Environment setup

Follow the hardware installation guide to install the Radxa AICore AX-M1 on the host device.

Check the device connection

• Use lspci to confirm that the Radxa AICore AX-M1 is detected.

Host

lspci

0000:01:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Axera Semiconductor Co., Ltd Device 0650 (rev 01)

Install the driver

• Install dependencies

Host

sudo apt install gcc linux-headers-$(uname -r) make

• Install the AXCL driver

Go to the Downloads page to download the required software packages, and place them in the same directory. Choose the 4GB or 8GB version according to the memory capacity of your Radxa AICore AX-M1.

Host

4GB

sudo dpkg -i axclhost-firmware_3.6.5-1_all_4gb.deb
sudo dpkg -i task-axclhost_3.6.5-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i axclhost-dkms_3.6.5-1_all.deb
sudo systemctl restart systemd-modules-load

8GB

sudo dpkg -i axclhost-firmware_3.6.5-1_all_8gb.deb
sudo dpkg -i task-axclhost_3.6.5-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i axclhost-dkms_3.6.5-1_all.deb
sudo systemctl restart systemd-modules-load

• Verify the installation

Host

axcl-smi

rock@rock-5b-plus:~$ axcl-smi
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| AXCL-SMI  V3.6.5_20250908154509                                  Driver  V3.6.5_20250908154509 |
+-----------------------------------------+--------------+---------------------------------------+
| Card  Name                     Firmware | Bus-Id       |                          Memory-Usage |
| Fan   Temp                Pwr:Usage/Cap | CPU      NPU |                             CMM-Usage |
|=========================================+==============+=======================================|
|    0  AX650N                     V3.6.5 | 0001:11:00.0 |                148 MiB /      945 MiB |
|   --   54C                      -- / -- | 2%        0% |                 18 MiB /     7040 MiB |
+-----------------------------------------+--------------+---------------------------------------+

+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                                     |
| Card      PID  Process Name                                                   NPU Memory Usage |
|================================================================================================|

Uninstall the driver

If you need to uninstall the AXCL driver, run the following command.

Host

sudo apt remove axclhost