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NXP MIMX8MP EVK

Overview

i.MX8M Plus EVK board is based on NXP i.MX8M Plus applications processor, composed of a quad Cortex®-A53 cluster and a single Cortex®-M7 core. Zephyr OS is ported to run on the Cortex®-M7 core.

  • Board features:

    • RAM: 6GB LPDDR4

    • Storage:

      • SanDisk 32GB eMMC5.1

      • Micron 32MB QSPI NOR

      • microSD Socket

    • Wireless:

      • WiFi: 2.4/5GHz IEEE 802.11b/g/n/ac

      • Bluetooth: v4.2

    • USB:

      • USB 3.0 Type C for Power

      • USB 3.0 Type A

      • USB 3.0 Type C

    • 2x 10/100/1000 Ethernet (1x w/ TSN)

    • PCI-E M.2

    • Connectors:

      • 40-Pin Dual Row Header

    • LEDs:

      • 1x Power status LED

      • 1x UART LED

    • Debug

      • JTAG connector

      • MicroUSB for UART debug, two COM ports for A53 and one for M7

MIMX8MP EVK

More information about the board can be found at the NXP website.

Supported Features

The Zephyr mimx8mp_evk board configuration supports the following hardware features:

Interface

Controller

Driver/Component

NVIC

on-chip

nested vector interrupt controller

SYSTICK

on-chip

systick

CLOCK

on-chip

clock_control

PINMUX

on-chip

pinmux

UART

on-chip

serial port-polling; serial port-interrupt

The default configuration can be found in the defconfig file: boards/arm/mimx8mp_evk/mimx8mp_evk_defconfig.

Other hardware features are not currently supported by the port.

Connections and IOs

MIMX8MP EVK board was tested with the following pinmux controller configuration.

Board Name

SoC Name

Usage

UART4 RXD

UART4_TXD

UART Console

UART4 TXD

UART4_RXD

UART Console

System Clock

The M7 Core is configured to run at a 800 MHz clock speed.

Serial Port

The i.MX8M Plus SoC has four UARTs. UART_4 is configured for the console and the remaining are not used/tested.

Programming and Debugging

The MIMX8MP EVK board doesn’t have QSPI flash for the M7, and it needs to be started by the A53 core. The A53 core is responsible to load the M7 binary application into the RAM, put the M7 in reset, set the M7 Program Counter and Stack Pointer, and get the M7 out of reset. The A53 can perform these steps at bootloader level or after the Linux system has booted.

The M7 can use up to 3 different RAMs (currently, only two configurations are supported: ITCM and DDR). These are the memory mapping for A53 and M7:

Region

Cortex-A53

Cortex-M7 (System Bus)

Cortex-M7 (Code Bus)

Size

OCRAM

0x00900000-0x0098FFFF

0x20200000-0x2028FFFF

0x00900000-0x0098FFFF

576KB

DTCM

0x00800000-0x0081FFFF

0x20000000-0x2001FFFF

128KB

ITCM

0x007E0000-0x007FFFFF

0x00000000-0x0001FFFF

128KB

OCRAM_S

0x00180000-0x00188FFF

0x20180000-0x20188FFF

0x00180000-0x00188FFF

36KB

DDR

0x80000000-0x803FFFFF

0x80200000-0x803FFFFF

0x80000000-0x801FFFFF

2MB

For more information about memory mapping see the i.MX 8M Plus Applications Processor Reference Manual (section 2.1 to 2.3)

At compilation time you have to choose which RAM will be used. This configuration is done based on board name (mimx8mp_evk_itcm for ITCM and mimx8mp_evk_ddr for DDR).

Load and run Zephyr on M7 from A53 using u-boot by copying the compiled zephyr.bin to the first FAT partition of the SD card and plug the SD card into the board. Power it up and stop the u-boot execution at prompt.

Load the M7 binary onto the desired memory and start its execution using:

ITCM ===

fatload mmc 0:1 0x48000000 zephyr.bin
cp.b 0x48000000 0x7e0000 20000
bootaux 0x7e0000

DDR

fatload mmc 0:1 0x80000000 zephyr.bin
dcache flush
bootaux 0x80000000

Debugging

MIMX8MP EVK board can be debugged by connecting an external JLink JTAG debugger to the J24 debug connector and to the PC. Then the application can be debugged using the usual way.

Here is an example for the Hello World application.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b mimx8mp_evk_itcm samples/hello_world
west debug

Open a serial terminal, step through the application in your debugger, and you should see the following message in the terminal:

*** Booting Zephyr OS build v2.7.99-1310-g2801bf644a91  ***
Hello World! mimx8mp_evk

References