This board development started in April 2021 and finished August 2021 but the semiconductor shortages didn’t allow us to test the prototypes until recently. We assembled 4 boards and all theyare alive and boot.
The features are:
MIMX8ML8DVNLZAB – Quad Core Arm Cortex-A53 running at 1.8Ghz with Arm Cortex-M7 co-processor running at 800Mhz and 2.3 TOPS Neural Processing Unit.
6GB LPDDR4 RAM
Power management
configuration EEPROM
status LED
LCD LVDS connector compatible with LCD-OLinuXino displays
MIPI DSI connector
2x MIPI CSI comera connectors with Raspberry Pi compatible pinout
220 signals on 6 0.05″ step connectors with essential peripherials like:
PCIe-3.0
2x CAN FD
HDMI 2.0a
SPDIF
SAI
2x USB 3.0
2x Gigabit Ethernet one of them with TSN
eMMC 5.1
SDIO 3.0 200Mhz
4 UART
6 I2C
3 SPI
JTAG
Unfortunately we only managed to find 24Gb LPDDR4 for the prototypes so instead of 6GB they are with only 3GB of RAM.
Now is time to prepare Linux and Android images! NXP provide iMX8MPlus with Linux Kernel 5.10 and Android 11.
Industrial grade -40+85C (STMP157-OLinuXino-LIME2H-IND) version running on 650 Mhz with HDMI output (when HDMI works operating temperature is commercial as HDMI convertor is not industrial grade)
Extended temperature -20+85C (STMP157-OLinuXino-LIME2H-EXT) version running on 800 Mhz with HDMI output (when HDMI works operating temperature is commercial as HDMI convertor is not industrial grade)
User Manual for the boards is available on the product web page.
Debian and Ubuntu Linux images are pre-build and ready to install and run.
The images are build with Olimex script Olimage which is available on GitHub.
Olimage user manual explains what is included in it and how you can modify uboot and kernel to include drivers for devices which are not included in Olimex official images.
iMX8Quad Max board we developed is still waiting for components to verify the first prototypes, but we decided to develop one more SOC from iMX8 Plus series which we thought is filling niche where we do not have product.
This is how iMX8MPLUS-SOM was designed:
MIMX8ML8DVNLZAB – Quad Core Arm Cortex-A53 running at 1.8Ghz with Arm Cortex-M7 co-processor running at 800Mhz and 2.3 TOPS Neural Processing Unit.
6GB LPDDR4 RAM
Power management
configuration EEPROM
status LED
LCD LVDS connector compatible with LCD-OLinuXino displays
MIPI DSI connector
2x MIPI CSI comera connectors with Raspberry Pi compatible pinout
220 signals on 6 0.05″ step connectors with essential peripherials like:
PCIe-3.0
2x CAN FD
HDMI 2.0a
SPDIF
SAI
2x USB 3.0
2x Gigabit Ethernet one of them with TSN
eMMC 5.1
SDIO 3.0 200Mhz
4 UART
6 I2C
3 SPI
JTAG
MIMX8ML8DVNLZAB operating temperature is -40+105C which makes it perfect for both industrial and automotive applications.
Evaluation board iMX8MPlus-SOM-EVB is now designed with Dual Ethernet, Dual USB 3.0, PCIe, HDMI.
NXP is going to provide mainline Linux support for this SOC.
It’s impossible to comment any pricing at the moment, but it will be very competitive compared with similar industrial grade products.
RK3328-SOM-EVB is evaluation board and reference design for RK3328-SOM:
Software support:
Android 10
Linux Kernel 4.4 is the official SDK of Rockchip. There is just basic mainline support with no drivers for USB3 although these SOCs are on the market for quite a lot of time.
Searching for more info about their new H313 SOC I found old news from August 2020, where Allwinner announce the development of AP SOC with RISC-V and praising Open Source Hardware and the open ISA of RISC-V.
They say in this announcement that they will have AP (application processor) SOC with RISC-V in 2021!
There is lot of development around RISC-V in the last years. Espressif have their ESP32-C3 which is with RISC-V SOC, but it can’t run Linux as has not enough memory and video. We still can’t see affordable silicon capable to run Linux.
There is announcement for BeagleBoneV but still not in production and at quite higher price compared to ARM boards on the market.
Allwinner is known to be able to design and produce low cost SOCs. Let’s hope the semiconductor crisis caused by Covid19 will not delay their plans.
So is the year 2021 when we will see $35 Linux running boards with RISC-V?
I’m crossing fingers!
As soon as we can get our hands to these SOC we will make OSHW OLinuXino with it!
OSHW design and affordable SOC will lead to affordable boards and boost of the software development of RISC-V too.
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.
The last issues with STM32MP1 mainline Linux kernel support were resolved and now we run STMP157-OLinuXino-LIME2 in production!
Revision B fixes all hardware issues in the initial prototype. STMP157-OLINUXINO-LIME2 is complete analog of A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 which is one of our best selling Allwinner board.
Mainline uboot and Linux kernel 5.12 images are available with all periperials working.
We will have STMP157-OLINUXINO-LIME2 on our web for sale by the end of April.
This is also our first board with Ethernet supporting Precise Time Protocol and Time Sensitive Networking implemented.
olimex 
Recent Comments