Over time, advancement for general purpose microcontrollers has essentially
been… incremental. Traditionally, microcontrollers are built in older,
lower-cost wafer process technology nodes and come with a common set of
peripherals and I/O when delivered to the market. These chips have been
providing engineering manufacturers with just enough capability to glue
together their embedded systems for decades. But, over the last few years,
NXP’s crossover MCU, which blends attributes of advanced processors
with those of simple microcontrollers, has been game-changing.
Now, with the
recently announced i.MX RT1170 family, NXP launches THE GIGAHERTZ MCU. The i.MX RT1170 family increases many
aspects of system-on-chip design by truly an order of magnitude.
Before getting into the details of what the i.MX RT1170 delivers, let’s
review how the breakthrough aspects of the device are achieved. There are a
few things to note:
the legacy of the series
process technology,
the architecture.
Legacy
The i.MX RT1170, now the eighth family introduced in the series since 2017,
follows a solid line of predecessors with great market success. Meaning the
infrastructure is in place as well as software, tools, application notes and
strong partnerships. By the time the i.MX RT1170 device is released broadly it
will be highly enabled by the crossover MCU ecosystem and indeed as simple to
use as a microcontroller. Previous i.MX RT devices topped off at an industry
best 600MHz CPU speed, but based on customer needs and feedback, the RT1170
MCU has been enhanced to meet the demands of the market for more processing
bandwidth.
Process Technology
Coupled with its ease of use advantages, the i.MX RT1170 device is built using
28nm FD-SOI—making it NXP’s first MCU built in this advanced
technology node. The advanced technology is central to the level of
integration, performance and energy efficiency which can be achieved on the
chip. With the attributes of 28nm FD-SOI technology, power efficiency is
realized for both shut-down states as well as when the processor is running.
This is highly advantageous for low energy designs that require a mix of
computation as well as sleep modes to save energy. To take advantage of the
technology, the microarchitecture of the i.MX RT1170 device includes both the
high performance Arm® Cortex®-M7 CPU with a
power optimized Arm Cortex-M4 core. Working together, the multi-core
architecture extends the inherent advantages provided by the technology,
allowing system designer the tools they need to highly optimize their designs.
Architecture
So, what aspects of the i.MX RT1170 family are breakthrough? As shown in the
high-level block diagram below, there’s plenty to highlight. First,
there is the compute performance. Unlike a typical
microcontroller operating at around 100MHz, the i.MX RT1170 device is the
world’s first broad market Gigahertz MCU. That means that it is
operating at ~10x the typical microcontroller speeds. With nearly limitless
computational power, decisions made on the edge will happen faster. Developers
will no longer be confined by traditional constraints and are free to innovate
like never before. Related to machine learning algorithms, the Gigahertz
processing will shorten inference times and support higher accuracy for a
broad range of applications.
Second, the peripherals within the chip are generations ahead of what would
normally be available on an MCU. For both the physical interfaces and the
on-chip accelerators, the i.MX RT1170 device will be first in its class with
regards to integration. With two Gigabit Ethernet blocks and an additional
10/100 Ethernet, the wired connectivity options will allow it to act as the
processing gateway for systems as complex as robotics and unmanned vehicles.
In addition to the communications interfaces, the i.MX RT1170 device includes
2D GPU and accelerators as well as multiple image building graphical display
units. With the standardized MIPI-CSI interface, camera data can be easily
captured. The integrated video mux allows for cost-saving memory optimization
as it can pass the image data directly to displays without the need of DRAM
space. In addition to the ground breaking interfaces are all of the standard
serial peripherals, analog inputs and timers one would expect for an MCU. In
the off-chance that there is a missing peripheral, the dual FlexIO
blocks allow for more parallel or serial interfaces on the chip.
Finally, there is the security. Matching with the present-day
threat landscape related to the cybersecurity of embedded systems, i.MX RT1170
device is NXP’s first chip to offer hardware root of trust protected by
the EdgeLock™ 400A security sub-system. Managing the root of
trust for secure boot and hardware unique keys, EdgeLock 400A establishes the
basis for a secure embedded design. The cryptographic accelerators integrated
on the device support advanced key sizes including acceleration for SHA-512
and large elliptical curve cryptography. In addition to the EdgeLock, the chip
includes a number of integrated capabilities allowing for secure
communications and encrypted execution from memory. The key manager block and
associated ROM-based support will make security easy to use and easy to
deploy.
Time will tell how the capabilities of this family will be amplified when
integrated into final devices. Working as a systems designer on the NXP
solutions team, I am ecstatic about the opportunity to explore its limitless
opportunities of the Gigahertz MCU era.
Systems and Applications Engineer, NXP Semiconductors
Donnie Garcia began his semiconductor career as an applications engineer for 8- and
16-bit MCUs. He has helped define and design low-power MCUs for consumer and
industrial applications and currently works as an applications and systems engineer
for IoT and Security Solutions. Donnie has authored nearly 20 technical publications
(webinars, whitepapers, articles, application notes, engineering bulletins). He
spends his weekends enjoying the outdoors around Austin.