatible with carrier boards built for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and Compute Module 5 — though with a third board-to-board connector, providing connectivity to extra general-purpose input/output (GPIO) features unavailable if installed on a two-connector CM4/CM5 carrier board.
At the heart of the module is the SpacemIT Key Stone K1, a system-on-chip that features eight X60 64-bit RISC-V cores running at up to 1.6GHz and featuring the RISC-V Vector Extensions (RVV 1.0) to accelerate machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) workloads. The CPU, the company claims, can deliver two tera-operations per second (TOPS) of compute at minimum precision — and there's also an Imagination BXE-2-32 graphics processor running at 819MHz for additional compute.
The module will launch, Banana Pi has confirmed, with 8GB of LPDDR4 and 16GB of eMMC flash storage on-board, with at 16GB LPDDR4 option plus support for 8GB, 32GB, and 128GB eMMC storage. There's a Realtek RTL8211F gigabit Ethernet transceiver, plus an RTL8852 Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.2 SDIO module for wireless connectivity.
The features available to the user, of course, depend on what is broken out by the carrier board — and Banana Pi has designed its own as a reference point. This features a single HDMI connector, two gigabit Ethernet ports, one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 Type-A port plus a USB Type-C On-The-Go (OTG) port, microSD Card storage, two M.2 M-key slots each with a two-lane PCI Express Gen 2.1 interface from the five available on the module, two four-lane MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) inputs, one four-lane Display Serial Interface (DSI) output, and a 26-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header.
More information on the Banana Pi BPI-CM6 is available on the company's wiki; at the time of writing, pricing and availability had yet to be announced.