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NXP MIMX8MQ EVK

Overview

i.MX8MQ EVK board is based on NXP i.MX8MQ applications processor, composed of a quad Cortex®-A53 cluster and a single Cortex®-M4 core. Zephyr OS is ported to run on the Cortex®-M4 core.

• Board features:

  • RAM: 3GB LPDDR4

  • Storage:

    • 16GB eMMC5.0

    • 32MB QSPI NOR

    • microSD Socket

  • Wireless:

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

    • Bluetooth: v4.1

  • USB:

    • OTG - 1x type C

    • HOST - 1x type A

  • Ethernet

  • PCI-E M.2

  • LEDs:

    • 1x Power status LED

    • 1x UART LED

  • Debug

    • JTAG 10-pin connector

    • MicroUSB for UART debug, two COM ports for A53 and M4

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

Supported Features

The Zephyr mimx8mq_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/nxp/imx8mq_evk/imx8mq_evk_mimx8mq6_m4_defconfig.

Other hardware features are not currently supported by the port.

Connections and IOs

MIMX8MQ EVK board was tested with the following pinmux controller configuration.

Board Name	SoC Name	Usage
UART2 RXD	UART2_TXD	UART Console
UART2 TXD	UART2_RXD	UART Console

System Clock

The M4 Core is configured to run at a 266 MHz clock speed.

Serial Port

The i.MX8MQ SoC has four UARTs. UART_2 is configured for the console and the remaining are not used/tested.

Programming and Debugging

The MIMX8MQ EVK board doesn’t have QSPI flash for the M4 and it needs to be started by the A53 core. The A53 core is responsible to load the M4 binary application into the RAM, put the M4 in reset, set the M4 Program Counter and Stack Pointer, and get the M4 out of reset. The A53 can perform these steps at bootloader level or after the Linux system has booted.

The M4 can use up to 3 different RAMs. These are the memory mapping for A53 and M4:

Region	Cortex-A53	Cortex-M4 (System Bus)	Cortex-M4 (Code Bus)	Size
OCRAM	0x00900000-0x0091FFFF	0x20200000-0x2021FFFF	0x00900000-0x0091FFFF	128KB
TCMU	0x00800000-0x0081FFFF	0x20000000-0x2001FFFF		128KB
TCML	0x007E0000-0x007FFFFF		0x1FFE0000-0x1FFFFFFF	128KB
OCRAM_S	0x00180000-0x00187FFF	0x20180000-0x20187FFF	0x00180000-0x00187FFF	32KB

For more information about memory mapping see the i.MX 8M Applications Processor Reference Manual (section 2.1.2 and 2.1.3)

At compilation time you have to choose which RAM will be used. This configuration is done in the file boards/nxp/imx8mq_evk/imx8mq_evk_mimx8mq6_m4.dts with “zephyr,flash” (when CONFIG_XIP=y) and “zephyr,sram” properties. The available configurations are:

"zephyr,flash"
- &tcml_code
- &ocram_code
- &ocram_s_code

"zephyr,sram"
- &tcmu_sys
- &ocram_sys
- &ocram_s_sys

Load and run Zephyr on M4 from A53 using u-boot.

From an SD cardFrom serial

Copy 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 M4 binary onto the desired memory and start its execution using:

fatload mmc 0:1 0x40480000 zephyr.bin
cp.b 0x40480000 0x7e0000 0x8000
bootaux 0x7e0000

Debugging

MIMX8MQ EVK board can be debugged by connecting an external JLink JTAG debugger to the J401 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 imx8mq_evk/mimx8mq6/m4 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 zephyr-v2.6.99-30942-g6ee70bd22058 *****
Hello World! imx8mq_evk

References