Apollo3 Blue EVB

Apollo3 Blue EVB is a board by Ambiq featuring their ultra-low power Apollo3 Blue SoC.

Hardware

  • Apollo3 Blue SoC with up to 96 MHz operating frequency

  • ARM® Cortex® M4F core

  • 16 kB 2-way Associative/Direct-Mapped Cache per core

  • Up to 1 MB of flash memory for code/data

  • Up to 384 KB of low leakage / low power RAM for code/data

  • Integrated Bluetooth 5 Low-energy controller

For more information about the Apollo3 Blue SoC and Apollo3 Blue EVB board:

Supported Features

The apollo3_evb 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.

apollo3_evb/apollo3_blue target

Type

Location

Description

Compatible

CPU

on-chip

ARM Cortex-M4F CPU1

arm,cortex-m4f

ADC

on-chip

Ambiq ADC node1

ambiq,adc

Bluetooth

on-chip

Bluetooth module that uses Ambiq’s Bluetooth Host Controller Interface SPI driver (e.g1

ambiq,bt-hci-spi

Clock control

on-chip

Generic fixed-rate clock provider1

fixed-clock

Counter

on-chip

Ambiq Timer/Counter8

ambiq,counter

Debug

on-chip

ARMv7 instrumentation trace macrocell1

arm,armv7m-itm

Flash controller

on-chip

Ambiq flash controller1

ambiq,flash-controller

GPIO & Headers

on-chip

Ambiq GPIO provides the GPIO pin mapping for GPIO child nodes1

ambiq,gpio

on-chip

Ambiq GPIO bank2

ambiq,gpio-bank

on-board

GPIO pins exposed on Ambiq Apollo4p EVB headers1

ambiq-header

I2C

on-chip

Ambiq I2C1 5

ambiq,i2c

Input

on-board

Group of GPIO-bound input keys1

gpio-keys

Interrupt controller

on-chip

ARMv7-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller)1

arm,v7m-nvic

LED

on-board

Group of GPIO-controlled LEDs1

gpio-leds

MTD

on-chip

Flash node1

soc-nv-flash

on-board

Fixed partitions of a flash (or other non-volatile storage) memory1

fixed-partitions

Pin control

on-chip

The Ambiq Apollo3 pin controller is a node responsible for controlling pin function selection and pin properties, such as routing a UART0 TX to pin 60 and enabling the pullup resistor on that pin1

ambiq,apollo3-pinctrl

Power management

on-chip

Ambiq power control1

ambiq,pwrctrl

RTC

on-chip

AMBIQ RTC1

ambiq,rtc

Serial controller

on-chip

Ambiq UART controller (PL011 compatible)1 1

ambiq,uart

SPI

on-chip

Ambiq SPI Device1

ambiq,spid

on-chip

Ambiq SPI1 5

ambiq,spi

on-chip

Ambiq MSPI1

ambiq,mspi

on-chip

This binding gives a representation of SPI controller in some Ambiq Apollox Blue SOC (e.g1

ambiq,spi-bleif

SRAM

on-chip

Generic on-chip SRAM description1

mmio-sram

Timer

on-chip

ARMv7-M System Tick1

arm,armv7m-systick

on-chip

Ambiq STIMER1

ambiq,stimer

Watchdog

on-chip

Ambiq Watchdog1

ambiq,watchdog

Programming and Debugging

Flashing an application

Connect your device to your host computer using the JLINK USB port. The sample application Hello World is used for this example. Build the Zephyr kernel and application, then flash it to the device:

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b apollo3_evb samples/hello_world
west flash

Note

west flash requires SEGGER J-Link software and pylink Python module to be installed on you host computer.

Open a serial terminal (minicom, putty, etc.) with the following settings:

  • Speed: 115200

  • Data: 8 bits

  • Parity: None

  • Stop bits: 1

Reset the board and you should be able to see on the corresponding Serial Port the following message:

Hello World! apollo3_evb