CompuLab UCM-i.MX8M-Plus
Ultra-compact 28 × 38 mm i.MX 8M Plus Computer-on-Module for wearable, handheld, and space-constrained edge-AI designs.
ucm-imx8m-plus- 2.3 TOPSi.MX 8M Plus NPU
- Quad A53 + M7Multi-Core Processing
- Up to 8 GBLPDDR4 Memory
- 28 × 38 mmUltra-Compact SoM
- -40 to 85°CIndustrial Temperature
- PCIe Gen 3.0High-Speed Expansion
Overview
The CompuLab UCM-i.MX8M-Plus, powered by Avocado OS and Avocado Connect, brings production-grade edge vision and AI to space- and power-constrained designs. Built on the NXP i.MX 8M Plus — quad Arm Cortex-A53 cores up to 1.8 GHz, an 800 MHz Cortex-M7 real-time core, a HiFi4 DSP, and an on-chip NPU up to 2.3 TOPS with dual MIPI-CSI camera inputs — the module fits all of that into a 28 × 38 × 5 mm, 7-gram footprint over dual 100-pin board-to-board connectors. A battery-friendly 3.45–4.4 V supply range and a -40°C to +85°C industrial temperature rating make it well suited to wearable, handheld, and portable instrumentation designs. Combined with Avocado OS — atomic OTA updates, secure boot, verified boot, and fleet-wide CVE tracking — and Avocado Connect's centralized fleet management, the module replaces months of BSP and infrastructure work with a validated, production-ready stack.
Specifications
| Specification | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| SoM / SoC | CompuLab UCM-i.MX8M-Plus on NXP i.MX 8M Plus | Offered in "Quad" and "QuadLite" configurations |
| CPU | Quad Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.8 GHz | Application processors for Linux workloads |
| Real-Time Core | Cortex-M7 @ 800 MHz | Dedicated real-time control processing |
| DSP | Tensilica HiFi4 DSP | Full (QuadM) configuration |
| AI Accelerator | On-chip NPU, up to 2.3 TOPS | Full (QuadM) configuration |
| Memory | 1 – 8 GB LPDDR4 | High-bandwidth memory for vision pipelines |
| Storage | 4 – 64 GB eMMC; microSD via carrier | On-module eMMC plus removable media on the carrier |
| Camera | 2× MIPI-CSI (4 lanes each) | Dual camera input for vision systems |
| Video | Decode 1080p60 HEVC/H.264/VP9/VP8; encode 1080p60 HEVC/H.264 | Full (QuadM) configuration |
| Graphics | Vivante GC7000UL — OpenGL ES 3.1/3.0, Vulkan, OpenCL 1.2, OpenVG 1.1 | Hardware-accelerated graphics |
| Display | HDMI 2.0a up to 1080p60, MIPI-DSI 4-lane 1080p60, LVDS 4-lane up to 1366×768 | Capacitive touch via SPI/I2C |
| Networking | 1× Gigabit Ethernet (up to 2× RGMII) | Wi-Fi 6 / Bluetooth are provided on the carrier board |
| Industrial I/O | Up to 2× CAN, 4× UART, 5× I2C, 2× SPI, up to 75× GPIO, 4× PWM, I2S/SAI, S/PDIF | Multifunction shared signals |
| USB | 2× USB 3.0 dual-role | Peripheral and accessory expansion |
| Expansion | PCIe x1 Gen 3.0 | High-speed peripheral expansion |
| Power | 3.45 – 4.4 V (main); 3.3 V digital I/O | Single-cell battery-friendly supply range |
| Operating Temp | 0–70°C (commercial), -20–70°C (extended), -40–85°C (industrial) | Storage -40°C to +85°C |
| Dimensions | 28 × 38 × 5 mm; 7 g | Dual 100-pin, 0.4 mm-pitch board-to-board connectors |
| Reliability | MTTF > 200,000 hours | Rated shock (50G) and vibration (20G) tolerance |
- The NPU, video (VPU), and HiFi4 DSP are present in the full QuadM (
C1800QM) configuration; cost-reduced QuadLite variants omit some of these blocks. - Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are not on the module — they are provided by the carrier board (CompuLab's evaluation kit uses an Intel AX210, 802.11ax + BT 5.3).
- Ethernet TSN, dual on-chip ISP, and long-term availability commitments are supported by the i.MX 8M Plus SoC family but are not explicitly stated in the module datasheet; confirm with CompuLab for your configuration.
Use Cases
Wearable & Portable Healthcare
Wearable monitors, medical devices, and portable diagnostics where size, weight, and power dominate the design. The 28 × 38 mm footprint and battery-friendly supply range fit a device you can wear or carry, without giving up on-device AI.
Handheld Instrumentation
Handheld test, measurement, and inspection equipment that runs vision or ML models locally. The 2.3 TOPS NPU and dual MIPI-CSI inputs support on-device inference in the field, with fleet-wide model updates delivered over the air.
Compact Industrial & Edge HMI
Space-constrained industrial endpoints and machine-vision nodes leveraging HDMI/MIPI-DSI/LVDS display output plus Gigabit Ethernet and PCIe expansion, in a ruggedized -40°C to +85°C package.
Challenges and Solutions
| Challenge | Solution |
|---|---|
| Months of custom BSP integration | Pre-integrated Avocado OS BSP for the i.MX 8M Plus |
| Building OTA and fleet infrastructure from scratch | Avocado Connect: OTA, observability, fleet management |
| Deploying and updating vision models in the field | Fleet-wide model updates over the air |
| Coordinating Linux + real-time workloads (A53 + M7) | Pre-integrated multi-core support |
| Fitting AI into a wearable/handheld footprint | 28 × 38 mm module with a 2.3 TOPS NPU on-board |
| Securing devices across distributed deployments | Secure boot, verified boot, FDE, fleet-wide CVE tracking |
Key Features
Industrial-Grade OS
Avocado OS provides a production-hardened, Yocto-based embedded Linux runtime with deterministic builds, secure boot, verified boot, and full-disk encryption out of the box.
NPU-Accelerated Vision
Up to 2.3 TOPS of on-device AI acceleration on the NXP i.MX 8M Plus, with dual MIPI-CSI cameras and native support for TensorFlow Lite and ONNX — edge inference in a wearable-sized module.
Real-Time Processing
A dedicated 800 MHz Cortex-M7 real-time core handles latency-sensitive tasks — sensor polling, deterministic I/O — while the quad Cortex-A53 cores up to 1.8 GHz run the Linux application stack.
Fleet Management
Avocado Connect delivers atomic OTA updates with delta compression, A/B rollback, staged rollouts, fleet dashboard, health monitoring, remote debugging, and secure tunnel access.
Getting Started
Init, Install, & Build
Follow the Any Supported Target instructions under Getting Started to begin. This target is ucm-imx8m-plus.
Provision
Build the project and execute the provisioning procedure — this builds the system image and writes it to the SD card. On a Linux host, disable auto-mounting first if applicable — see Linux Auto-Mounting.
avocado build
avocado provision -r dev --profile sd
Provisioning specifics (boot-mode switch positions and whether eMMC-over-USB is used) depend on the CompuLab carrier board. Confirm the boot-mode selection for your carrier in CompuLab's documentation before provisioning.
Run
Insert the SD card into the carrier, set the boot mode to the SD/external media per your carrier, and power it on. The root user is passwordless in the dev runtime used by this guide; a serial console is available over the carrier's debug UART, or you can SSH into the device once it is on the network.
For board-level setup — power, console, and boot-mode selection — see the CompuLab UCM-i.MX8M-Plus product page and CompuLab's evaluation-kit documentation.