At just 55 x 40 mm (2.2 x 1.6 inches), the same footprint as the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, Banana Pi's new BPI-CM7 packs an Allwinner H618 SoC into a compute module designed for embedded projects and custom hardware. Unlike a traditional single-board computer with ports along its edges, the BPI-CM7 breaks out all its signals through two 100-pin high-density connectors, requiring a carrier board to expose physical I/O. That tradeoff is the point: developers building compact devices, from handheld consoles to kiosk controllers, can design minimal carrier boards that expose only the interfaces they need.
The Allwinner H618 provides four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at up to 1.5 GHz alongside a Mali-G31 GPU. Banana Pi has confirmed a configuration with 2 GB of LPDDR4 and 32 GB of eMMC, with Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 integrated on the module itself. The companion BPI-CM7IO carrier board breaks out HDMI, one USB 2.0 OTG port, two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, 100 Mbps Ethernet, and a microSD slot, along with GPIO, UART, SPI, I2C, and PWM headers for sensor and actuator work.
Linux support is a practical consideration for any H618-based board, and the BPI-CM7 ships with Armbian compatibility out of the box. Banana Pi's documented test image is an Armbian 24.11.1 Jammy build on Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS running a Linux 5.4.125 legacy sunxi64 kernel, the same vendor-maintained legacy branch most H618 boards have shipped on rather than a mainline kernel build. The H618 has seen steady mainline kernel work through the linux-sunxi community, with basic SoC support merged and ongoing driver development for display, audio, and peripheral subsystems. Boards built around this chip, like the Orange Pi Zero 3 and Banana Pi BPI-M4 Zero, already run mainline kernels, giving the BPI-CM7 a head start on software maturity.
Banana Pi has not announced pricing or a concrete release date. For context, the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 starts at $45 (around €41) for a 2 GB model, though it pairs significantly faster Cortex-A76 cores and a VideoCore VII GPU with that price. The BPI-CM7 is positioned as a budget-tier alternative targeting projects where the H618's capabilities and lower expected cost are a better fit than the CM5's extra performance.
