Alif Ensemble E1C StartKit

Overview

The Alif Ensemble E1C StartKit is a low-cost, single-board development platform for the low-power, AI-enabled E1C MCU in the Alif Ensemble family.

The E1C series contains a single CPU cluster:

RTSS-HE (High Efficiency): Cortex-M55 running at up to 160 MHz

The board supports the AE1C1F4051920PH0 SoC variant, with the board identifier ensemble_e1c_sk/ae1c1f4051920ph0/rtss_he.

More information about the board can be found at the Ensemble E1C StartKit Product Page [1].

Hardware

The Ensemble E1C StartKit provides the following hardware components:

J-Link On-Board debugger with USB-to-UART bridge
High-Speed USB device interface
mikroBUS Click board expansion socket
Arducam camera header
2x PDM digital microphones
Multicolor user LED
User and reset push-buttons
GPIO headers for I/O expansion

Supported Features

The ensemble_e1c_sk board supports the hardware features listed below.

on-chip / on-board: Feature integrated in the SoC / present on the board.
2 / 2: Number of instances that are enabled / disabled.
Click on the label to see the first instance of this feature in the board/SoC DTS files.
vnd,foo: Compatible string for the Devicetree binding matching the feature.
Click on the link to view the binding documentation.

`ensemble_e1c_sk/ae1c1f4051920ph0/rtss_he` target

On-target memory for this board target: 1536 KiB of RAM, 1945 KiB of Flash.

Type	Location	Description	Compatible
CPU	on-chip	ARM Cortex-M55 CPU1	`arm,cortex-m55`
Clock control	on-chip	Generic fixed-rate clock provider5	`fixed-clock`
	on-chip	Alif clock source multiplexer1	`alif,clock-mux`
	on-chip	Generic fixed factor clock provider1	`fixed-factor-clock`
	on-chip	Alif Semiconductor clock controller1	`alif,clockctrl`
Counter	on-chip	Synopsys Designware timer driver2	`snps,dw-timers`
GPIO & Headers	on-chip	Synopsys DesignWare GPIO10	`snps,designware-gpio`
I2C	on-chip	Synopsys DesignWare I2C2	`snps,designware-i2c`
Interrupt controller	on-chip	ARMv8.1-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller)1	`arm,v8.1m-nvic`
MMU / MPU	on-chip	ARMv8.1-M MPU (Memory Protection Unit)1	`arm,armv8.1m-mpu`
Pin control	on-chip	Alif Semiconductor pin controller1	`alif,pinctrl`
Serial controller	on-chip	ns16550 UART1 5	`ns16550`
Timer	on-chip	ARMv8.1-M System Tick1	`arm,armv8.1m-systick`

Programming and Debugging

Configuring a Console

The on-board USB-to-UART bridge is shared between the Secure Enclave UART and the UART2 user serial port, selected by the JP5 jumpers. Move JP5 to the UART2 position (JP5-3-5 and JP5-4-6) to reach the Zephyr console.

Connect a USB cable from your PC to the PRG USB connector, and use the serial terminal of your choice (minicom, putty, etc.) with the following settings:

Speed: 115200
Data: 8 bits
Parity: None
Stop bits: 1

To use SETOOLS without moving JP5 back, keep JP5 in the UART2 position and connect a 1.8 V USB-to-serial cable to the SEUART header J10: pin 1 is GND, pin 2 is the SEUART transmit line (to the cable RXD) and pin 3 is the SEUART receive line (to the cable TXD). The Zephyr console and the Secure Enclave UART are then available at the same time.

Flashing

The Alif Ensemble E1C StartKit is programmed using the Alif Security Toolkit (SETOOLS). Refer to the Ensemble E1C StartKit Product Page [1] for detailed instructions on installing and using SETOOLS to program the board.

Building an application for the RTSS-HE core:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b ensemble_e1c_sk/ae1c1f4051920ph0/rtss_he samples/hello_world

After building, use SETOOLS to flash the build/zephyr/zephyr.bin binary to the board.

After flashing and resetting the board, you should see the following message on the serial console:

Hello World! ensemble_e1c_sk/ae1c1f4051920ph0/rtss_he

Debugging

The board supports debugging through the on-board J-Link debugger using standard SEGGER J-Link tools.