BeagleBone AI-64 SBC features TI TDA4VM Cortex-A72/R5F SoC with 8 TOPS AI accelerator

BeagleBone AI-64 is a single board computer (SBC) powered by a Texas Instruments TDA4VM dual-core Cortex-A72 + hexa-core Cortex-R5F processor which also embeds an 8 TOPS AI accelerator, plus three DSP, as well as plenty of I/Os that makes it ideal for advanced AI industrial applications.

It follows the BeagleBone-AI SBC launched in 2019, but with much higher specs including a 64-bit Arm processor, 4GB RAM, three USB 3.0 ports, an M.2 E-Key socket with PCIe, USB and SDIO, plus the usual expansion headers that keep compatibility with existing BeagleBone cape add-on boards.

BeagleBone AI-64

 

BeagleBone AI-64 specifications compared to BeagleBone-AI and BeagleBone Black boards:

BeagleBone AI-64BeagleBone AIBeagleBone Black (or BeagleBone Black Wireless)
SoCTexas Instruments Jacinto TDA4VM
2x ARM Cortex-A72
Texas Instruments Sitara AM5729
2x ARM Cortex-A15
Texas Instruments Sitara AM3358
ARM Cortex-A8
Max CPU clock2 GHz1.5 GHz1 GHz
Co-processorsC7x+MMA, 2xC66x, 12xPRU, 6xARM Cortex-R5, PowerVR Rogue 8XE GE8430, H.264 encode, H.264/H.265 decode2xC66x, 4xPRU, 4xARM Cortex-M4, 4xEVE, 2xPowerVR SGX544, IVA-HD2xPRU, ARM Cortex-M3, PowerVR SGX530
Analog Pins7 (3.3V)7 (4-wire touchscreen capable) (3.3V)7 (4-wire touchscreen capable) (1.8V)
Digital Pins
72 (including 7 analog pins which are digital capable)
65
Memory4GB LPDDR41GB DDR3L512MB DDR3
Storage
16GB eMMC flash on-board
microSD card slot
4GB eMMC flash on-board
microSD card slot
USB USB 3.0 Type-C 5Gbps
2x USB 3.0 Type-A Host Ports
USB 3.0 Type-C 5Gbps
USB 2.0 Type-A Host Port
USB 2.0 microUSB 480Mbps
USB 2.0 Type-A Host Port
Network1 Gigabit Ethernet
M.2 E-key w/ PCIe/USB/SDIO
1 Gigabit Ethernet
2.4/5GHz WiFi
Bluetooth 4.2/BLE
10/100M Ethernet (Black-only)
2.4GHz WiFi (Wireless-only)
Bluetooth 4.2/BLE (Wireless-only)
VideominiDP
MIPI DSI (w/ I2C)
Cape add-on boards
micro HDMI
Cape add-on boards
AudiominiDP
cape/USB add-ons
MikroBUS Shuttle connector
micro HDMI
cape/USB add-ons
Bluetooth
micro HDMI
cape/USB add-ons
Bluetooth (Wireless-only)
Camera2x MIPI CSI (4 lane)
N/A
Supported Expansion Interfaces
4x UART
16-bit LCD interface
2x I2C
2x SPI
8x PWM
4x Timer
A/D (3.3V)
CAN
Pulse Capture
Quadrature Encoder
PRU GPIO
PRU UART
PRU Pulse Capture
...
4x UART
16-bit LCD interface
2x I2C
2x SPI
8x PWM
4x Timer
A/D (1.8V)
CAN
Pulse Capture
Quadrature Encoder
PRU GPIO
PRU UART
PRU Pulse Capture
...
On-board Sensors
On-die processor temperature sensors
N/A
BeagleBone AI-64 Block Diagram
Block Diagram

Another notable change is that a mini DisplayPort has now replaced the micro HDMI port found in earlier boards. The TDA4VM SoC comes with many co-processors, so it will be interesting to see how well those are supported in the software. BeagleBoard.org provides Debian 11.3 with XFCE desktop environment for the BeagleBone AI-64 bootable either from the internal flash or a microSD card, and the instructions to get started are the same as for earlier BeagleBone or BeagleBoard boards.

The BeagleBone AI-64 is open-source hardware with the hardware design files, documentation, and some software, available in a dedicated git repository. You may also find additional information on the product page. The board is available through three distributors namely Digi-Key, Element14 (Asia), and OKdo for about $187.

Jacinto 7 TDA4VM SBC BeagleBone AI-64 Heatsink

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13 Replies to “BeagleBone AI-64 SBC features TI TDA4VM Cortex-A72/R5F SoC with 8 TOPS AI accelerator”

  1. This SOC is listed at $111 Q1 at Digikey. If you can get TI to sell direct they are $65 Q1000.

  2. Let’s hope it follows the tradition of excellent design and build quality as its predecessors. At least at this price it doesn’t target hobbyists anymore, but RPi and others filled that gap since the original beaglebone.

  3. Finally one that can run with open-source GPU drivers, the previous models all used SGX5xx. PCIe and a decent amount of RAM are great as well.

      1. I think I was wrong here: at least the initial version was announced to support 6GX, AXE and BXS. I assumed it would also cover the other Rogue variants (series 7 and and 9), but apparently it’s not yet part of the source code.

  4. Um I guess this will interest some users, but AI and video seems to be eating everything. How about bringing back the Pocket Beagle, a good old embedded linux board with some analog capability that is more industrially oriented than the raspberry pi? Those have gotten very expensive and hard to find. Most of the embedded applications I can think of for this new board are not very nice. I..e they involve things like face recognition.

    1. It has the usual assortment of industrial features from TI like PRUs, encoders, ADCs, CAN etc.
      What sort of thing do you have in mind that’s missing ?

      1. 6x R5F! It would be interesting if some of those may run in lock-step mode and if they may share whole RAM or are on their own island with some dedicated small SRAM.

    2. That’s because AI and image processing are consuming everything, they’re both now industrial standards for automation including automated QC

    3. How about part recognition or defect recognition in manufacturing for automated QC? AI assisted tool pathing? AI augmented safety where an ai can detect a foreign object within a robots work space and reroute the robot to bypass the obstacle or just stop the robot? You see nefarious use cases because you want to see them

  5. God, the title is a nerds delight who names these things? Did they use all 26 letters of the alphabet and 0 through 9

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