NXP’s i.MX 8M Mini Provides Low Power, High Performance Processing

In today’s electronics market, designers of smart devices are being pressured to combine real-time processing with increasing application processing capabilities, all while still reducing power consumption.

Additionally, the ever-increasing need for application processing that is scalable to suit multiple design needs has led chip manufacturers to develop heterogeneous multicore processing (HMP) devices. These devices integrate both application processor cores and embedded processor cores. An example of this would be NXP's i.MX 8M family, which integrates an Arm Cortex-M4 embedded processor core with up to four Arm Cortex-A53 application processor cores.

To complement its heterogenous cores, an extensive set of multimedia resources including a 4K video processing unit and a 3D graphics processing unit are integrated into the NXP i.MX 8M devices.

As noted earlier, designers not only need increased processing capabilities, they also need to reduce power consumption. To help solve this dilemma, NXP has developed the i.MX 8M Mini processor. These processors provide both reduced power consumption and high-performance mixed load processing. To reduce power consumption, developers can take advantage of the NXP i.MX 8M Mini’s ability to switch automatically or programmatically to lower power operating modes. The high-performance aspect is accomplished by combining an Arm Cortex-M4 for embedded processing with up to four Arm Cortex-A53 cores for application processing. To further enhance its performance capabilities, a comprehensive security subsystem and multiple connectivity and I/O options are also integrated into these devices.

(Image source: NXP)

The NXP i.MX 8M Mini processors are designed for emerging industrial and Internet of Things (IoT) systems that blend requirements for high performance, strong security, and low power.

To aid engineers in application development and to reduce development time, NXP offers the i.MX 8M Mini EVK (evaluation kit) and associated reference design. This kit provides a complete system including external LPDDR4 memory and flash as well as USB and other interfaces. The kit’s connectivity options include Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. NXP also offers add-on boards for video (MINISASTOCSI) and display (MX8-DSI-OLED1)applications.

NXP’s i.MX 8M Mini EVK. (Image source: NXP)

Pre-built images for the Embedded Linux^® and the Embedded Android^® operating environments are available so that designers can use the kit to immediately evaluate the i.MX 8M Mini and run sample applications. NXP also offers its free MCUXpresso software development kit (SDK) for those building their own software applications. This SDK includes a full set of software components to build a typical high-performance embedded application.

See the article, “Use a Multicore Processor to Build Low-Power Media-Rich Smart Products”, for a more detailed discussion of the NXP i.MX 8M and i.MX 8M Mini processors.