NXP i.MX RT700 dual-core Cortex-M33 AI Crossover MCU includes eIQ Neutron NPU and DSPs

NXP has recently announced the release of  NXP i.MX RT700 RT700 AI crossover MCU following the NXP i.MX RT600 series release in 2018 and the i.MX RT500 series introduction in 2021.

The new i.MX RT700 Crossover MCU features two Cortex-M33 cores, a main core clocked at 325 MHz with a Tensilica HiFi 4 DSP and a secondary 250 MHz core with a low-power Tensilica HiFi 1 DSP for always-on sensing tasks. Additionally, it integrates a powerful eIQ Neutron NPU with an upgraded 7.5 MB of SRAM and a 2D GPU with a JPEG/PNG decoder. These features make this device suitable for applications including AR glasses, hearables, smartwatches, wristbands, and more.

NXP i.MX RT700 specifications:

• Compute subsystems
  • Main Compute Subsystem
    • Cortex-M33 @ up to 325 MHz with Arm TrustZone, built-in Memory Protection Unit (MPU), a floating-point unit (FPU),  a HiFi 4 DSP and supported by NVIC for interrupt handling and SWD for debugging
    • DSP Core – Cadence Tensilica Fusion HiFi 4 DSP @ up to 325 MHz
    • AI accelerator – NXP eIQ Neutron NPU
  • Sense Compute Subsystem
    • Cortex-M33 up to 250 MHz
    • DSP Core – Cadence Tensilica Fusion HiFi 1 DSP @ up to 250MHz
• On-chip memory – Up to 7.5 MB of system SRAM
• External storage I/F
  • 3x Quad SPI interfaces supporting up to 16-bit wide external memories @ up to 250 MHz DDR
  • 2x SD/eMMC memory card interfaces including one supporting eMMC 5.0 with HS400/DDR operation
• Graphics
  • 2.5D GPU with vector graphics acceleration and frame buffer compression
  • Full openVG 1.1 support
  • Integrated JPEG/PNG decoder support
• LCD interface – MIPI DSI up to 720p60 from on-chip SRAM
• Camera interface – CSI 8/10/16-bit parallel (FlexIO)
• Peripherals
  • 8-channel digital microphone interface
  • 1x USB high-speed host/device controller with integrated PHY
  • eUSB support with integrated PHY
  • Multiple Serial peripherals (UART, I²C, I3C, SPI, HSPI, SAI)
  • 16-bit SAR ADC
  • 24-bit SD ADC with analog microphone support
  • Timers, PWM, MRT, RTC, PLL, DMA, CRC
• Security
  • EdgeLock Secure Enclave (Core Profile)
    • Secure Boot
    • Secure Debug
    • Secure Storage – Physically Unclonable Function (PUF), One-Time Programmable (OTP) memory
    • Cryptographic services (TRNG, DICE, UID)
    • Crypto accelerators – PKC, AES, SHA
    • Security monitoring with tamper and intrusion detection
    • Device Attestation with support of Device Identifier Composition Engine (DICE)
  • Life cycle management
• Package – FOWLP249, WLCSP141

The i.MX RT700 is supported by NXP’s eIQ machine learning software development environment, which features tools like the eIQ Toolkit, inference engines (TensorFlow Lite Micro, DeepViewRT), and neural network compilers (Glow) for efficient on-device ML. These are integrated into the MCUXpresso SDK and Yocto development environments. Additionally, the i.MX RT700 is compatible with popular RTOS options like FreeRTOS and Zephyr, providing flexibility for real-time application development.

At the time of writing, the RT700 AI crossover MCU is in the preproduction stage, so the company does not provide any pricing information or a datasheet for the product. However, some specifications and other information can be found on the product page, press release, and blog.

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