iMX8MN + Harpoon : DDR4 vs LPDDR4

[khang_letruong]

Dear Experts,

We are going to design a custom board based on the iMX8M Nano and we would like your confirmation if there's any difference in using DDR4 or LPDDR4 as I saw in older BSP releases, both iMX8M Nano DDR4 EVK and iMX8M Nano LPDDR4 EVK were tested but in recent BSP releases, iMX8M Nano DDR4 EVK has not been mentioned anymore but only iMX8M Nano LPDDR4 EVK.

Thanks in advance and best regards,

Khang

[JosephAtNXP]

Hi,

Thank you for your interest in NXP Semiconductor products,

8M Nano LPDDR4 and 8M Nano DDR4 actually differ in the SOM board, they feature different DDR memories (their type changes as specified; C1612PC2WDGTKR-U and MT40A1G16RC-062E:B), which leads to a change between their imx-boot.

On i.MX 8M Quad, i.MX 8M Mini, i.MX 8M Nano, and i.MX 8M Plus, multiple elements are needed:

• imx-boot (built by imx-mkimage), which includes SPL, U-Boot, Arm Trusted Firmware, DDR firmware

• HDMI firmware (only supported by i.MX 8M Quad)

• Linux kernel image

• A device tree file (.dtb) for the board being used.

• A root file system (rootfs) for the particular Linux image

But found DDR4 and EVK imx-boots in 6.1.36 release.

Regards

[khang_letruong]

Hi @JosephAtNXP,

Thanks for your explanation. However, my interest is the iMX Harpoon project and I would like to know if there's any impact on using the DDR4 system based instead of LPDDR4 system based as I saw that the support of the iMX8M Nano DDR4 EVK was dropped since mickledore release(s).

Thanks and regards,

Khang

[JosephAtNXP]

Hi @khang_letruong,

Please use the DDR4 releases,

Regards,

[khang_letruong]

Hi @JosephAtNXP,

Thanks for your reply. I plan to use BSP: Yocto Linux Mickledore /  i.MX LF 6.1.55-2.2.0 . However the Harpoon User Guide aligned with that BSP version does not mention iMX8MN DDR4 EVK as a tested platform anymore.  Do you confirm if there would be no problem to use DDR4 for Harpoon project/purpose ?

Thanks and best regards,

Khang