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.
We started working on our most complex OSHW board with KiCAD.
iMX8 is broad range of very different ARM architectures under same name which some people may find quite confusing. Here is the table chart:
You can see by yourself:
iMX8X is quite humble with up to x4 Cortex-A35+Cortex-M4F cores, something less capable than Allwinner A13 or STM32MP1XX
iMX8M, Nano/Mini/Plus is x4 Cortex-A53 + Cortex-A7/M4F something in the range of power of Allwinner A64
finally iMX8QuadMax comes with different configurations, but the high end is Octa-core with x2 Cortex-A72 + x4 Cortex-A53 + x2 Cortex-M4F and is more powerful than the popular Rockchip RK3399
Why we did started working on such monster?
Company from EU which values the OSHW recognized the absence of high end open source Linux board and asked us to design one. They offered to cover all associated design costs. They specially requested this to be not yet another RK3399 board, but based on SOC with proper documentation and software support. NXP’s high end iMX8QuadMax matched their requirements perfectly.
Currently all powerful Cortex-A72 comes from Chinese or Korean origin and are always closed projects, the only published info in best case is PDF schematic which can’t be verified i.e. the final product may or may not match what they publish. The popular Raspberry Pi go even further and their “schemaitcs” are just connector diagrams.
This is how the Tukhla project was born, it will have:
MIMX8QM5AVUFFAB Octa-core SOC with: ( x2 Cortex-A72, x4 Cortex-A53, x2 Cortex-M4F, x4 GPUs with 16 Vec4-Shader GPU, 32 compute units OpenGL® ES 3.2 and Vulkan® support Tessellation and Geometry Shading, Split-GPU architecture enables 2x 8 Shader Cores, 4k h.265 Decode, 1080p h.264 encode)
x2 LPDDR4 x32 databus RAM memory with up to 16GB of RAM configuration
PMU taking all power lines from single 12V/4A source
micro SD card
eMMC Flash with differnt sizes
QSPI Flash
x1 SATA for external HDD/SSD drives
x2 single lane PCIe with M2 connectors for NVMe
HDMI input 1.4 RX with HDCP 2.2
HDMI output 2.0 TX with HDCP 2.2 4K
USB 2.0 OTG
USB 3.0 HOST
x2 Gigabit Ethernet
x2 MIPI CSI camera connectors
The price of MIMX8QM5AVUFFAB alone is around EUR 100 in small quantities and currently LPDDR4 4GB cost EUR 35, LPDDR4 8GB cost EUR 50, LPDDR4 16GB cost EUR 180.
So with BOM over EUR 200 this board will not be affordable for the most of Raspberry Pi $35 price range users.
This board targets professionals, who need high performance board and being not dependent by Chinese SOC vendors. With all hardware open, which gives them security for their business as the design is public.
iMX8QuadMax SOC is available in automotive AEC-Q100 Grade 3 (-40° to 125° C Tj), Industrial (-40° to 105° C Tj), Consumer (-20° to 105° C Tj)
Some of the features like HDMI input are not present in the Chinese SOCs at all.
iMX8QuadMax may have DSP and incorporate Vision and Speech Recognition interactivity via a powerful vision pipeline and audio processing subsystem.
The Software support include: Android™, Linux®, FreeRTOS, QNX™, Green Hills®, Dornerworks XEN™.
iMX8QuadMax is fully supported on NXP’s 10 and 15-year Longevity Program
Tukhla means Brick in Bulgarian (and other Slavish languages) and it will be the OSHW building block for whole range of different solutions.
How long it will take to finish this design?
We honestly don’t know. It took more than month just to capture the schematic in the state it is now:
There is long path now to create and verify all component packages (just the SOC is in 1313 BGA ball package), verify the schematic signals, place the components on the PCB, route high speed signals manually.
It may be 6 months or more. We got unofficial info that NXP engineers spent more than year to make the NXP iMX8QMax demo board.
A13-SOM-256 and A13-SOM-512 are low cost Linux running System on Modules which are very popular but lack industrial grade operating temperature.
STM32MP1XXX series of SOC from ST is the first mass produced SOC which operates from -45 up to +125C by default, so we decided to design SOM module with STM32MP1XX SOC which to be pin to pin compatible with A13-SOM and offer same interfaces and signals so it could be drop in replacement for A13-SOM without need to re-design the complete product.
As you can see for STMP1-SOM we decided to put the SOC on opposite side of the connectors, this allow if necessary to add aluminum heatsink without interference with mainboard.
Also we add AXP209 PMU which allow lower power operating modes and LiPo battery backup and operation on battery only which is missing in the original A13-SOM.
STMP1-SOM will be offered with three SOC choices STM32MP151, STM32MP153 and STM32MP157.
The prices will start from EUR 15 for the non industrial grade memory which are similar to A13-SOM and EUR 18 for the industrial grade -45+85C memory version.
We expect first STMP1-SOMs to be available in July 2020.
ATN-SLD2065D is professional grade, powerful 65W soldering iron with digital PID temperature control and ceramic heater element for fast heating. Build in motion sensor enter sleep mode if the soldering iron is not moved for more than 10 minutes and completely shutdown after 20 minutes of non activity.
It has LCD display, power and +- buttons, LED status indicator and heats fast.
For these who are familiar with TS100 soldering iron, ATN-SLD2065D is similar but with much more power and allow even bigger PTH components to be soldered quick and easy.
The soldering iron comes by default with one ATN-T900-B solder tip which is good for PTH components soldering and rework, but we also offer 4 more different tips which are good for normal and fine pitch SMT components soldering.
The ATN-T900 soldering tips are with professional grade excellent plating, which allow long lasting work, but they also are priced very competitive. For comparison ERSA and Weller soldering tips which are with same grade plating cost EUR 6-12. We use ATN-T900 in our daily production and they are very good choice as price/performance, the normal low grade soldering tips do not last more than couple of days with intensive work at our factory. ATN-T900 lasts for about month, for the about same time ERSA/Weller tips also wear off at intensive work.
The ATN-SLD2065D-HS are ceramic heaters with long life and very competitive price, ATN-SLD2065D auto detects broken heater and signals for exchange.
With their good pricing ATN-SLD2065D soldering iron and ATN-T900 tips are very good choice for both professional engineers and beginners.
STMP1-OLinuXino routing is complete. It took 6 months from the idea to the finish.
Why it took so long? We had several times to re-design the schematics around the DDR memory and power supply.
Our goal was to make it pin to pin compatible with OLinuXino-LIME2 and we achieved it.
STMP1-OLinuXino has:
Same size as LIME2
Same GPIOs on same places
Ethernet, USB, battery Lipo, buttons, HDMI, SD-card on same places
same mount holes
1GB DDR3 memory
Gigabit Ethernet interface
HDMI interface
LCD interface
2x USB hosts and 1x USB-OTG
micro SD-card
GPIOs have similar interfaces on the same positions
LiPo battery charger and step up converter for battery operation
CAN interface
There are few differences:
we add Flash connector where different flash modules will be attached: NAND Flash, SPI Flash, eMMC Flash, so instead to keep many different versions of the board with different Flash options like LIME2 this will be done with exchangeable modules
we put the STM32MP1 SOC on bottom where adding heatsink do not interference with the top GPIO connectors and add-on boards
The STM32MP1 devices work at -20/40+125C operating temperature by default which makes them perfect for industrial applications.
There will be different versions with STM32MP151/153/157 as they share same BGA package, also there will be some versions with commercial temperature grade components for lower cost. Our preliminary estimations are the prices to be between EUR 35 and 70 depend on the different configurations.
OLIMEXINO-2560 is Arduino Mega2560 like board which keeps ports conversion but adds UEXT connector to connect our wide range of modules and sensors, works on 5V and 3.3V, and has on board micro SD card for file storage and logging.
Power supply uses DCDC convertor with input range 6-15VDC when OLIMEXINO-2560 works on 5V and 5-15VDC when OLIMEXINO-2560 works on 3.3V.
We are selling for some time already A20-OLinuXino-MICRO Rev.J where few things were improved:
We changed the LAN PHY from Realtek to Microchip as latter is more reliable supplier for both commercial and industrial temperature components, we searched desperately Realtek PHY in industrial temperature grade but without success.
We extended the input working voltage from 6-16VDC to 8-24VDC
We changed the NAND Flash to eMMC (but old NAND style flash is still possible to assembly)
The Ethernet PHY change requires new patches on the Uboot and Linux images which are already uploaded.
A20-OLinuXino-LIME2-eMMC was developed first for customer of ours, but after we saw the result we decided that it’s good to add it in our web shop.
What difference make eMMC instead of NAND Flash?
eMMC behaves like SD-card so no need for special drivers, you write on it as you write on SD-CARD, it’s faster than NAND Flash, and it’s more reliable.
The eMMC Flash we use is industrial grade -40+90C SLC Flash from Micron. All other functionality remains same. Note thatA20-OLinuXino-LIME2-eMMC is still not 100% industrial temperature grade, the DDR3 and Ethernet PHY are in commercial temperature grade (0-90C for the DDR3 and 0-70C for Ethernet PHY), we have industrial grade DDR3 and can build A20-OLinuXino-LIME2-eMMC with such memories,so the next step to complete industrial grade temperature board is to find proper industrial grade Ethernet PHY chip.
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