FriendlyElec NanoPi M5

Overview

The NanoPi M5 is FriendlyElec's compact developer board built around the Rockchip RK3576 — an octa-core SoC combining four Cortex-A72 performance cores with four Cortex-A53 efficiency cores, a Mali-G52 MC3 GPU, and a 6 TOPS NPU for INT4/INT8/INT16/FP16 edge AI inference.

Memory is available in three configurations: 4GB LPDDR4X or 8GB/16GB LPDDR5, with optional UFS 2.0 flash for high-speed sequential storage alongside the standard M.2 M-Key NVMe socket and 16MB SPI NOR flash. A microSD slot rounds out storage options. Dual native Gigabit Ethernet ports make it suitable for IoT gateway and light router workloads without external adapters.

The board outputs video via a single HDMI port supporting up to 4096×2304@60Hz, and supports dual MIPI CSI camera interfaces and dual MIPI DSI display connectors for embedded display applications. A 30-pin GPIO header exposes four UARTs, three I2C buses, two SPI buses, PWM, and 20 general-purpose GPIO lines, with an M.2 E-Key slot for optional SDIO WiFi/BT modules.

Armbian, Ubuntu, Debian, Android, and FriendlyWrt are all supported. The NanoPi M5 fits the same aluminum enclosure family as other NanoPi boards, making it well-suited for compact edge AI inference, smart gateway, NAS, and industrial control deployments.