Edge Impulse model not executing on Ethos-U (Alif E7 + Zephyr)

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#1

Question/Issue:

Hello everyone,
I am currently working on an Alif E7 (M55 + Ethos-U55) under Zephyr, and I am trying to integrate an Edge Impulse model so that it actually runs on the ARM Ethos-U NPU.
I generated the model via Deployment, selecting: ‘Zephyr Library’.
However, when I integrate this model into my Zephyr project on the Alif E7, inference always runs on the CPU (Cortex-M55) and never on the NPU.
I also don’t see the EI_CLASSIFIER_HAS_ETHOSU flag in model_metadata.h, and there is no trace of the Ethos-U driver logs at runtime.
Has anyone ever managed to run an Edge Impulse model on the Ethos-U NPU in a Zephyr project on Alif E7?
Is there a tutorial or example?
Thank you in advance for any help or feedback!

Context/Use case:
Trying to deploy an Edge Impulse model on an Alif E7 running Zephyr, with the goal of offloading inference to the ARM Ethos-U55 NPU instead of the Cortex-M55 CPU.

Steps Taken:

  1. Generated the model using Edge Impulse Deployment, selecting “Zephyr Library”.
  2. Integrated the generated files into the Alif E7 Zephyr project.
  3. Ran inference on-device and checked logs/model metadata to verify NPU usage.
#2

Hi @Rizelaine

we still don’t have the option to deploy a model as a Zephyr Library for ethos.
so the best would be to export as Ethos library and manually integrate the SDK and the model into your project.

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You can check this example GitHub - edgeimpulse/example-standalone-inferencing-zephyr to see how can be done.

regards,
fv

#3

@ei_francesco,

Thank you very much for your help.
I’m currently trying to follow your recommendation.
However, when I build the project, I’m running into the following error, and so far I haven’t found a solution:

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It looks like Zephyr is still unable to correctly include some parts of the Edge Impulse SDK during compilation, even though the folders seem correctly referenced.

To give more context, here is my current CMakeLists.txt for the HP application:

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If you have any suggestions or see something wrong with my integration, I would be very grateful.

Thanks again for your support!

Regards,
Rizelaine