i.MX95 EVK
Overview
The i.MX95 EVK (IMX95LPD5EVK-19) board is a platform designed to show the most commonly used features of the i.MX 95 automotive applications processor. It is an entry-level development board, which helps developers to get familiar with the processor before investing a large amount of resources in more specific designs. The i.MX95 device on the board comes in a compact 19 x 19 mm package.
Hardware
i.MX 95 automotive applications processor
The processor integrates up to six Arm Cortex-A55 cores, and supports functional safety with built-in Arm Cortex-M33 and -M7 cores
DRAM memory: 128-Gbit LPDDR5 DRAM
eMMC: 64 GB Micron eMMC
SPI NOR flash memory: 1 Gbit octal flash memory
USB interface: Two USB ports: Type-A and Type-C
Audio codec interface
One audio codec WM8962BECSN/R with one TX and RX lane
One 3.5 mm 4-pole CTIA standard audio jack
One 4-pin connector to connect speaker
Ethernet interface
ENET2 controller
Connects to a 60-pin Ethernet connector
Supports Ethernet PHY daughter cards that can be configured to operate at 100 Mbit/s or 1000 Mbit/s
ENET1 controller
Supports 100 Mbit/s or 1000 Mbit/s RGMII Ethernet with one RJ45 connector connected with an external PHY, RTL8211
10 Gbit Ethernet controller
Supports XFI and USXGMII interfaces with one 10 Gbit RJ45 ICM connected with an external PHY, Marvell AQR113C
M.2 interface: One Wi-Fi/Bluetooth Murata Type-2EL module based on NXP AW693 chip supporting 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2
MIPI CSI interface: Connects to one 36-pin miniSAS connector using x4 lane configuration
MIPI CSIDSI interface: Connects to one 36-pin miniSAS connector using x4 lane configuration
LVDS interface: two mini-SAS connectors each with x4-lane configuration
CAN interface: Two 4-pin CAN headers for external connection
SD card interface: one 4-bit SD3.0 microSD card
I2C interface: I2C1 to I2C7 controllers
FT4232H I2C interface: PCT2075 temperature sensor and current monitoring devices
DMIC interface: two digital microphones (DMIC) providing a single-bit PDM output
ADC interface: two 4-channel ADC header
Audio board interface
Supports PCIe x4 slot for Quantum board connection
Supports PCIe x8 slot for Audio I/O board connection
Debug interface
One USB-to-UART/MPSSE device, FT4232H
One USB 2.0 Type-C connector (J31) for FT4232H provides quad serial ports
Supported Features
The imx95_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.
Type |
Location |
Description |
Compatible |
|---|---|---|---|
CPU |
on-chip |
||
Counter |
on-chip |
NXP Timer/PWM Module (TPM) used as timer6 |
|
Firmware |
on-chip |
System Control and Management Interface (SCMI) shared memory (SHMEM)1 |
|
on-chip |
System Control and Management Interface (SCMI) with doorbell and shared memory (SHMEM) transport1 |
||
on-chip |
System Control and Management Interface (SCMI) clock protocol1 |
||
on-chip |
System Control and Management Interface (SCMI) pinctrl protocol1 |
||
GPIO & Headers |
on-chip |
i.MX RGPIO5 |
|
I2C |
on-chip |
||
Interrupt controller |
on-chip |
ARM Generic Interrupt Controller v31 |
|
Mailbox |
on-chip |
||
Pin control |
on-chip |
The node has the ‘pinctrl’ node label set in MCUX SoC’s devicetree1 |
|
Serial controller |
on-chip |
||
Timer |
on-chip |
per-core ARM architected timer1 |
System Clock
This board configuration uses a system clock frequency of 24 MHz for Cortex-A55. Cortex-A55 Core runs up to 1.8 GHz. Cortex-M7 Core runs up to 800MHz in which SYSTICK runs on same frequency.
Serial Port
This board configuration uses a single serial communication channel with the CPU’s UART1 for Cortex-A55, UART3 for Cortex-M7.
TPM
Two channels are enabled on TPM2 for PWM for M7. Signals can be observerd with oscilloscope. Channel 2 signal routed to resistance R881. Channel 3 signal routed to resistance R882.
SPI
The EVK board need to be reworked to solder R1217/R1218/R1219/R1220 with 0R resistances. SPI1 on J35 is enabled for M7.
Ethernet
NETC driver supports to manage the Physical Station Interface (PSI).
The first ENET1 port could be enabled for M7 by west build option
-DEXTRA_DTC_OVERLAY_FILE=enetc_psi0.overlay.
Programming and Debugging (A55)
The imx95_evk board supports the runners and associated west commands listed below.
| flash | debug |
|---|
There are multiple methods to program and run Zephyr on the A55 core:
Option 1. Boot Zephyr by Using SPSDK Runner
SPSDK runner leverages SPSDK tools (https://spsdk.readthedocs.io), it builds an
bootable flash image flash.bin which includes all necessary firmware components,
such as ELE+V2X firmware, System Manager, TCM OEI, TF-A images etc. Using west flash
command will download the boot image flash.bin to DDR memory, SD card or eMMC flash.
By using flash.bin, as no U-Boot image is available, so TF-A will boot up Zephyr on
the first Cortex-A55 Core directly.
In order to use SPSDK runner, it requires fetching binary blobs, which can be achieved by running the following command:
west blobs fetch hal_nxp
Note
It is recommended running the command above after west update.
SPSDK runner is enabled by configure item CONFIG_BOARD_NXP_SPSDK_IMAGE, currently
it is not enabled by default for i.MX95 EVK board, so use this configuration to enable
it, for example, with the Basic Synchronization sample:
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b imx95_evk/mimx9596/a55 samples/synchronization -- -DCONFIG_BOARD_NXP_SPSDK_IMAGE=y
If CONFIG_BOARD_NXP_SPSDK_IMAGE is available and enabled for the board variant,
flash.bin will be built automatically. The programming could be through below commands.
Before that, switch SW7[1:4] should be configured to 0b1001 for usb download mode
to boot, and USB1 and DBG ports should be connected to PC. There are 4 serial ports
enumerated (115200 8n1), and we use the first for M7 and the fourth for M33 System Manager.
(The flasher is spsdk which already installed via scripts/requirements.txt.
On linux host, usb device permission should be configured per Installation Guide
of https://spsdk.readthedocs.io)
# load and run without programming. for next flashing, execute 'reset' in the
# fourth serail port
$ west flash
# program to SD card, then set SW7[1:4]=0b1011 to reboot
$ west flash --bootdevice sd
# program to emmc card, then set SW7[1:4]=0b1010 to reboot
$ west flash --bootdevice=emmc
Option 2. Boot Zephyr by Using U-Boot Command
U-Boot “go” command can be used to start Zephyr on A55 core0 and U-Boot “cpu” command is used to load and kick Zephyr to the other A55 secondary Cores. Currently “cpu” command is supported in : Real-Time Edge U-Boot (use the branch “uboot_vxxxx.xx-y.y.y, xxxx.xx is uboot version and y.y.y is Real-Time Edge Software version, for example “uboot_v2023.04-2.9.0” branch is U-Boot v2023.04 used in Real-Time Edge Software release v2.9.0), and pre-build images and user guide can be found at Real-Time Edge Software.
Step 1: Download Zephyr Image into DDR Memory
Firstly need to download Zephyr binary image into DDR memory, it can use tftp:
tftp 0xd0000000 zephyr.bin
Or copy the Zephyr image zephyr.bin SD card and plug the card into the board, for example
if copy to the FAT partition of the SD card, use the following U-Boot command to load the image
into DDR memory (assuming the SD card is dev 1, fat partition ID is 1, they could be changed
based on actual setup):
fatload mmc 1:1 0xd0000000 zephyr.bin;
Step 2: Boot Zephyr
Use this configuration to run basic Zephyr applications and kernel tests, for example, with the Basic Synchronization sample:
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b imx95_evk/mimx9596/a55 samples/synchronization
This will build an image (zephyr.bin) with the synchronization sample app.
Then use the following command to boot Zephyr on the core0:
dcache off; icache flush; go 0xd0000000;
Or use “cpu” command to boot from secondary Core, for example Core1:
dcache flush; icache flush; cpu 1 release 0xd0000000
It will display the following console output:
*** Booting Zephyr OS build v3.6.0-4569-g483c01ca11a7 ***
thread_a: Hello World from cpu 0 on imx95_evk!
thread_b: Hello World from cpu 0 on imx95_evk!
thread_a: Hello World from cpu 0 on imx95_evk!
thread_b: Hello World from cpu 0 on imx95_evk!
thread_a: Hello World from cpu 0 on imx95_evk!
Option 3. Boot Zephyr by Using Remoteproc under Linux
When running Linux on the A55 core, it can use the remoteproc framework to load and boot Zephyr, refer to Real-Time Edge user guide for more details. Pre-build images and user guide can be found at Real-Time Edge Software.
Programming and Debugging (M7)
The i.MX System Manager (SM) is used on i.MX95, which is an application that runs on Cortex-M33 processor. The Cortex-M33 is the boot core, runs the boot ROM which loads the SM (and other boot code), and then branches to the SM. The SM then configures some aspects of the hardware such as isolation mechanisms and then starts other cores in the system. After starting these cores, it enters a service mode where it provides access to clocking, power, sensor, and pin control via a client RPC API based on ARM’s System Control and Management Interface (SCMI).
To program M7, an i.MX container image flash.bin must be made, which contains
multiple elements required, like ELE+V2X firmware, System Manager, TCM OEI, Cortex-M7
image and so on.
SPSDK runner is used to build flash.bin, and it requires fetching binary blobs, which
can be achieved by running the following command:
west blobs fetch hal_nxp
Note
It is recommended running the command above after west update.
Two methods to build and program flash.bin.
1. If CONFIG_BOARD_NXP_SPSDK_IMAGE is not available for the board variant,
the steps making flash.bin and programming should refer to Getting Started with
MCUXpresso SDK for IMX95LPD5EVK-19.pdf in i.MX95 MCUX SDK release. Note that
for the DDR variant, one should use the Makefile targets containing the ddr keyword.
See 4.2 Run an example application, just rename zephyr.bin to m7_image.bin
to make flash.bin and program to SD/eMMC.
2. If CONFIG_BOARD_NXP_SPSDK_IMAGE is available and enabled for the board variant,
flash.bin will be built automatically. The programming could be through below commands.
Before that, switch SW7[1:4] should be configured to 0b1001 for usb download mode
to boot, and USB1 and DBG ports should be connected to PC. There are 4 serial ports
enumerated (115200 8n1), and we use the first for M7 and the fourth for M33 System Manager.
(The flasher is spsdk which already installed via scripts/requirements.txt.
On linux host, usb device permission should be configured per Installation Guide
of https://spsdk.readthedocs.io)
# load and run without programming. for next flashing, execute 'reset' in the
# fourth serail port
$ west flash
# program to SD card, then set SW7[1:4]=0b1011 to reboot
$ west flash --bootdevice sd
# program to emmc card, then set SW7[1:4]=0b1010 to reboot
$ west flash --bootdevice=emmc
Zephyr supports two M7-based i.MX95 boards: imx95_evk/mimx9596/m7 and
imx95_evk/mimx9596/m7/ddr. The main difference between them is the memory
used. imx95_evk/mimx9596/m7 uses TCM (ITCM for code and, generally, read-only
data and DTCM for R/W data), while imx95_evk/mimx9596/m7/ddr uses DDR.
Building the Hello World application for the TCM-based board
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b imx95_evk/mimx9596/m7 samples/hello_world
Building the Hello World application for the DDR-based board
# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b imx95_evk/mimx9596/m7/ddr samples/hello_world
After making flash.bin and program to SD/eMMC, open a serial terminal, and reset the
board. For the imx95_evk/mimx9596/m7 board you should see something like:
*** Booting Zephyr OS build v3.6.0-4569-g483c01ca11a7 ***
Hello World! imx95_evk/mimx9596/m7
while, for the imx95_evk/mimx9596/m7/ddr board, you should get the following output:
*** Booting Zephyr OS build v3.6.0-4569-g483c01ca11a7 ***
Hello World! imx95_evk/mimx9596/m7/ddr
Support Resources for Zephyr
MCUXpresso for VS Code, wiki documentation and Zephyr lab guides
NXP’s Zephyr landing page (including training resources)