Achieving SystemReady IR Certification of the i.MX 8M Mini Processor, NXP Leads the Industry to the Next Era of Software

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A gracious thank you to Arm® for complimenting NXP for leading the journey for the whole IoT industry! See Arm’s blog.  Arm commended us on certifying the first SystemReady IR platform, the i.MX 8M Mini applications processor EVK.

SystemReady IR is part of the Project Cassini initiative to enable cloud-based workloads to scale down to devices near the production or consumption of data by strengthening standards, improving security, and enriching the microprocessor ecosystem. The SystemReady program defines hardware and firmware specifications to ensure portability of system software, an essential ingredient in helping workloads to move from the cloud to the edge. In simpler terms, the program helps commercial and community OS suppliers provide a single binary that will run on any certified platform, which, in turn, facilitates porting and validating applications on these OSs. This, consequently, helps NXP customers reduce their development and maintenance cost and time to market.

i.MX 8M Mini EVK

The i.MX 8M Mini EVK was tested for compliance with Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Debian Linux® distributions. Several additional community and commercial OSs will support SystemReady IR platforms soon, giving developers additional choices of OS that run out of the box on any compliant platform. While the i.MX 8M Mini EVK was the first, it was quickly followed by the Compulab IOT-GATE-IMX8 board based on the i.MX 8M Mini. Certification of other commercial platforms is underway. Progress made with the i.MX 8M Mini EVK lays the groundwork for approval of platforms based on other i.MX 8M family devices—the i.MX 8M Quad, i.MX 8M Nano, and i.MX 8M Plus applications processors. An upcoming release of the i.MX board support package (BSP) will include updates to help manufacturers certify their designs based on the i.MX 8M family.

In addition to ensuring readiness of IoT platforms with SystemReady IR certification, Arm ensures the readiness of edge-computing systems with SystemReady ES certification. The ES level specifies use of the UEFI and ACPI firmware interfaces depended on by server operating systems and hypervisors. Multiple platforms based on NXP Layerscape processors have achieved SystemReady ES certification.

Device-Dependent Era vs. Device-Independent Era Stacks

In summary, NXP is pleased to work with Arm on achieving SystemReady certifications for our processors. Embedded software has been on a long-term trend away from device-specific stacks to device-independent stacks, as the figure shows. The OS layer is one of the toughest to decouple and requires the standardization that SystemReady defines. The SystemReady program and Project Cassini will bring tangible benefits to developers using i.MX and Layerscape processors, enhancing their value to NXP’s customers.

Dive deeper and learn more about the i.MX 8M Mini.

Tags: Edge Computing, Technologies

Author

Joseph Byrne

Joseph Byrne

Senior strategic marketing manager for NXP's Digital Networking Group

Prior to joining NXP, Byrne was a senior analyst at The Linley Group, where he focused on communications and semiconductors, providing strategic guidance on product decisions to senior semiconductor executives. Prior to working at The Linley Group, he was a principal analyst at Gartner, leading the firm's coverage of wired communications semiconductors. There, he advised semiconductor suppliers on strategy, marketing and investing. Byrne started his career at SMOS Systems after graduating with a bachelor of science in engineering from Duke University. He spent three years at SMOS as part of the R&D engineering team working on 32-bit RISC microcontrollers. He then returned to school for an MBA, which he received with high distinction from the University of Michigan. He worked with Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group for a year before going on to work at Gartner, where he spent the next nine years until going to work for The Linley Group in 2005.