Our most complex Open Source Hardware board made with KiCad – the octa core iMX8 Quad Max – Tukhla is completely routed and now on prototype production

The PCB routing of our most complex board – IMX8QM-Tukhla is complete and ready for first prototype build.

We started this project June-July 2020. Due to the Covid19 the development took 10 months although only 6 month of active work was done, due to lock downs, ill developers and so on troubles.

Now the board is completely routed and has these features:

Main SOC MIMX8QM5AVUFFAB which is member of iMX8 Quad Max series – the most powerful iMX8 SOC line from NXP.

MIMX8QM5AVUFFAB has 8 cores:

• x2 Cortex-A72 running at 1.6Ghz
• x4 Cortex-A53 running at 1.2Ghz
• x2 Cortex-M4F running at 264Mhz

Memory:

• 64-bit LPDDR4 @1600 MHz

Connectivity:

• 1× PCIe (2-lanes)
• 1× USB 3.0 with PHY
• 1x USB 3.0 dual role with PHY
• 1× SATA 3.0
• 2× 1Gb Ethernet with AVB
• 1× CAN/CAN-FD
• 1x HDMI Rx

GPU:

• 2xGC7000 XSVX
• 16× Vec4 shaders with 64 execution units
• Dual independent 8-Vec4 shader GPUs or a combined 16-Vec4 shader GPU
• OpenGL 3.0, 2.1
• OpenGL ES 3.2, 3.1 (with AEP), 3.0, 2.0, and 1.1
• OpenCL 1.2 Full Profile and 1.1
• OpenVG 1.1
• Vulkan

VPU:

• H.265 decode (4Kp60)
• H.264 decode (4Kp30)
• WMV9/VC-1 imple decode
• MPEG 1 and 2 decode
• AVS decodeMPEG4.2 ASP,
• H.263, Sorenson Spark decode
• Divx 3.11 including GMC decode
• ON2/Google VP6/VP8 decode
• RealVideo 8/9/10 decode
• JPEG and MJPEG decode
• 2× H.264 encode (1080p30)

Display:

• Supports single UltraHD 4Kp60 display
• or up to 4 independent FullHD 1080p60 displays
• 2× MIPI-DSI with 4 lanes each
• 1× HDMI-TX/DisplayPort
• 2× LVDS Tx with 2 channels of 4 lanes each

Camera:

• 2× MIPI-CSI with 4-lanes each, MIPI DPHYSM v1.

Security:

• Advanced High Assurance Boot (AHAB) secure & encrypted boot

Operating temperature:

• Automotive AEC-Q100 Grade 3 -40+125C

To the best of our knowledge there is no Open Source Board so far which to be so complex and advanced.

Now we are running the first prototypes and crossing fingers everything to work 🙂

With the current state of the semiconductor industry production will not be possible to be run soon.

Linux support will need attention as NXP has no mainline Linux for this SOC, but only Yocto build for old kernel (4.14.98_2.3.3).

If there are people with experience and interest in this SOC we may share one of the first samples we build, so they can help on the Linux support.

The schematic of IMX8QM-TUKHLA Revision A is uploaded for review on out ftp.