Short answer: Choose the RK3568 if your project needs GPU-accelerated display, Android or multimedia capability, multiple video outputs, or aggressive BOM cost targets — the ieeker YKR-BP3568-V1 development board runs 30–40% cheaper than equivalent i.MX8M Plus hardware at volume. Choose the i.MX8M Plus if your application requires a real-time Cortex-M7 co-processor, DO-178/IEC 61508 functional safety compliance, or NXP's 15-year longevity program for medical/aerospace programs where supply commitment must be contractually guaranteed.
The RK3568 and NXP i.MX8M Plus occupy the same performance bracket — both are quad-core Cortex-A53 SoCs in the 1.8–2.0 GHz range, both target industrial IoT, HMI, and edge AI applications, and both are available on development boards from multiple vendors. Yet they make profoundly different engineering trade-offs, and choosing the wrong one costs real money: not just the BOM delta, but the BSP integration hours, the certification path, and the supply chain exposure over a 5-year program.
This guide gives embedded engineers and hardware product managers a direct, criterion-by-criterion comparison — CPU architecture, GPU, NPU, display output, real-time capability, development board availability, BSP ecosystem, BOM cost, and supply longevity — so you can make the right call before the first PCB layout is committed.
Основные выводы
- RK3568 Mali-G52 GPU vastly outperforms i.MX8M Plus GC7000UL for OpenGL ES, Qt rendering, and multi-display HMI workloads
- i.MX8M Plus has a dedicated 800 MHz Cortex-M7 real-time co-processor; RK3568 does not — critical differentiator for hard real-time control loops
- RK3568 NPU: 1.0 TOPS. i.MX8M Plus NPU: 2.3 TOPS — i.MX8M Plus wins on AI inference throughput at this tier
- ieeker YKR-RK3568 development board BOM cost runs 30–40% lower than comparable i.MX8M Plus boards at 1,000-unit production volumes
- NXP i.MX8M Plus carries a contractual 15-year longevity program from NXP; Rockchip's RK3568J has extended industrial availability but without a 15-year written guarantee
- RK3568 supports 4 simultaneous display outputs (MIPI DSI, dual LVDS, eDP, HDMI); i.MX8M Plus supports 2 (dual LVDS + HDMI or MIPI DSI)
- Linux BSP maturity is strong on both; Android is significantly better supported on RK3568 than on i.MX8M Plus
- For 95% of industrial HMI, IoT gateway, and edge AI applications — the RK3568 is the correct cost-performance choice
RK3568 vs i.MX8M Plus: At-a-Glance Specification Comparison
Before the deep-dive, here is the full specification map. Bold entries highlight where one SoC meaningfully outperforms the other.
| Parameter | RK3568 / RK3568J | NXP i.MX8M Plus |
|---|---|---|
| CPU cores | 4× Cortex-A55 @ 2.0 GHz | 4× Cortex-A53 @ 1.8 GHz + 1× Cortex-M7 @ 800 MHz |
| CPU architecture | ARMv8.2-A (newer) | ARMv8-A |
| GPU | Mali-G52 2EE OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 2.0 | Vivante GC7000UL OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 1.2 |
| НПУ | 1.0 TOPS (RKNN) | 2.3 TOPS (eIQ / TFLite) |
| Process node | 22 nm | 14 nm (TSMC) |
| Display outputs | 4 simultaneous MIPI DSI + dual LVDS + eDP + HDMI 2.0 | 2 simultaneous dual LVDS + HDMI or MIPI DSI |
| Video decode | 4K H.265/H.264 @ 60fps | 4K H.265/H.264 @ 60fps |
| Ethernet | 2× Gigabit (independent MACs) | 2× Gigabit (with TSN support) |
| PCIe | PCIe 3.0 × 2 | PCIe 3.0 × 1 |
| USB | USB 3.0 × 1, USB 2.0 × 2 | USB 3.0 × 2, USB 2.0 × 1 |
| SATA | SATA III × 1 | Нет |
| шина CAN | CAN 2.0 × 2 | CAN-FD × 2 |
| Industrial temp. | -40°C to +85°C (RK3568J) | -40°C to +85°C (standard) |
| Longevity program | Industrial availability (RK3568J), no contractual 15-yr | 15-year NXP longevity program |
| Typical SBC BOM cost | ~$65–90 @ 1k units | ~$95–130 @ 1k units |
| Android support | Excellent (Android 12, well-maintained) | Limited (Yocto/Linux primary) |
CPU Architecture: Why the Cortex-M7 Co-Processor Is the Real Differentiator
On paper, the RK3568 wins the single-core CPU race: its Cortex-A55 cores run at 2.0 GHz versus the i.MX8M Plus's 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53, and the ARMv8.2-A architecture brings modest IPC improvements over ARMv8-A. In practice, for the workloads these SoCs run — UI rendering, protocol handling, data acquisition, edge inference — this clock speed difference is imperceptible.
The genuinely important CPU difference is what the i.MX8M Plus adds that the RK3568 lacks: a dedicated Cortex-M7 real-time co-processor running at 800 MHz. This is not a minor specification footnote. The M7 runs an independent RTOS (FreeRTOS, Zephyr, or bare-metal) and has its own RAM, interrupt controller, and direct peripheral access — completely isolated from the Linux application processor cores. It enables deterministic interrupt response times in the sub-150 µs range without any impact from Linux scheduling jitter on the A53 cores.
For comparison: the RK3568 with a PREEMPT_RT patched kernel achieves approximately 180–220 µs worst-case interrupt latency under load — solid for HMIs, IoT gateways, and most industrial control panels, but above the threshold for servo control loops that must close at ≥1 kHz. As one detailed benchmark on DEV Community notes: "For 95% of products — digital signage, control panels, edge cameras — Rockchip's latency is already over-engineered. If your servo loop must close at ≥1 kHz with <150 µs jitter, pick NXP."
The practical decision rule: if your industrial application involves closed-loop motor control, synchronized multi-axis robotics, or functional safety certification that requires a certified real-time execution environment — the i.MX8M Plus's M7 co-processor is genuinely necessary. For everything else (HMI panels, IoT gateways, machine vision, digital signage, edge AI inference), the RK3568's PREEMPT_RT Linux performance is more than sufficient.
GPU Performance: The Biggest Practical Gap Between These Two SoCs
The GPU difference between the RK3568 and i.MX8M Plus is the most impactful specification for the majority of industrial embedded applications — and it strongly favors the RK3568.
The RK3568's Mali-G52 2EE is a modern Bifrost-architecture GPU with full OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.1, and OpenCL 2.0 support. The i.MX8M Plus uses a Vivante GC7000UL — an older architecture that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and OpenCL 1.2, with Vulkan 1.1 support added via driver update but with documented performance limitations in geometry-heavy workloads.
In practice, this translates to meaningful differences in the exact workloads industrial embedded products run:
| Рабочая нагрузка | RK3568 Mali-G52 | i.MX8M Plus GC7000UL |
|---|---|---|
| Qt Quick 1080p UI @ 60fps | ✅ Solid 60fps, ~35% GPU load | ⚠️ 45–55fps under animation load |
| Android launcher / UI | ✅ Smooth (full Android 12 support) | ❌ Android BSP poorly maintained |
| 4K H.265 video decode (VPU) | ✅ Hardware VPU, <10% GPU load | ✅ Hardware VPU, equivalent |
| Multi-display independent output | ✅ 4 simultaneous outputs | ⚠️ 2 simultaneous outputs |
| OpenCL compute (image processing) | ✅ OpenCL 2.0 full profile | ⚠️ OpenCL 1.2 only |
| Wayland/Weston compositor | ✅ Stable, well-tested | ✅ Stable (Yocto reference) |
The GPU gap matters most for HMI panel applications. If you're building an industrial touch panel with Qt Quick, animated data visualization, or a kiosk-style Android interface, the Mali-G52's performance headroom means a smoother UI without display driver optimization work. The GC7000UL is a functional GPU but requires more careful Qt rendering configuration to reach equivalent frame rates. For purely headless applications (IoT gateways, protocol converters), the GPU difference is irrelevant.
For more detail on Qt rendering performance on RK3568 specifically — including EGLFS configuration and common data-binding bottlenecks — see our ieeker YKR-RK3568 Qt HMI guide.
NPU Comparison: 1.0 TOPS vs 2.3 TOPS — Does It Matter for Your Application?
Both SoCs include a dedicated Neural Processing Unit, but with different architectures, toolchains, and effective throughput:
- RK3568 NPU (1.0 TOPS): Uses the same RKNN architecture as the RK3588's 6 TOPS NPU, meaning the RKNN-Toolkit2 workflow (PyTorch/TensorFlow → ONNX → RKNN quantized model → inference) is identical between platforms. Models validated on RK3568 deploy on RK3588 without re-quantization. Real-world inference for INT8 quantized MobileNetV2: approximately 35ms per frame — adequate for anomaly detection, basic object classification, and predictive maintenance models.
- i.MX8M Plus NPU (2.3 TOPS): Uses a Verisilicon VIP architecture accessed through NXP's eIQ ML development environment (TensorFlow Lite, ONNX Runtime). The 2.3 TOPS figure gives roughly 2× the raw inference throughput of RK3568, enabling faster inference or larger model sizes at the same latency target. NXP provides well-maintained model optimization tools and documented INT8 quantization pipelines.
The practical question is whether 2.3 TOPS vs 1.0 TOPS matters for your specific application. For lightweight inference workloads — predictive maintenance anomaly detection on time-series sensor data, basic visual inspection at 5–10 fps, keyword spotting — 1.0 TOPS is sufficient and the cost advantage of the RK3568 platform is decisive. For multi-stream video inference (running detection on 4+ camera feeds simultaneously) or low-latency vision inference at 30+ fps with ResNet-50 or larger models, the i.MX8M Plus's 2.3 TOPS provides meaningful headroom.
One toolchain note: RKNN-Toolkit2 has a larger Chinese developer community and more industrial model examples available on GitHub than the i.MX8M Plus eIQ ecosystem. For teams that will build their own custom models, this practical documentation advantage can outweigh the raw TOPS difference in development time.
From the Factory Floor: Why a German Automation Customer Switched from i.MX8M Plus to RK3568
About eighteen months ago, we were approached by the hardware team at a German industrial automation company building a new generation of conveyor control panels. They had spent four months prototyping on an i.MX8M Plus SoM from a European vendor — a well-regarded platform with solid Yocto Linux support — and had hit two problems they couldn't resolve within their project timeline.
The first was display performance. Their Qt Quick HMI — a 10.1-inch LVDS panel showing real-time conveyor speed, zone occupancy, and a 60-second throughput trend chart — was rendering at a consistent 42–48fps on the GC7000UL GPU, not the 60fps their UI specification required. Their Qt consultant had spent two weeks tuning the rendering pipeline, reducing animation complexity, and adjusting batch rendering settings. Improvement was marginal. The root cause was that the GC7000UL simply didn't have enough fragment shading throughput for their specific combination of animated SVG icons and dynamic ListView components at 1280×800.
The second problem was BOM cost. At their planned production volume of 800 units per year, the i.MX8M Plus SoM was priced at approximately €87 per unit. Their product target margin required a compute module cost below €60. The gap was €27 per unit — at 800 units, that was €21,600 per year in margin erosion that had not been in the original product business case.
We supplied a prototype ieeker YKR-RK3568 development board within five days of their inquiry. Their UI ran at steady 60fps on the Mali-G52 on the first boot, without any Qt configuration changes. BOM cost at their volume: approximately $72 USD — within budget. Their application had no hard real-time servo control requirement (the M7 co-processor was not needed), and their temperature environment was within the RK3568J's industrial grade range. The migration took six weeks: BSP bring-up on the new board, DTS update for their specific LVDS panel timing, and validation testing on the production conveyor line.
They have been in production for fourteen months at 840 units shipped. Zero hardware failures attributable to the SoC selection. The €21,600 annual margin improvement paid back their BSP migration cost in the first production quarter.
BOM Cost, BSP Ecosystem, and Supply Longevity: The Three Procurement Factors
BOM Cost: 30–40% Lower on RK3568
The aggregate cost difference between RK3568 and i.MX8M Plus development boards at production volumes is driven by three components: SoC unit price, PMIC complexity, and memory configuration. As documented in a detailed Rockchip vs NXP analysis: the SoC cost delta is approximately -30%, the passive and power-tree delta is approximately -10%, and the aggregate SBC delta runs 30–40% after PCB, connectors, and local assembly. At 1,000 units annually, this gap is typically $25–40 per unit — a meaningful number in industrial product business cases.
BSP Ecosystem: Strong on Both, But Different Communities
Both platforms have mature Linux BSPs. The differences are in community composition and Android support:
- RK3568 BSP: Large Chinese developer community, extensive Android BSP support (Android 11/12), strong multimedia and display driver coverage, RKNN-Toolkit2 for NPU inference. Yocto support exists but is not the primary development path. BSP updates follow Rockchip's vendor kernel cadence.
- i.MX8M Plus BSP: NXP provides an official Yocto meta-layer (meta-imx) with well-documented industrial deployment path. Проект Yocto is the dominant build system in regulated industrial and medical embedded Linux deployments in Europe and North America. Android BSP exists but is not actively maintained. eIQ ML environment is well-documented for NPU deployment.
If your team's production build system is Yocto-based — which is typical for European industrial OEMs building IEC 61508-compliant products — the i.MX8M Plus's official Yocto meta-layer provides a cleaner integration path than RK3568's primarily Buildroot/vendor-kernel ecosystem. If your team uses Buildroot, Ubuntu, or Debian and has no Yocto requirement, RK3568 is well-served.
Supply Longevity: NXP's 15-Year Program vs RK3568J Industrial Grade
NXP's i.MX8M Plus is part of their longevity program providing a minimum of 15 years of supply from product launch — a contractual commitment that is verifiable and auditable, and which satisfies the supply chain risk requirements of medical device (FDA/MDR), aerospace (DO-178C), and critical infrastructure programs.
The RK3568J is Rockchip's industrial-grade variant with extended temperature ratings and longer production runs than commercial-grade Rockchip SoCs, but Rockchip does not publish a 15-year contractual longevity commitment equivalent to NXP's program. For programs where a written supply commitment is a regulatory or contractual requirement from the end customer, this is a genuine differentiator in favor of i.MX8M Plus.
For most industrial programs — IoT gateways, HMI panels, edge AI systems, industrial tablets — where the supply commitment required is 5–7 years rather than 15, the RK3568J's industrial-grade availability combined with ieeker's bonded inventory options provides sufficient supply security. We cover supply chain evaluation criteria in detail in our embedded board manufacturer evaluation guide.
The Decision Guide: When to Choose Each Platform
Choose the RK3568 Development Board if:
- Your application is a HMI panel or display terminal — the Mali-G52 GPU runs Qt Quick and Android UIs significantly better than the GC7000UL
- You need more than 2 simultaneous display outputs — RK3568's 4 outputs cover dual-operator configurations that require a separate SoC or HDMI splitter on i.MX8M Plus
- Your project is an IoT gateway, edge AI device, or NVR — PCIe 3.0 ×2, dual GbE, SATA, and CAN bus without external chips
- Your team uses Android or needs a strong Android BSP — Android 12 is well-supported and actively maintained on RK3568; i.MX8M Plus Android BSP is effectively abandoned
- Your BOM target is under $90/unit at 1k volume — the 30–40% cost advantage is real and consistent
- Your deployment requires 5–7 year field life with ieeker's industrial RK3568J boards and inventory management — not a contractual 15-year supply commitment
Choose the i.MX8M Plus if:
- Your application requires hard real-time control loops closing at ≥1 kHz — the Cortex-M7 co-processor with dedicated RTOS is the only correct solution
- Your product must meet IEC 61508, DO-178C, or ISO 26262 functional safety certification — NXP provides pre-certified safety libraries and the M7 provides the isolated execution environment required
- Your end customer or regulatory body requires a written 15-year supply commitment — NXP's longevity program is the only contractual option at this price tier
- Your team is Yocto-first and building for European industrial certifications where the NXP meta-imx official Yocto layer is the correct build path
- Your application requires higher NPU throughput (2.3 vs 1.0 TOPS) for multi-stream video inference or larger model sizes without the RK3588's cost and power
Project Case: Building a Multi-Zone Temperature Monitoring Gateway on RK3568
A food cold chain logistics company in South Korea needed a multi-zone temperature monitoring gateway for their refrigerated warehouse network — 24 temperature and humidity sensors per gateway via Modbus RTU, cellular uplink via M.2 LTE, a 4.3-inch LVDS local display showing zone status, and cloud forwarding to AWS IoT Core via MQTT/TLS. Their engineering team had initially scoped the project around an i.MX8M Plus SoM based on familiarity from a previous project, with a per-unit budget of $85.
After reviewing the requirements together, we recommended the RK3568J for three specific reasons: (1) the application had no real-time control requirement — the M7 co-processor would be unused silicon cost; (2) the LVDS local display with Qt status UI played to the Mali-G52's strengths; (3) the RK3568J's dual GbE + SATA + PCIe M.2 eliminated the need for external expansion chips that the i.MX8M Plus would have required to match the interface count.
The prototype was running within three weeks using our ieeker YKR-RK3568 development board. The production custom carrier board was delivered in eight weeks. Per-unit cost at 300-unit annual volume: $74 — $11 under budget. The customer used the margin improvement to add a second cellular modem as a redundant uplink, improving their 99.7% uptime SLA to 99.95% with automatic carrier failover.
They are now in their second year of production with 580 gateways deployed across six warehouse sites in South Korea and one in Vietnam. Field failure rate attributable to the gateway hardware: 0.17% (one board per 600 deployed), all attributed to connector damage from forklift impact rather than electronic failure.
ieeker RK3568 Development Boards for Industrial Projects
ieeker manufactures YKR-RK3568-based development boards and SoMs for industrial applications — with in-house SMT production, validated BSP (Buildroot, Debian 11, Ubuntu 22.04, Android 12), and a direct engineering support line for integration questions. For projects transitioning from i.MX8M Plus or evaluating RK3568 for the first time, we supply single-unit evaluation boards with full SDK access and can provide a BSP feature parity checklist against your existing platform.
- ieeker YKR-RK3568: Dual GbE, LVDS + MIPI DSI + eDP + HDMI, M.2 PCIe LTE slot, SATA III, CAN bus, RS-485. Available from single-unit for evaluation. See the ieeker YKR-RK3568 product page.
- ieeker YKR-RK3568 SoM + Custom Carrier: For OEM programs requiring custom form factor or interface layout. NRE from $4,000, production from 50 units. See the custom development board design guide.
For projects where the RK3568's compute is insufficient — edge AI inference at 30+ fps, 8K video processing, multi-camera analytics — see our Плата разработки RK3588 which maintains the same interface ecosystem and BSP workflow at 6× the NPU throughput.
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→ Request RK3568 Evaluation Board →Часто задаваемые вопросы
Is the RK3568 faster than the i.MX8M Plus?
In single-threaded and multi-threaded CPU benchmarks, the RK3568's 2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 cores are marginally faster than the i.MX8M Plus's 1.8 GHz Cortex-A53 — approximately 10–15% higher single-thread performance. GPU performance is significantly higher on RK3568 (Mali-G52 vs GC7000UL). NPU throughput is higher on i.MX8M Plus (2.3 TOPS vs 1.0 TOPS). Real-time latency is better on i.MX8M Plus due to the dedicated Cortex-M7 co-processor. "Faster" depends entirely on which workload you measure.
Can RK3568 replace i.MX8M Plus in an existing design?
For applications without hard real-time requirements and without a 15-year supply contract requirement, yes — typically with 6–10 weeks of BSP migration work (DTS update, peripheral driver validation, application rebuild and testing). The main integration areas are: display timing configuration (DTS panel node), industrial interface drivers (CAN, RS-485), and application rebuild for ARM Linux (same architecture, straightforward recompile). Android migrations require additional BSP validation work.
Does i.MX8M Plus support Android?
NXP provides an Android BSP for i.MX8M Plus but it is not actively maintained as a primary platform — NXP's primary embedded software path is Yocto Linux. Android on i.MX8M Plus is functional for basic deployments but lags significantly behind RK3568's Android 12 BSP in terms of GPU driver optimisation, app compatibility, and BSP maintenance cadence. For Android-first applications (kiosks, tablets, signage), RK3568 is the correct choice.
What does NXP's 15-year longevity program mean in practice?
NXP's longevity program is a contractual commitment that the i.MX8M Plus SoC will remain in production and available for purchase for at least 15 years from its product launch date. This is verifiable in writing and can be cited in product documentation for medical device FDA submissions, aerospace DO-178C certification packages, and industrial automation contracts where end customers require documented supply chain continuity. It does not guarantee price — only availability.
Which is better for an IoT gateway — RK3568 or i.MX8M Plus?
RK3568 for the majority of IoT gateway applications. The RK3568 natively provides: dual GbE (LAN/WAN separation), PCIe 3.0 ×2 (4G/5G modem), SATA III (local historian SSD), CAN bus ×2, and three UARTs for RS-485 Modbus. The i.MX8M Plus provides dual GbE with TSN (useful for time-sensitive networking in industrial ethernet applications) and CAN-FD ×2, but lacks SATA and has only one PCIe 3.0 lane. For remote monitoring, data historian, and MQTT cloud forwarding gateways, RK3568 wins on interface breadth and cost. For industrial ethernet gateways requiring TSN or CAN-FD specifically, i.MX8M Plus has the edge. See our RK3568 IoT gateway guide for the full deployment architecture.
What is CAN-FD and does it matter for my application?
CAN-FD (CAN with Flexible Data Rate) extends the classical CAN 2.0 protocol with higher data rates (up to 8 Mbps vs CAN 2.0's 1 Mbps) and longer data frames (up to 64 bytes vs 8 bytes). The i.MX8M Plus supports CAN-FD; the RK3568 supports CAN 2.0 only. CAN-FD matters for applications connecting to modern automotive-derived sensors, newer Bosch or Beckhoff industrial actuators that use CAN-FD, or any field device that transmits large periodic data payloads. For legacy industrial equipment using classical CAN 2.0 (the overwhelming majority of installed base), RK3568's CAN 2.0 support is fully sufficient.
Sources & References