8.2.10. imxrt (NXP i.MXRT)

This BSP offers multiple variants. The imxrt1052 supports the i.MXRT 1052 processor on a IMXRT1050-EVKB (tested with rev A1). Some possibilities to adapt it to a custom board are described below.

NOTE: The IMXRT1050-EVKB has an backlight controller that must not be enabled without load. Make sure to either attach a load, disable it by software or disable it by removing the 0-Ohm resistor on it’s input.

The imxrt1166-cm7-saltshaker supports an application specific board. Adapting it to another i.MXRT1166 based board works similar like for the imxrt1052 BSP.

8.2.10.1. Build Configuration Options

Please see the documentation of the IMXRT_* and BSP_* configuration options for that. You can generate a default set of options with:

./waf bspdefaults --rtems-bsps=arm/imxrt1052 > config.ini

8.2.10.2. Adapting to a different board

This is only a short overview for the most important steps to adapt the BSP to another board. Details for most steps follow further below.

  1. The device tree has to be adapted to fit the target hardware.

  2. A matching clock configuration is necessary (simplest method is to generate it with the NXP PinMux tool)

  3. The dcd_data has to be adapted. That is used for example to initialize SDRAM.

  4. imxrt_flexspi_config has to be adapted to match the Flash connected to FlexSPI (if that is used).

  5. BOARD_InitDEBUG_UARTPins should be adapted to match the used system console.

8.2.10.3. Boot Process of IMXRT1050-EVKB

There are two possible boot processes supported:

  1. The ROM code loads a configuration from HyperFlash (connected to FlexSPI), does some initialization (based on device configuration data (DCD)) and then starts the application. This is the default case. linkcmds.flexspi is used for this case.

  2. Some custom bootloader does the basic initialization, loads the application to SDRAM and starts it from there. Select the linkcmds.sdram for this.

For programming the HyperFlash in case 1, you can use the on board debugger integrated into the IMXRT1050-EVKB. You can generate a flash image out of a compiled RTEMS application with for example:

arm-rtems6-objcopy -O binary build/arm/imxrt1052/testsuites/samples/hello.exe hello.bin

Then just copy the generated binary to the mass storage provided by the debugger. Wait a bit till the mass storage vanishes and re-appears. After that, reset the board and the newly programmed application will start.

NOTE: It seems that there is a bug on at least some of the on board debuggers. They can’t write more than 1MB to the HyperFlash. If your application is bigger than that (like quite some of the applications in libbsd), you should use an external debugger or find some alternative programming method.

For debugging: Create a special application with a while(true) loop at end of bsp_start_hook_1. Load that application into flash. Then remove the loop again, build your BSP for SDRAM and use a debugger to load the application into SDRAM after the BSP started from flash did the basic initialization.

8.2.10.4. Flash Image

For booting from a HyperFlash (or other storage connected to FlexSPI), the ROM code of the i.MXRT first reads some special flash header information from a fixed location of the connected flash device. This consists of the Image vector table (IVT), Boot data and Device configuration data (DCD).

In RTEMS, these flash headers are generated using some C-structures. If you use a board other than the IMXRT1050-EVKB, those structures have to be adapted. To do that re-define the following variables in your application (you only need the ones that need different values):

#include <bsp/flash-headers.h>
const uint8_t imxrt_dcd_data[] =
    { /* Your DCD data here */ };
const ivt imxrt_image_vector_table =
    { /* Your IVT here */ };
const BOOT_DATA_T imxrt_boot_data =
    { /* Your boot data here */ };
const flexspi_nor_config_t imxrt_flexspi_config =
    { /* Your FlexSPI config here */ };

You can find the default definitions in bsps/arm/imxrt/start/flash-*.c. Take a look at the i.MX RT1050 Processor Reference Manual, Rev. 4, 12/2019 chapter 9.7 Program image or i.MX RT1166 Processor Reference Manual, Rev. 0, 05/2021 chapter 10.7 Program image for details about the contents.

8.2.10.5. FDT

The BSP uses a FDT based initialization. The FDT is linked into the application. You can find the default FDT used in the BSPs in bsps/arm/imxrt/dts. The FDT is split up into two parts. The controller specific part is put into an dtsi file. The board specific one is in the dts file. Both are installed together with normal headers into ${PREFIX}/arm-rtems6/${BSP}/lib/include. You can use that to create your own device tree based on that. Basically use something like:

/dts-v1/;

#include <imxrt/imxrt1050-pinfunc.h>
#include <imxrt/imxrt1050.dtsi>

&lpuart1 {
        pinctrl-0 = <&pinctrl_lpuart1>;
        status = "okay";
};

&chosen {
        stdout-path = &lpuart1;
};

/* put your further devices here */

&iomuxc {
        pinctrl_lpuart1: lpuart1grp {
                fsl,pins = <
                        IMXRT_PAD_GPIO_AD_B0_12__LPUART1_TX     0x8
                        IMXRT_PAD_GPIO_AD_B0_13__LPUART1_RX     0x13000
                >;
        };

        /* put your further pinctrl groups here */
};

You can then convert your FDT into a C file with (replace YOUR.dts and similar with your FDT source names):

sh> arm-rtems6-cpp -P -x assembler-with-cpp \
           -I ${PREFIX}/arm-rtems6/imxrt1052/lib/include \
           -include "YOUR.dts" /dev/null | \
       dtc -O dtb -o "YOUR.dtb" -b 0 -p 64
sh> rtems-bin2c -A 8 -C -N imxrt_dtb "YOUR.dtb" "YOUR.c"

You’ll get a C file which defines the imxrt_dtb array. Make sure that your new C file is compiled and linked into the application. It will overwrite the existing definition of the imxrt_dtb in RTEMS.

8.2.10.6. Clock Driver

The clock driver uses the generic ARMv7-M Clock.

8.2.10.7. IOMUX

The i.MXRT IOMUXC is initialized based on the FDT. For that, the pinctrl-0 fields of all devices with a status of ok or okay will be parsed.

8.2.10.8. Console Driver

LPUART drivers are registered based on the FDT. The special rtems,path attribute defines where the device file for the console is created.

The stdout-path in the chosen node determines which LPUART is used for the console.

8.2.10.9. I2C Driver

I2C drivers are registered based on the FDT. The special rtems,path attribute defines where the device file for the I2C bus is created.

Limitations:

  • Only basic I2C is implemented. This is mostly a driver limitation and not a hardware one.

8.2.10.10. SPI Driver

SPI drivers are registered based on the FDT. The special rtems,path attribute defines where the device file for the SPI bus is created.

Note that the SPI-pins on the evaluation board are shared with the SD card. Populate R278, R279, R280, R281 on the IMXRT1050-EVKB (Rev A) to use the SPI pins on the Arduino connector.

By default, the native chip selects are used. If you want to use GPIOs as chip select instead, you can use the cs-gpios and num-cs attributes just like on a Linux SPI controller. A maximum of IMXRT_LPSPI_MAX_CS pins can be used.

The hardware doesn’t support selecting no native chip select during a transfer. Therefore one native chip select has to be reserved as a dummy if you want to be able to use GPIOs. The pin function for this chip select must not be configured on any pin. Dummy will be the first of the first four chip selects that is not a native one. Example configuration:

&lpspi4 {
  status = "okay";
  pinctrl-0 = <&my_pinctrl_lpspi4>;
  cs-gpios = <0>, <0>, <&gpio1 1 0>, <0>, <&gpio11 5 1>;
  num-cs = <5>;
}

In this case, CS2 will be the dummy chip select and no pin must be configured with that function. CS0, CS1 and CS3 are just native chip selects and should be used via pin functions. GPIO1.1 is used as a high active CS and GPIO11.5 a low active one.

Limitations:

  • Only a basic SPI driver is implemented. This is mostly a driver limitation and not a hardware one.

  • GPIO CS pins on i.MXRT10xx are not tested. The chip has a lot of errate so they might not work.

  • Switching from one mode (CPOL/CPHA) to another one can lead to single wrong edges on the CLK line if GPIO CS pins are involved. Make sure to stuff a dummy transfer with SPI_NO_CS set if you use multiple modes together with a GPIO CS.

8.2.10.11. Network Interface Driver

The network interface driver is provided by the libbsd. It is initialized according to the device tree.

Note on the hardware: The i.MXRT1050 EVKB maybe has a wrong termination of the RXP, RXN, TXP and TXN lines. The resistors R126 through R129 maybe shouldn’t be populated because the used KSZ8081RNB already has an internal termination. Ethernet does work on short distance anyway. But keep it in mind in case you have problems. Source: https://community.nxp.com/t5/i-MX-RT/Error-in-IMXRT1050-EVKB-and-1060-schematic-ethernet/m-p/835540#M1587

8.2.10.12. NXP SDK files

A lot of peripherals are currently not yet supported by RTEMS drivers. The NXP SDK offers drivers for these. For convenience, the BSP compiles the drivers from the SDK. But please note that they are not tested and maybe won’t work out of the box. Everything that works with interrupts most likely needs some special treatment.

The SDK files are imported to RTEMS from the NXP mcux-sdk git repository that you can find here: https://github.com/nxp-mcuxpresso/mcux-sdk/

The directory structure has been preserved and all files are in a bsps/arm/imxrt/mcux-sdk directory. All patches to the files are marked with #ifdef __rtems__ markers.

The suggested method to import new or updated files is to apply all RTEMS patches to the mcux-sdk repository, rebase them to the latest mcux-sdk release and re-import the files. The new base revision should be mentioned in the commit description to make future updates simpler.

A import helper script (that might or might not work on newer releases of the mcux-sdk) can be found here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/c-mauderer/nxp-mcux-sdk/d21c3e61eb8602b2cf8f45fed0afa50c6aee932f/export_to_RTEMS.py

8.2.10.13. Clocks and SDRAM

The clock configuration support is quite rudimentary. The same is true for SDRAM. It mostly relies on the DCD and on a static clock configuration that is taken from the NXP SDK example projects.

If you need to adapt the DCD or clock config to support a different hardware, you should generate these files using the NXP MCUXpresso Configuration Tools. You can add the generated files to your application to overwrite the default RTEMS ones or you can add them to RTEMS in a new BSP variant.

As a special case, the imxrt1052 BSP will adapt it’s PLL setting based on the chip variant. The commercial variant of the i.MXRT1052 will use a core clock of 600MHz for the ARM core. The industrial variants only uses 528MHz. For other chip or BSP variants, you should adapt the files generated with the MCUXpresso Configuration Tools.

8.2.10.14. Caveats

  • The MPU settings are currently quite permissive.

  • There is no power management support.

  • On the i.MXRT1166, sleeping of the Cortex M7 can’t be disabled even for debugging purposes. That makes it hard for a debugger to access the controller. To make debugging a bit easier, it’s possible to overwrite the idle thread with the following one in the application:

    void * _CPU_Thread_Idle_body(uintptr_t ignored)
{
  (void)ignored;
  while (true) {
    /* void */
  }
}