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 imx8mq_evk 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.
imx8mq_evk
/
mimx8mq6/m4

Type

Location

Description

Compatible

CPU

on-chip

ARM Cortex-M4 CPU1

arm,cortex-m4

ARM architecture

on-chip

i.MX ITCM (Instruction Tightly Coupled Memory)1

nxp,imx-itcm

on-chip

i.MX DTCM (Data Tightly Coupled Memory)1

nxp,imx-dtcm

Clock control

on-chip

i.MX CCM (Clock Controller Module) IP node1

nxp,imx-ccm

GPIO & Headers

on-chip

i.MX GPIO5

nxp,imx-gpio

Interrupt controller

on-chip

ARMv7-M NVIC (Nested Vectored Interrupt Controller)1

arm,v7m-nvic

IPM

on-chip

i.MX Messaging Unit1

nxp,imx-mu

Pin control

on-chip

This compatible binding should be applied to the device’s iomuxc DTS node1

nxp,imx-iomuxc

on-chip

The node has the ‘pinctrl’ node label set in MCUX SoC’s devicetree1

nxp,imx8m-pinctrl

Serial controller

on-chip

This binding gives a base representation of the NXP iMX IUART1 3

nxp,imx-iuart

SPI

on-chip

NXP i.MX ECSPI controller3

nxp,imx-ecspi

Timer

on-chip

ARMv7-M System Tick1

arm,armv7m-systick

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 imx8mq_evk board supports the runners and associated west commands listed below.

flash debug attach debugserver rtt
jlink ✅ (default) ✅ (default) ✅ ✅ ✅

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.

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

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