Virtium Embedded Artists Launches the Energy-Efficient DEEPX iMX8M Mini AI Kit

Industrial and embedded computing specialist Virtium Embedded Artists has announced the launch of the DEEPX iMX8M Mini AI Kit, developed in partnership with DEEPX: a single-board computer (SBC) style development bundle with an "AI Booster" delivering 25 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of compute at a 5W power draw for on-device machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) workloads.

"This product redefines the limits of edge AI performance, delivering unparalleled power and cost efficiency," claims Virtium Embedded Artists managing director Anders Rosvall of the company's newest launch. "The DEEPX iMX8M Mini AI Kit simplifies the evaluation process for design engineers, enabling them to determine if our solution meets their application requirements while accelerating time to market."

The DEEPX iMX8M Mini AI Kit isn't a true single-board computer, though it can be treated like one; rather, it's three boards bundled together. The first is an iMX8M Mini uCOM computer-on-module, built around NXP Semiconductor's i.MS 8M Mini processor — giving it four Arm Cortex-A53 cores running at up to 1.8GHz and a Cortex-M4 core running at up to 400MHz, a VeriSilicon Vivante GC Nano Ultra 2D graphics processor, and GC320 3D graphics processor. To this the company has added 1GB of LPDDR4 memory and 8GB of on-board eMMC storage.

The second board is DEEPX's contribution: an M.2 module with the company's DX-M1 AI Booster, delivering a claimed 25 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of minimum-precision compute at a 5W power draw — the highest cost efficiency, power efficiency, and performance efficiency in the world, the company boasts. The final board ties everything together: a carrier board for the uCOM module, which includes a gigabit Ethernet port, USB ports, microSD card slot, MIPI Display Serial Interface (DSI) and parallel RGB video outputs plus a bundled DSI-to-HDMI adapter, a MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) input, mikroBUS header, expansion connectors, and a dedicated debug interface.

The kit, which can run pre-trained models or custom models compiled with a toolkit available from DEEPX, is now available to order for "qualified projects" on the Virtium Embedded Artists website; the company has not publicly disclosed pricing.