User:<image>Describe the image.
Answer: This is a surreal, stylized digital illustration depicting an astronaut relaxing on the Moon.
Here's a breakdown of the scene:
- The Astronaut: A space traveler in a white spacesuit reclines on their back on the lunar surface. Their helmet visor reflects the surrounding environment with a golden, metallic sheen. They are holding a green glass bottle—likely a beer—with both hands, as if taking a sip or savoring a moment of leisure.
- The Setting: The astronaut is lying on a small, green cooler that has some white lettering (possibly "Coca-Cola" or similar branding) on its side. To the right, a metal ladder leans against the ground, suggesting this might be part of an expedition or base camp.
- Background: In the distance, Earth looms large in the sky, its blue and green surface visible against the blackness of space. The Moon's surface is depicted with craters and rocks, typical of lunar terrain.
- Atmosphere: The image has a dreamlike, almost cinematic quality. It juxtaposes the harsh reality of space exploration with a moment of casual relaxation—a humorous or ironic twist on the idea of astronauts enjoying a drink in such an alien environment.
Overall, it’s a visually striking and imaginative piece that blends science fiction with everyday leisure, creating a whimsical and slightly absurd scene.
Paper: Qwen3 Technical Report
Hugging face: https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-VL-4B-Instruct
LLMs (Large Language Models) are neural networks trained on large text datasets to understand and generate language.
VLMs (Vision-Language Models) add a visual encoder so the model can process images and text together.
A combined VLM+LLM system is often referred to as a multimodal model.
These models can be large—hundreds of millions to billions of parameters—which impacts accuracy, memory use, and runtime speed.
On edge devices like the RK3588, available RAM and compute are limited, and even the NPU has strict constraints on supported operations.
Because of this, models typically need to be quantised or simplified to fit.
Performance is usually expressed in tokens (words) per second.
Once converted to RKNN, parts of the model can run on the NPU, improving speed.
Despite these limits, models like Qwen3 run well on the RK3588 because the NPU efficiently accelerates the heavy math, and the vision encoder can be optimised. This makes advanced multimodal AI feasible on small, power-efficient devices.
All models, with C++ examples, can be found on the Q-engineering GitHub.
All LLM models are quantized to w8a8, while the VLM vision encoders use fp16.
| model | RAM (GB)1 | llm cold sec2 | llm warm sec3 | vlm cold sec2 | vlm warm sec3 | Resolution | Tokens/s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qwen3-2B | 3.1 | 21.9 | 2.6 | 10.0 | 0.9 | 448 x 448 | 11.5 |
| Qwen3-4B | 8.7 | 49.6 | 5.6 | 10.6 | 1.1 | 448 x 448 | 5.7 |
| Qwen2.5-3B | 4.8 | 48.3 | 4.0 | 17.9 | 1.8 | 392 x 392 | 7.0 |
| Qwen2-7B | 8.7 | 86.6 | 34.5 | 37.1 | 20.7 | 392 x 392 | 3.7 |
| Qwen2-2.2B | 3.3 | 29.1 | 2.5 | 17.1 | 1.7 | 392 x 392 | 12.5 |
| InternVL3-1B | 1.3 | 6.8 | 1.1 | 7.8 | 0.75 | 448 x 448 | 30 |
| SmolVLM2-2.2B | 3.4 | 21.2 | 2.6 | 10.5 | 0.9 | 384 x 384 | 11 |
| SmolVLM2-500M | 0.8 | 4.8 | 0.7 | 2.5 | 0.25 | 384 x 384 | 31 |
| SmolVLM2-256M | 0.5 | 1.1 | 0.4 | 2.5 | 0.25 | 384 x 384 | 54 |
1 The total used memory; LLM plus the VLM.
2 When an llm/vlm model is loaded for the first time from your disk to RAM or NPU, it is called a cold start.
The duration depends on your OS, I/O transfer rate, and memory mapping.
3 Subsequent loading (warm start) takes advantage of the already mapped data in RAM. Mostly, only a few pointers need to be restored.


To run the application, you have to:
- OpenCV 64-bit installed.
- rkllm library.
- rknn library.
- Optional: Code::Blocks. (
$ sudo apt-get install codeblocks)
Start with the usual
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get install cmake wget curl
To install OpenCV on your SBC, follow the Raspberry Pi 4 guide.
Or, when you have no intentions to program code:
$ sudo apt-get install lib-opencv-dev
$ git clone https://github.com/Qengineering/Qwen3-VL-4B-NPU.git
To run InternVL3, you need to have the rkllm-runtime library version 1.2.3 (or higher) installed, as well as the rknpu driver version 0.9.8.
If you don't have these on your machine, or if you have a lower version, you need to install them.
We have provided the correct versions in the repo.
$ cd ./Qwen3-VL-4B-NPU/aarch64/library
$ sudo cp ./*.so /usr/local/lib
$ cd ./Qwen3-VL-4B-NPU/aarch64/include
$ sudo cp ./*.h /usr/local/includeThe next step is downloading the models.
This time, we used the original model supplied by Rockchips rkllm_model_zoo (44 GB!), fetch code: rkllm.
Better to download the two needed files (5.4 GB) from our Sync.com server:
qwen3-vl-4b-instruct_w8a8_rk3588.rkllm and qwen3-vl-4b-vision_rk3588.rknn
Copy both to your ./model folder.
Once you have the two models, it is time to build your application.
You can use Code::Blocks.
- Load the project file *.cbp in Code::Blocks.
- Select Release, not Debug.
- Compile and run with F9.
- You can alter command line arguments with Project -> Set programs arguments...
Or use Cmake.
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make -j4
The app has the following arguments.
VLM_NPU Picture RKNN_model RKLLM_model NewTokens ContextLength| Argument | Comment |
|---|---|
| picture | The image. Provide a dummy if you don't want to use an image |
| RKNN_model | The visual encoder model (vlm) |
| RKLLM_model | The large language model (llm) |
| NewTokens | This sets the maximum number of new tokens. Optional, default 2048 |
| ContextLength | This specifies the maximum total number of tokens the model can process. Optional, default 4096 |
In the context of the Rockchip RK3588 LLM (Large Language Model) library, the parameters NewTokens and ContextLength both control different limits for text generation, and they're typical in LLM workflows.
NewTokens
This sets the maximum number of tokens (pieces of text, typically sub-word units) that the model is allowed to generate in response to a prompt during a single inference round. For example, if set to 300, the model will not return more than 300 tokens as output, regardless of the prompt length. It's important for controlling generation length to avoid too-short or too-long responses, helping manage resource use and output size.
ContextLength
This specifies the maximum total number of tokens the model can process in one go, which includes both the prompt (input) tokens and all generated tokens. For example, if set to 2048 and your prompt already uses 500 tokens, the model can generate up to 2048-500 = 1548 new tokens. This is a hardware and architecture constraint set during model conversion and deployment, as the context window cannot exceed the model's design limit (for instance, 4096 or 8192 tokens depending on the model variant).
A typical command line can be:
VLM_NPU ./Moon.jpg ./models/qwen3-vl-4b-vision_rk3588.rknn ./models/qwen3-vl-4b-instruct_w8a8_rk3588.rkllm 2048 4096The NewTokens (2048) and ContextLength (4096) are optional and can be omitted.
Using the application is simple. Once you provide the image and the models, you can ask everything you want.
Remember, we are on a bare Rock5C, so don't expect the same quality answers as ChatGPT can provide.
On the other hand, when you see the examples below, the app performs amazingly well.
If you want to talk about the picture, you need to include the token <image> in your prompt once.
The app remembers the dialogue until you give the token <clear>.
With <exit>, you leave the application.
Below, you find the surprisingly little code of main.cpp.
#include "RK35llm.h"
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
std::string input_str;
std::string output_str;
RK35llm RKLLM;
RKLLM.SetInfo(true); //yes, you may give me additional model information
RKLLM.SetSilence(false); //you may print the incremental text chunks on the terminal
if (argc< 4) {std::cerr << "Usage: " << argv[0] << " image vlm_model llm_model [option]NewTokens [option]ContextLength\n"; return -1;}
else if(argc==4) RKLLM.LoadModel(argv[2],argv[3]);
else if(argc==5) RKLLM.LoadModel(argv[2],argv[3],std::atoi(argv[4]));
else if(argc> 5) RKLLM.LoadModel(argv[2],argv[3],std::atoi(argv[4]),std::atoi(argv[5]));
cv::Mat Pic = cv::imread(argv[1]);
RKLLM.LoadImage(Pic);
while(true) {
printf("\n");
printf("User: ");
std::getline(std::cin, input_str);
if (input_str == "exit") break;
output_str = RKLLM.Ask(input_str);
// std::cout << "\nLLM Reply: " << output_str << std::endl;
}
return 0;
}Most code speaks for itself. One remark.
The LLM generates the answer to your request in little pieces of text. You see them as if the LLM is typing on your terminal.
RKLLM.SetSilence controls this behaviour. When set to true, it will suppress this output. RKLLM.Ask() also returns the complete answer.
In main.cpp uncomment this line:
std::cout << "\nLLM Answer: " << output_str << std::endl;Notice the nice Markdown makeup of the answer!
User: Can you make me a C++ call that embeds the Pythagorean theorem?
Answer:Actually, there is no “Pythagorean theorem” in C++ — it’s a mathematical formula, not a programming construct. But you can write a C++ function or program that implements the Pythagorean theorem, which states:
In a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
c² = a² + b²
→ c = √(a² + b²)
#include <iostream>
#include <cmath> // for sqrt()
double pythagoreanTheorem(double a, double b) {
return std::sqrt(a * a + b * b);
}
int main() {
double sideA = 3.0;
double sideB = 4.0;
double hypotenuse = pythagoreanTheorem(sideA, sideB);
std::cout << "For sides " << sideA << " and " << sideB
<< ", the hypotenuse is: " << hypotenuse << std::endl;
return 0;
}For sides 3 and 4, the hypotenuse is: 5
- This function computes the hypotenuse given two legs of a right triangle.
- You can also write it to compute any side if you know the other two — e.g.,
a = sqrt(c² - b²)etc. - The
std::sqrt()is from<cmath>— standard math library.
#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>
bool isRightTriangle(double a, double b, double c) {
// Sort the sides to ensure we compare largest with sum of squares
double sides[3] = {a, b, c};
std::sort(sides, sides + 3);
return std::abs(sides[0] * sides[0] + sides[1] * sides[1] - sides[2] * sides[2]) < 1e-9;
}
int main() {
double a = 3.0, b = 4.0, c = 5.0;
if (isRightTriangle(a, b, c)) {
std::cout << "This is a right triangle!" << std::endl;
} else {
std::cout << "Not a right triangle." << std::endl;
}
return 0;
}Let me know if you want to embed it in a class, use vectors, or even visualize it with graphics! 🎨📐




