Dzu's Blog (Einträge über imx8)

Using OpenOCD with the M4 MCU on the i.MX8M Mini

Detlev Zundel — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 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.

Weiterlesen… (2 min verbleiben zum Lesen)

More AMP on the i.MX8M Mini with Rpmsg

Detlev Zundel — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 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.

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Exploring the U-Boot boot scripts on i.MX8M Mini EVK

Detlev Zundel — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 09:01:30 GMT

As I used the i.MX8M Mini SoC in previous blog posts, I decided to explain the "magic" going on with the default boot settings in U-Boot. Understanding this gives us a solid foundation to efficiently work with the eval board during early development.

Of course it is also possible to reuse the framework for your own embedded Linux project, so it is even more important to understand the functional implications of it.

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Basic AMP on the i.MX8M Mini with Rpmsg

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

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Using the M4 MCU on the i.MX8M Mini

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

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Testing Preempt RT on the i.MX8MM SoC in 15 minutes

Detlev Zundel — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 20:34:30 GMT

Looking at the kernel sources for NXP's i.MX8M SoCs, I noticed branch names like "lf-5.10.72-rt-2.2.0" and I wondered if NXP finally was going to offer RT preempt support within their BSP. Some other vendors have started supporting the patch set already a while ago but for NXP this is new.

In this post we are going to run this real-time enabled kernel on the i.MX8M-Mini evaluation board from NXP to get a first hand impression of what is required on the kernel level. We will not use the Yocto build system as this is only a wrapper around the distribution agnostic kernel development.

Weiterlesen… (8 min verbleiben zum Lesen)