Basic AMP on the i.MX8M Mini with Rpmsg

Detlev Zundel — Sat, 16 Apr 2022 12:48:52 GMT

In a recent post, I described the basics to execute code on the Cortex M4 micro controller inside the i.MX8M Mini SoC. However there was no communication going on between Linux on the Cortex A cores and the application running on the M4. In this post, I will look at an example using the remoteproc and rpmsg (Remote Processor Messaging) frameworks for communication between the processors. The remoteproc subsystem implements basic house keeping for co-processors in Linux and the rpmsg framework implements the actual data channels.

Using the M4 MCU on the i.MX8M Mini

Detlev Zundel — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 17:01:30 GMT

Over the last few years, SoCs targeted at embedded GNU/Linux applications became heterogenous architectures. Instead of adding more identical copies of CPU cores (Cortex-A class), a small companion micro controller core (Cortex-M class) was added. Compared to the complex architecture of Cortex-A systems, including their multi-layer caches, those cores are usually deterministic and thus predestined for low-latency "real time" jobs. NXP's first such SoC is the i.MX6 Solo X device featuring an Cortex-M4 next to an Cortex-A9 core. The i.MX8 family moved the Cortex-A cores into the 64 bit world and there are different combinations of Cortex-M companion micro controllers, but all of them do feature them as they are pretty "cheap" in terms of die space and transistor count.

From what I can see, it is still uncommon to use those micro controllers in actual projects though. Today I want to take a short look on how to run simple programs on the Cortex-M4 of the i.MX8M Mini SoC, especially we will use the official i.MX8M Mini EVK.

Dzu's Blog (Posts about mcuxpresso)

Basic AMP on the i.MX8M Mini with Rpmsg

Using the M4 MCU on the i.MX8M Mini