"Freescale i.MX series application processor is a solution based on high-performance arm cortex-a series. It is suitable for multimedia and display applications. It has the characteristics of scalability, high performance and low power consumption. At present, it is mainly active in automotive, consumer electronics, industry, medical / health care and other fields. In July this year, a new member of the i.MX family was added. The i.MX 6ultralite series products based on arm cortex-a7 processor with high energy efficiency ratio can save 50% of power consumption under the same performance compared with the cortex-a9 series products of the same series. It is very suitable for the current popular applications such as Internet of things, vehicle information processing, home energy management system, industrial control and so on, This is also Freescale's first development board based on arm cortex-a7 processor. Is it worth looking forward to? Let's have a look.
Mcimx6ul-evk development board
The mcimx6ul-evk development board is packaged in simple recyclable kraft cardboard. The packaging box obtained by aiban.com is not equipped with additional accessories. See the instructions, users need to configure their own power adapter, microSD card, LCD (if they need a better experience) and other accessories.
Seeing mcimx6ul-evk at first glance makes people feel that peripheral resources are very rich. In the end, it is different from a simple microcontroller board. The mcimx6ul-evk board adopts the design of backplane mcimx6ul-bb + core board mcimx6ul-cm, which is connected through sodimm interface, which is also convenient for engineers to expand or transplant the core board directly to existing projects in the future.
The backplane mcimx6ul-bb mainly includes the expansion of some functional peripherals, such as audio circuit, Ethernet, LCD, USB, HDMI (take a closer look at the board at this time, the transmitter chip of HDMI is not pasted, so this function cannot be realized temporarily). The core board mcimx6ul-cm is mainly the smallest system board based on Freescale i.MX 6ultralite application processor, In addition to the application processor, the board is mainly equipped with ddr3l, SPI flash (compatible with NAND flash design, but the board can only select one of the storage methods), microSD interface (compatible with EMMC design), boot setting switch, etc., as shown in the figure below.
The concise hardware system block diagram of mcimx6ul-evk development board is as follows:
Mcimx6ul-bb base plate
Remove the core board mcimx6ul-cm. Let's take a closer look at some functions on the board. The first is the bottom board mcimx6ul-bb. The bottom board adopts a 4-layer board design with a size of 13.0 cm x 10.8 cm. The interfaces on the board are still very rich.
Backplane mcimx6ul-bb onboard resources:
LCD expansion connector
HDMI connector (without SMD HDMI transmitter chip)
Audio codec circuit (including 3.5mm headphone interface, microphone input, left and right speaker output)
One USB2.0 microusb OTG connector
One USB2.0 USB host interface
Two Ethernet (10 / 100t) connectors
Dual can connector
SD / SDIO interface
Parallel camera interface
Sensor: Freescale mag3110 Electronic compass, Freescale fxls8471q Accelerometer and gyroscope (not pasted)
20pin standard JTAG connector
UART to micro USB interface
Arduino extension interface
The resource distribution on the mcimx6ul-bb board is still very clear. However, since the board is equipped with two mciro USB interfaces, one is serial port to USB and the other is USB OTG interface, it is necessary to distinguish between serial port and download function, which will be used later in the process of downloading software.
Mcimx6ul-cm core board
The core board mcimx6ul-cm is also a four layer board design, with a size of 6.76 cm x 4.24 cm, which is not as big as a business card. It is very suitable for engineers to add it to existing applications. The author is shocked by this. The on-board i.mx6ultralite application processor has nearly 300 pins, which can be designed with only four layers of boards. The optimization on the chip pins is really "attractive".
Core board mcimx6ul-cm onboard resources:
i. Mx6ultralite application processor
Separate power supply circuit
4GB ddr3l SDRAM
256 MB Quad channel SPI flash / NAND flash (not SMD)
MicroSD connector / EMMC (not SMD)
The resources of the core board mcimx6ul-cm seem to be relatively small. In addition to the i.mx6ultralite application processor, compatible designs are made for the expansion of the core on-board storage. For example, SPI flash or NAND flash can be selected, microSD card holder or EMMC can be selected, and the default configuration of the board is the combination of SPI flash and microSD card.
It is worth mentioning that the core board is powered by a separate power supply, which is supplied to the i.mx6ultralite application processor with 3.3v/1.8v/2.8v/1.2v and other voltages through different LDOS and DC / DC. In addition, the core board is also equipped with two dial switches, which are respectively used for how to start the development board and the setting of startup mode. The actual operation will be explained when the development board is powered on, which will not be described in detail here.
i. Mx6ultralite application processor
The specific model of the application processor on the mcimx6ul-evk development board is pcimx6g2cvm05aa, which is packaged in BGA 14mm * 14mm. This is Freescale's first i.mx6 series chip based on arm cortex-a7 processor. It has a single core and has a maximum dominant frequency of 528mhz, as shown in the figure below.
The hardware system block diagram of the chip is as follows:
i. Mx6ultralite features are as follows:
Based on arm cortex-a7 processor, the maximum dominant frequency is 528mhz and supports 128 KB L2 cache
Support parallel LCD display, up to WXGA (1366) × 768) resolution
Support 8 / 10 / 16 / 24 bit parallel camera sensor interface
Support 16 bit lp-ddr2, DDR3 / ddr3l
Support 8-bit / 16 bit parallel nor flash / PSRAM
Dual Quad SPI NOR Flash
Support 8-bit NAND flash (40 bit ECC)
2 mmc4.5 / 3.0 SD / SDIO ports
Two USB2.0 otgs, HS / Fs, supporting slave or host mode
Audio interface: 3 I2S / Sai, S / PDIF, TX / RX
Two 10 / 100 Ethernet, supporting IEEE1588 standard
2 12 bit ADCs, up to 10 input channels, including resistive touch controller (4-wire / 5-wire)
Integrated PMU unit
Security module: true random number generator, encryption engine (AES / TDES / Sha / RSA), tamper proof monitoring
Secure boot, simv2 / evmsim x 2, OTF DRAM encryption, pci4.0 pre authentication
i. Among the many features of mx6ultralite, there are several points that people should look forward to. Needless to say, arm cortex-a7 is the most energy-efficient 32-bit processor launched by arm. The application products on the market themselves cover many fields. In particular, compared with cortex-a9 series, it can reduce the power consumption by about 50% on the premise of maintaining the same performance, and the low power consumption is worthy of the name.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that the security feature of i.mx6ultralite integrates many encryption functions, including OTF DRAM encryption, which can dynamically encrypt input and output on the bus, which is very suitable for China's growing electronic point of sale (EPOS) business, Internet of things, Internet of vehicles and other applications that need high security.
Engineers who have played Freescale's i.mx6 series application processor should know that the resources on the chip are very rich and there are many points to play. Of course, these are no exception on i.mx6ultralite. However, the author is surprised. If you have experienced i.mx6solo on riotboard development board or i.mx6dual on Mars board, You will find that compared with these two i.mx6 series products, i.mx6ultralite integrates less than one thing. Yes, GPU, such an important thing. Why did you lose it?
From the perspective of Freescale i.mx6 family products, i.mx6 already has a GPU integrated cortex-a9 series application processor. If i.mx6ultralite based on cortex-a7 does the same, it may impact its own high-end product line. Such a flood of water to the Dragon King Temple must be avoided, Moreover, the characteristics of cortex-a7 also "force" the products of i.mx6ultralite series to compete for middle and low-end products that focus on energy consumption, such as the current hot Internet of things, car entertainment and other applications. Moreover, the non integration of GPU also reduces the cost of the chip itself. Based on the 1K initial order, it is less than US $4 / chip. It is said that Freescale also provides a long-term supply guarantee for i.mx6ultralite. From these aspects, the product positioning of i.mx6ultralite is very clear.
Power on start
The mcimx6ul-evk development board does not have a burning system when it leaves the factory, so we must first burn the system before use. The system will burn into the microSD card through the USB OTG interface. The preparations are as follows:
Prepare a power adapter. The author uses 5V / 2A here
Two microusb cables (one is used to burn the system, and the other can view the system log and startup information)
A network cable, a microSD card and other peripheral accessories, such as mouse and keyboard
A liquid crystal display with the model of lcd8000-43t (this can be purchased on the official website of imbit)
Download the software support package BSP of mcimx6ul-evk development board on Freescale's official website, as indicated in the figure below, including download tools and system image. The system is a yocto system customized based on Linux.
After downloading, unzip, and then complete the following operations according to the instructions in the user guide. For example, to start the system through the microSD card, we must open the corresponding download file mfgtool2-yocto-mx-evk-sdcard-sd2.vbs, as shown in the figure below.
Before downloading, remember to insert the microSD card into the core board and dial the mode dial code on the core board to the corresponding specified position.
During downloading, we can observe the log burned by the system through uart-to-usb interface. When the burning is completed, both software and system log printing will prompt successful information.
Power off the board, restore the default dial setting, connect the corresponding accessories, power on and start. If there is a screen, you can directly see the start-up screen. Engineers without a screen can also view the system through uart-to-usb interface. The following is to view the system through Intel's lcd8000-43t LCD.
The officially provided system is the yocto project customized based on the Linux kernel.
After entering the system, I found a problem. There is a serious error in the touch sensing of the resistance screen, which seems to have not been calibrated. Therefore, it is best to connect the mouse and enter the touch calibration interface for recalibration. After completion, you can directly enjoy the yocto project through touch.
The author has roughly tested the basic functions of the board, such as Ethernet communication, USB communication, audio circuit, etc. the functions can be used normally, but if the engineer needs to use them directly in the project, they need to be further optimized.
The following figure shows the Ethernet function:
The following figure shows the song playing through the onboard audio circuit:
From the ready-made yocto image system provided on Freescale's official website, there is no problem in the implementation of basic functions. However, if you want to customize and compile the image file, it can be said to be a time-consuming and laborious thing. It will not be explained one by one in this article. Interested engineers can refer to Freescale's yocto project instruction manual.
Summary
This paper introduces Freescale's latest development board mcimx6ul-evk based on arm cortex-a7 processor. The board is composed of core board mcimx6ul-cm + backplane mcimx6ul-bb. The mcimx6ul-evk development board is equipped with the latest i.mx6ultralite application processor. This is Freescale's first new product based on arm cortex-a7 processor. It supports 528mhz dominant frequency at most and has low power consumption With advanced power management architecture and efficient security, the development board can connect a variety of peripherals such as Wi Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, display and camera sensors with the help of memory and multiple connection interfaces, so as to meet the specific needs of the Internet of things, on-board information processing, home energy management system, industrial control field and so on, Engineers in need can go to Freescale's official website to buy.
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Original statement: This article is original by Aiban. Reprint is declined“
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