16. NXP i.MX 8M Series

The i.MX 8M family of applications processors based on Arm Corte-A53 and Cortex-M4 cores provide high-performance computing, power efficiency, enhanced system reliability and embedded security needed to drive the growth of fast-growing edge node computing, streaming multimedia, and machine learning applications.

16.1. Boot Sequence

Bootrom –> SPL –> BL31 –> BL33(u-boot) –> Linux kernel

16.2. How to build

16.2.1. Build Procedure

  • Prepare AARCH64 toolchain.

  • Build spl and u-boot firstly, and get binary images: u-boot-spl.bin, u-boot-nodtb.bin and dtb for the target board.

  • Build TF-A

    Build bl31:

    CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-linux-gnu- make PLAT=<Target_SoC> bl31
    

    Target_SoC should be “imx8mq” for i.MX8MQ SoC. Target_SoC should be “imx8mm” for i.MX8MM SoC.

16.2.2. Deploy TF-A Images

TF-A binary(bl31.bin), u-boot-spl.bin u-boot-nodtb.bin and dtb are combined together to generate a binary file called flash.bin, the imx-mkimage tool is used to generate flash.bin, and flash.bin needs to be flashed into SD card with certain offset for BOOT ROM. the u-boot and imx-mkimage will be upstreamed soon, this doc will be updated once they are ready, and the link will be posted.