Banana Pi BPI-CM4: Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 alternative presented with an Amlogic A311D chipset

Banana Pi has lifted the lid on the BPI-CM4, a system on module (SoM) that measures 55 x 40 mm with four M.2 mounting holes. Undoubtedly, the BPI-CM4 resembles the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4), with Banana Pi even borrowing the device's initialism. Also, the BPI-CM4 is pin-to-pin compatible with the CM4, theoretically making it a drop-in replacement for Raspberry Pi's SoM.

However, the BPI-CM4 utilises the Amlogic A311D as its chipset rather than the Broadcom BCM2711 in the CM4. As CNX Software notes, the Amlogic A311D means that the BPI-CM4 does not support all the CM4's interfaces. Specifically, the BPI-CM4 can only realise single HDMI, MIPI CSI and MIPI DSI connections; the CM4 supports dual connections of each interface. For reference, the Amlogic A311D has four ARM Cortex-A73 cores, two Cortex-A53 cores, a Mali-G52 MP4 GPU and a 5 TOPs NPU.

Moreover, Banana Pi plans to offer the BPI-CM4 with 16 GB to 128 GB of eMMC flash storage, plus 2 GB and 4 GB of RAM variants. Furthermore, the BPI-CM4 will be available with WiFi 5 or WiFi 6 modules, although pricing has not been announced yet. Currently, Banana Pi has not confirmed when the BPI-CM4 will be available either; only renders have been shown so far too.

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