Apalis iMX8 Module

Quick Start

  • Build the ARM trusted firmware binary

  • Get scfw_tcm.bin and ahab-container.img

  • Build U-Boot

  • Load U-Boot binary using uuu

  • Flash U-Boot binary into the eMMC

  • Boot

Get and Build the ARM Trusted Firmware

Download the imx-atf repository:

$ git clone -b lf_v2.6 https://github.com/nxp-imx/imx-atf.git

Compile it with an aarch64 toolchain:

$ cd imx-atf/
$ make PLAT=imx8qm bl31

Get scfw_tcm.bin and ahab-container.img

Download imx-seco firmware and extract it:

$ wget https://www.nxp.com/lgfiles/NMG/MAD/YOCTO/imx-seco-5.8.7.bin
$ sh imx-seco-5.8.7.bin --auto-accept

Copy the following binaries to the U-Boot folder:

$ wget https://github.com/toradex/i.MX-System-Controller-Firmware/raw/master/src/scfw_export_mx8qm_b0/build_mx8qm_b0/mx8qm-apalis-scfw-tcm.bin
$ cp ../imx-atf/build/imx8qm/release/bl31.bin .
$ cp ../imx-seco-5.8.7/firmware/seco/mx8qmb0-ahab-container.img mx8qm-ahab-container.img

Build U-Boot

$ make apalis-imx8_defconfig
$ make u-boot-dtb.imx

Load the U-Boot Binary Using UUU

Get the latest version of the universal update utility (uuu) aka mfgtools 3.0:

https://github.com/nxp-imx/mfgtools/releases

Put the module into USB recovery aka serial downloader mode, connect the USB device to your host and execute uuu:

sudo ./uuu u-boot/u-boot-dtb.imx

Flash the U-Boot Binary into the eMMC

Burn the u-boot-dtb.imx binary to the primary eMMC hardware boot area partition and boot:

load mmc 1:1 $loadaddr u-boot-dtb.imx
setexpr blkcnt ${filesize} + 0x1ff && setexpr blkcnt ${blkcnt} / 0x200
mmc dev 0 1
mmc write ${loadaddr} 0x0 ${blkcnt}

As a convenience, instead of the last three commands, one may also use the update U-Boot wrapper:

> run update_uboot