i.MX8 shared (USB) peripherals between cores

Earthshine — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 21:03:12 GMT

I have a suspicion the answer may be no "no", but is there any possible way to share a single USB host peripheral between the two i.MX8 cores (A53 and M7)? Ideally, the A53 talking to a USB camera and the M7 communicating via VCP, over a single USB cable. The A53 will be running Linux or Android - which I suspect is what may preclude this... I'm thinking any attempt to put something else in control of the USB host (with a mutex or such) will probably break the V4L2 connection...?

More generally, can less-sophisticated peripherals (such as GPIO, I2C, UART, etc) be shared (with mutex perhaps) between both cores?

Re: i.MX8 shared (USB) peripherals between cores

igorpadykov — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 23:56:39 GMT

Hi Brian

unfortunately answer is no. The only solution to share some module between M4/7 and A53

is to implement a client-server approach using RPMSG and only one core to program module.

i.MX7ULP MCUXpresso SDK includes some examples of access service via RPMSG on the M4 side .

https://source.codeaurora.org/external/imx/linux-imx/tree/drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-rpmsg-imx.c?h=lf-5.10.y

Best regards
igor

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i.MX8 shared (USB) peripherals between cores

Re: i.MX8 shared (USB) peripherals between cores