#U BOOT CONFIGURATION STEPS HOW TO#
#U BOOT CONFIGURATION STEPS SERIAL#
#U BOOT CONFIGURATION STEPS LICENSE#
#U BOOT CONFIGURATION STEPS DOWNLOAD#

#U BOOT CONFIGURATION STEPS DOWNLOAD#

Just select the device you are working with and click Build MCUXpresso SDK, then you will prompted to select your IDE and host.Ĭlick on Download SDK and a compressed file containing the SDK will be dowloaded to your computer. The image for the Cortex-M4 can be generated using the SDK:

mx8qx-ahab-container.img -> SECO FW for QXP devices.

mx8qm-ahab-container.img -> SECO FW for QM devices.

The Security Controller Firmware is only distributed in binary form and can be obtained from the NXP website.ĭownload SECO FW binaries for release 4.14.98_02 here.

#U BOOT CONFIGURATION STEPS LICENSE#

You will prompted to accept a license agreement and after that the binaries will be extracted: If you are trying this on one of NXP's reference board you can use a pre-built SCFW binary, this can be obtained through the building process of the Yocto project or by downloading the porting kit and following these steps:ĭowload SCFW binaries for release 4.14.98_02 here.

#U BOOT CONFIGURATION STEPS HOW TO#

The following is a compendium of documents on the basics of the SCFW and how to build it from scratch you can go there if you need help getting started with the porting process: Now that you have the mkimage tool you need some actual images to work with, if you are using a custom board you might need to port the SCFW and DDR configuration files for it (depending on how close it follows NXP's reference board). You should now be able to see the following folders: So the first step is to clone the mkimage repository into our machine and checkout the latest branch, at the time of writing this document the latest release is 4.14.98_02: git clone The tool in charge of merging all these images and creating a bootable image for the i.MX8 is called mkimage, and can be obtained in source form in the following repository: It is also possible to boot an image with only the Cortex-M4 image (baremetal, FreeRTOS, AutoSAR.), only the Cortex-A image (U-boot or any bootloader) or both Cortex-M4 and Cortex-A images. It is possible to boot an image that only contains the SCFW and SECO FW, this could be useful in the first stages of porting the SCFW to the target board. Once the images are loaded to their destination memory the SCFW boots the cores and sets them in their start address.Īs a recap a bootable image is comprised of as minimum the System Controller Firmware and the Security Controller Firmware, optionally it can contain images for the Cortex M4 cores (if more than one available as in the case of QM devices) and Cortex A cores. The SCFW then initializes the DDR and starts loading the images for the Cortex-M4 (optional) and the Cortex-A cores (optional). Once the SCFW is loaded, ROM jumps to it and starts executing it. The SECO FW needs to be loaded to refresh the watchdog timer (kick the dog) in the device, if the SECO FW is not loaded before the watchdog expires the device will reset, this usually happens when the device fails to fetch a valid image from the boot media. The image container has all the information needed to load all the images to the system, the first images that get loaded are the System Controller Firmware (SCFW) and Security Controller Firmware (SECO). It can also boot by downloading an image through USB. ROM loads data from the predefined addresses above (depending on the selected boot device) to the System Controller Unit (SCU) internal memory (tightly coupled memory) and parses it to find the image container. Once the boot device has been identified, ROM configures the boot media and attempts to read the image from a predefined address in the boot device, the following table shows the addresses where the image is expected to be on different boot devices.

The following table indicates the available options on a i.MX8QXP, the i.MX8 reads the boot mode pads and based in the configuration selects the desired boot device.

#U BOOT CONFIGURATION STEPS SERIAL#

Serial Download Protocol (USB) - This is used in manufacturing mode to bring-up a board by downloading an image to RAM and then flashing the on-board boot device.

The i.MX8 can boot out of the following boot devices: This document intends to provide an overview of the i.MX8 Boot process and walk you through the process of creating a bootable image.Ĭoming out of a reset state the i.MX8 ROM (firmware that is stored in non-volatile memory of the i.MX8) reads the boot mode pins to determine the boot media/device that will be used.

U boot configuration steps