NXP Releases i.MX RT Series Crossover Processors for Face Recognition and Smart Audio Applications

NXP has released a trio of crossover processors designed for face recognition and smart audio applications. Each of the i.MX-RT series packs an Arm Cortex-M7 core that operates at up to 600MHz for real-time applications, including high-end audio, image and voice processing, sensor fusion and motor control, which make them perfect for NXP’s new chips. While the NXP i.MX RT106F is tailored for face recognition/expression identification, the NXP i.MX RT106L and NXP i.MX RT106A are catered to cloud-based voice applications.

NXP’s i.MX-RT1060A, i.MX RT-106L and the i.MX-RT106F are virtually identical in terms of hardware, with the only difference being wireless connectivity interfaces. Under the hood, each is outfitted with an Arm Cortex-M7 processor (3020 CoreMark/1284 DMIPS) with 1Mb of on-chip SRAM and up to 512Kb of configurable TCM (Tightly Coupled Memory). There are also several external memory storage options, including NAND, eMMC, QuadSPI NOR Flash, and Parallel NOR Flash.

Rounding out the feature set of the boards are advanced multimedia for GUI and enhanced HMI — a 2D graphics accelerated engine, parallel camera interface, LCD controller, and 3X I2S for multichannel audio. Connectivity options include interfaces for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, and Thread.

The i.MX RT-106L takes advantage of Snips voice AI platform, which offers a far-field audio front end (acoustic echo cancellation, ambient noise reduction, beamforming, codecs, etc.), automatic speech recognition, media player/streamer, as well as MQTT, lwIP, and TLS. The i.MX RT-1060A uses NXP’s turnkey voice assistance software, providing a far-field softDSP audio front end (acoustic echo cancellation, ambient noise reduction, beamforming, Barge-in, codecs, etc.). It even includes a wake-word inference engine (media player/streamer, MQTT, IwIP, TLS, discovery, and onboarding).

On the software side for the i.MX RT106F processor, NXP utilized their turnkey face recognition platform, which consists of MCUXpresso SDK, IDE, and Config Tools, along with camera and display drivers, image capturing, image pre-processing, face detection/tracking/alignment/recognition, anti-spoofing, and more. More details on NXP’s i.MX-RT crossover series processors and purchasing options can be found on the company’s product page.