The Banana Pi BPI-M8 SBC combines an octa-core Allwinner A733 processor, 4GB LPDDR5 memory, camera and display interfaces, and expandable storage for embedded computing applications.
Banana Pi has introduced the BPI-M8, a credit card-sized single-board computer (SBC) built around Allwinner’s A733 processor. Designed in a form factor similar to the Raspberry Pi 5, the board brings together camera and display interfaces, wireless connectivity and multiple storage options for embedded computing projects. It is equipped with 4GB of LPDDR5 RAM and is available in two variants: BPI-M8A with 64GB eMMC storage and BPI-M8B with 16MB SPI NOR flash. A microSD card slot and a dedicated UFS module socket provide additional storage options.
The SoC architecture of the Allwinner A733 chip comprises a dual-core Arm Cortex-A76 up to 2GHz paired with a six-core Cortex-A55 with a frequency of 1.8GHz. There is also the inclusion of a real-time RISC-V E902 core. Graphical capabilities are ensured by an Imagination Technologies BXM-4-64 MC1 graphics processing unit with the compatibility with OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.3, and OpenCL 3.0. Moreover, there is a neural processing unit (3 TOPS) for artificial intelligence calculations as well as video decoding/encoding support for resolutions up to 8K and 4K respectively.
Peripheral connections include the presence of an HDMI 2.0b connector that supports 4K resolution at 60Hz, as well as a four-lane MIPI DSI connector for display and two four-lane MIPI CSI camera interfaces. The expansion features consist of an FFC connector (16-pin), which can be connected to a PCIe card, and the GPIO header has 40 pins, which are compatible with the Raspberry Pi and have UART, SPI, I2C, and PWM signals. Other types of connections that are present in this board include one USB 3.0 host port, three USB 2.0 host ports, USB-C OTG, Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.0. Audio features an audio codec and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Dimensions are 85 × 56mm, with support for 5V via USB-C, requiring a recommended power supply of 4A. An optional Power over Ethernet (PoE) module can be connected through a dedicated header. Banana Pi lists support for Android, Linux and Armbian, although software images and source code were not yet available in the published documentation at the time of reporting. The BPI-M8A is listed at US$103 on the Banana Pi store, while the BPI-M8B costs US$69.
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