MaaXBoard 8ULP features the NXP i.MX 8ULP processor to achieve ultra-low power, EdgeLock® secured intelligent edge applications
The i.MX 8ULP SoC device is architected with separate processing domains
- The application domain includes two Arm® Cortex®-A35 (1 GHz) cores plus 3D/2D GPUs for GUI-enabled Linux applications.
- The Real Time domain includes an Arm Cortex-M33 (216 MHz) core, plus Fusion DSP (200 MHz) core for low-power audio/voice use cases.
- The LPAV domain (Low Power Audio Video) has a HiFi 4 DSP (600 MHz) core to support advanced audio, ML and sensor applications.
- The S400 Security Enclave and Power Manager also utilize RISC-V cores.
The 8ULP processor has on-chip shared RAM (768 KB), while the board is well resourced with power-efficient 32bit wide LPDDR4X DDR (2GB), Octal PSRAM (8 MB), plus eMMC 5.1 flash (32 GB) and Octal SPI NOR flash (4 MB) memory devices.
MaaXBoard 8ULP is engineered as two PCBs, a small SOM (43mm x 36mm) connected via 2x100-pin connectors to a baseboard (BB) in compact Raspberry Pi form-factor, which supports a versatile set of I/O interfaces. These include 10/100 Ethernet (with IEE1588 support), two USB 2.0 host interfaces and a USB 2.0 device interface, MIPI DSI and CSI camera interfaces, a Pi-HAT compatible 40-pin header, MikroE Click 16-pin header plus ADC/DAC 6-pin header.
Audio applications are supported via onboard audio codec, digital microphone and stereo headphone jack I/O. Power is sourced via a USB-C connector and is managed via NXP PCA9460B PMIC on the SOM plus three additional voltage regulators.
A unique aspect of this board is it’s debug subsystem which supports remote USB access to three UARTs, 16bit I/O expander-based remote control and monitoring, plus integrated SWD/JTAG (or external header) debugger interface.
The back of the board has an M.2 module connector for easy addition of 801.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.1 wireless connectivity.
