DFI M8MP553 NXP i.MX 8M Plus Arm Single Board Computers with 9 to 36 V DC Input, Dual GbE and Wide Temperature

Automation controllers and machine HMIs often sit in cabinets with no climate control, wired to field buses and running from whatever DC supply the panel provides. The DFI M8MP553 series is built for that job: NXP i.MX 8M Plus Arm processors on a 3.5″ single board computer measuring 146 x 102 mm, with industrial-grade processor parts, a 9 to 36 V DC input and fanless operation from -30 to 80 °C.

All three M8MP553 boards use industrial-grade i.MX 8M Plus processors at 1.6 GHz with soldered LPDDR4 memory, 16 GB of eMMC 5.1 storage and a microSD slot. The Vivante GC7000UL GPU and the hardware video engine decode H.265, H.264, VP9 and VP8 at 1080p60 and encode H.265 and H.264 at 1080p60, while HDMI at 1920 x 1080 and dual-channel LVDS at 1920 x 1200 drive two displays at once. Linux Yocto 5.0 is the default image, with Debian 12 and Android 10 available on request; under Android the board supports a single display output.

The M8MP553-ECC-21DLI uses the dual-core i.MX 8M Plus with 2 GB of memory and is the build with NXP’s machine learning NPU, rated at 2.3 TOPS, for light vision or anomaly detection at the edge. The M8MP553-ECC-41QDI and M8MP553-ECC-81QDI use the quad-core part, which has no NPU but gives four cores to HMI, protocol conversion and control software, with 4 GB or 8 GB of memory respectively.

The I/O reflects the automation brief. Two GbE ports on AR8035 PHYs separate a machine network from the plant network, and two CAN 2.0B ports connect drives, PLCs and vehicle buses. Serial covers an RS-232 header, an RS-232/422/485 header and a two-wire RS-485 port on a rear terminal block, with 8-bit DIO for discrete signals. Two USB 3.1 Gen 1 and two USB 2.0 Type-A ports sit on the edge, with two USB 2.0 headers inside. An M.2 B-key socket with a nano SIM slot takes 4G, an M.2 E-key 2230 socket takes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and a Micro USB download port serves as a service port for flashing.

Power is 9 to 36 V DC on a terminal block; DFI rates the full -30 to 80 °C range at 9 to 24 V, with 36 V supported up to 70 °C. A software-programmable watchdog resets the board after 1 to 255 seconds, and the series carries CE, FCC, UKCA and RoHS compliance.