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NXP i.MX 95

The EdgeFirst Profiler runs on the NXP i.MX 95 (aarch64) and uses the Neutron NPU for hardware-accelerated inference. The Neutron NPU is exposed to the profiler through the TFLite C library and the NXP libneutron_delegate.so.

For a guided platform tour see the i.MX 95 Quick Start. This page covers only the profiler-specific setup.

Prerequisites

  • NXP Linux BSP image with the EdgeFirst SDK overlay
  • libtensorflowlite_c.so (preinstalled in the EdgeFirst image)
  • libneutron_delegate.so (preinstalled in the EdgeFirst image)
  • neutron-converter toolchain (cross-host, used to compile models before deployment)

The Neutron NPU only executes models that have been passed through the Neutron Converter — the converter rewrites a standard TFLite model into a graph the Neutron NPU can run. See the Neutron Converter guide.

Install the profiler

pip install edgefirst-profiler

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/EdgeFirstAI/profiler-cli/main/install.sh | bash

Confirm:

edgefirst-profiler --version

Delegate selection

The profiler picks a TFLite delegate automatically — and you can override it on the validation session if needed. Delegate values:

Value Behavior
(omitted) / auto Probe well-known NPU paths (/usr/lib/libneutron_delegate.so, /usr/lib/libvx_delegate.so); fall back to XNNPACK.
xnnpack Explicit XNNPACK CPU delegate.
none / cpu No delegate — reference kernels.
path to .so Load a custom delegate from disk.

Auto-detection reads /sys/firmware/devicetree/base/compatible to identify i.MX 95 and pre-populate the delegate path in the TUI's profile configuration screen.

Per-tick Neutron profiling

When both conditions below are met, the profiler reports per-tick timing — every NPU kernel (Conv2DDenseTT, AddTT, …) appears as its own slice in the Studio trace view:

  1. The model was compiled with enable_profiling: true in the Neutron Converter.
  2. The target runs Neutron drivers ≥ 3.0.1 (tested on 3.0.1), shipped as part of the eIQ Neutron SDK.

Older 2.x drivers

The profiler remains fully functional with Neutron drivers 2.x — inference timing, pipeline-stage breakdown, and accuracy metrics all work normally. Only the per-operation NPU timing (op-level profiling of the Neutron graph) is unavailable without 3.0.1+ drivers.

To get human-readable kernel names rather than opaque IDs, pass the Neutron converter statistics file produced when the model was compiled:

neutron-converter --dump-statistics-file yolov8n_neutron.statistics ...

Provide that file to the validation session via --neutron-statistics yolov8n_neutron.statistics. Without the statistics file the timing is still captured — only the labels become opaque IDs.

Verifying the install

edgefirst-profiler login
edgefirst-profiler              # opens TUI on F1 Help; F4 auto-populates the delegate path

Then run a validation session — see Validation from Studio or Validation from the Profiler.