NXP i.MX 9 gets neural processor for AI at the edge

“These attributes enable developers to address areas from voice-assisted smart home and building systems, to low-power industrial gateways and automotive driver monitoring systems,” according to NXP.

In high-end versions (table below) there are dual 1.7GHz Arm Cortex-A55 application processors, and a 250MHz real-time Cortex-M33 microcontroller with access to all peripherals including the Ethos-U65.

The fully-loaded version has two-lane 1,080p30 MIPI CSI for a camera, as well as a parallel camera interface, with displays served by four-lane 1,080p60 MIPI DSI, four-lane LVDS and a parallel display interface. Finally there are two Gbit Ethernet ports and two USB 2.0 ports for communication.

Security comes from the company’s EdgeLock ‘secure enclave’, a pre-configured autonomous security sub-system that will be standard on-die feature across i.MX 9 devices. NXP has partnered with Microsoft to offer chip-to-cloud security with “more than ten years of on-going updates and security improvements with the i.MX 93-CS [‘cloud secured’] family built with Microsoft Azure Sphere”, said NXP. In -CS devices, Microsoft Pluton is enabled on the EdgeLock enclave to form a root-of-trust.

Automotive, smart home, smart building and smart factory applications are expected, where machine learning anticipates and automates user needs.

“i.MX 93 applications processors will help open a range of use cases at the edge, where you need to have that close tie-in to the sensor data to make fast decisions,” said NXP edge processing general manager Ron Martino. “This will enable a new generation of secured, efficient, intelligent devices across IoT, industrial IoT and automotive applications.”

Machine learning application development will be using the eIQ software development environment, including the eIQ Toolkit workflow, GUI-based eIQ Portal development environment and eIQ inference engine options – that will include Ethos-U65 microNPU as an inference target.

i.MX 93 will be part of NXP’s product longevity programme.

Parts

Package features

The iMX 93 product page is here, and there is a product summary here