IOMUX Tool Introduction

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When working on the IOMUX settings of an i.MX processor for our design it’s always good to make use of the IOMUX Tool provided by Freescale on the Download Page of most i.MX processors. We’ll focus on the latest release of the IOMUX tool for i.MX6.

The IOMUX tool provides a Graphic User Interface to easily assign internal signals to external pins/balls and resolve any potential pin conflict and muxing options for the different modules available on the i.MX processors.

IOMUX Tool Download (Will request to log in)

Freescale’s Boards IOMUX settings.

On the IOMUX tool package you’ll find the User’s Manual and also a folder containing the muxing options for Freescale’s Reference Boards, which may be of help when working with the Reference Designs as a starting point. You may load these settings files using the file/open option.

MMDC pins

Since the Multi-mode DDR controller MMDC pins are not muxed these cannot be changed on the IOMUX tool. This because the memory interfaces are much more sensitive to interference and thus have dedicated pins that do not share pad with other signals. The registers are also set on the default value so it’s good to keep this in mind when working with the code provided by the IOMUX tool.

Considerations when using generated code

The tool can generate code to be used as reference of the IOMUX configuration but still requires manual tweaking and the header files available on the i.MX Processor’s BSP in order to be implemented in an actual application code. It’s important to review the register settings on the Register tab in order to export the desired values; otherwise the code will have the default values for the registers according to the IOMUX tool. This is especially true for the Daisy Chain settings, always manually review these.

Import function limitations

There is an import function available so IOMUX configuration files saved in previous versions of the IOMUX tool can be loaded on the newest version. However, this feature should be used carefully.

When importing a design it’s recommended to save the imported design on the new version of the IOMUX tool as imported.xml; then opening a new configuration and saving it as new.xml and comparing register value differences to manually correct the imported.xml values. In small projects it might be recommended to manually load the IOMUX information on the new IOMUX tool version to avoid register conflicts from version to version.

For more information please refer to the documentation available within the IOMUX tool package. An advanced example is also included in that document.