@EdwinHz Thank you for the advice. We have found that running the application in SDRAM has resulted in a noticeable increase in performance, but I have been having a lot of trouble generating a hex file that runs the application from SDRAM. The benchmark performance optimization document described a process for creating a SDRAM-based firmware image using the secure provisioning tool that seems to generate an image suitable for the serial downloader mode: https://docs.mcuxpresso.nxp.com/secure/latest/06_processor_specific_workflow.html#image-running-from... . However, we will be flashing our device directly using a JLink, so we need our image to include the boot header, ivt, dcd etc... I found this article describing how to manually re-add those sections to the linker script: https://community.nxp.com/t5/i-MX-RT-Crossover-MCUs-Knowledge/I-MX-RT-How-to-boot-to-SDRAM/ta-p/1125... , but I didn't have any luck. Could you provide some guidance for how I can generate a binary file that I can flash using a JLink, that runs the application from SDRAM?
For reference here are the steps that I think come closest to achieving this:
1. starting with the iled_blinky project on the RT1064-EVK board with mcuxpresso SDK V25.06.00 .
2. add `XIP_BOOT_HEADER_DCD_ENABLE=1` and `SKIP_SYSCLK_INIT` to the preprocessor defines
3. check "Link application to RAM" in managed linker script
4. delete `PROGRAM_FLASH` memory region and move `BOARD_SDRAM` memory region to the top of the list
5. run a build to generate the linker file
6. uncheck "manage linker script" and re-add the boot header/ivt/boot_data/dcd_data sections to the linker script
