Hardware requirements

  • Mini/micro USB cable

  • MIMXRT1160-EVK board

  • Personal Computer

Board settings

No special settings are required.

Prepare the Demo

  1. Connect a USB cable between the host PC and the OpenSDA USB port on the target board.

  2. Open a serial terminal with the following settings:

    • 115200 baud rate

    • 8 data bits

    • No parity

    • One stop bit

    • No flow control

  3. Download the program to the target board.

  4. Either press the reset button on your board or launch the debugger in your IDE to begin running the demo.

Running the demo

The log below shows the output of the hello world multicore demo in the terminal window:

Hello World from the Primary Core!

Copy Secondary core image to address: 0x20200000, size: 3280
Starting Secondary core.
The secondary core application has been started.

Press the SW7 button to toggle Secondary core Start/Stop.
When no action is taken the secondary core application crashes intentionally after 100 LED toggles (simulated exception), generating the RemoteExceptionEvent to this core.
Use the Stop and then the Start button to get it running again.

.
.
.

Secondary core cannot be stopped!

Note: The “Copy Secondary core image to address…” log message is not displayed on the terminal window when MCUXpresso IDE is used. In case of MCUXpresso IDE the secondary core image is copied to the target memory during startup automatically.

Note: The MIMXRT1160-EVK board does not support stopping of secondary code. After pressing the button prints that secondary core cannot be stopped. Only way to start the secondary core again is POR.

Note: To download binary of cm7 core into qspiflash and boot from qspiflash directly, following steps are needed:

  1. Compile flash target of the project, and get the binaray file “hello_world.bin”.

  2. Set the SW1: 1 off 2 off 3 on 4 off, then power on the board and connect USB cable to J11.

  3. Drop the binaray into disk “RT1160-EVK” on PC.

  4. Wait for the disk disappear and appear again which will take couple of seconds.

  5. Reset the board by pressing SW3 or power off and on the board. (If default boot core is cm4, binary of cm4 could be downloaded and boot according to steps above.)

Note: To download and debug IAR EW project using J-Link (replacing the default CMSIS-DAP debug probe), following steps are needed:

  1. Remove J6 and J7 jumpers.

  2. Attach the J-Link probe (J-Link Plus / J-Trace) to the board using the J1 connector.

  3. Set “J-Link / J-Trace” in CM7 project options -> Debugger -> Setup panel (replacing CMSIS-DAP option).

  4. Unselect the “Use macro file(s)” in CM7 project options -> Debugger -> Setup panel.

  5. Enable “Use command line options” in CM7 project options -> Debugger -> Extra Options panel (–jlink_script_file=$PROJ_DIR$/../evkmimxrt1160_connect_cm4_cm7side.jlinkscript command line option is applied).

  6. Click on “Download and Debug” button. During the loading process you can be asked by J-Link sw to select the proper device name (MIMXRT1166XXXA_M7 is unknown). Click O.K. and choose the MIMXRT1166xxxxA device.

  7. It is not possible to attach to the CM4 core when using the J-Link. Also, the multicore debugging does not work with that probe.

Note: To download and debug Keil MDK project using J-Link (replacing the default CMSIS-DAP debug probe), following steps are needed:

  1. Remove J6 and J7 jumpers.

  2. Attach the J-Link probe (J-Link Plus / J-Trace) to the board using the J1 connector.

  3. Set “J-LINK / J-TRACE Cortex” in CM7 project options -> Debug panel (replacing CMSIS-DAP Debugger option).

  4. After the CM7 application build click on Download/F8 button (menu Flash -> Download).

  5. Power off and power on the board.

  6. Multicore example starts running, one can start debugging the CM7 side by clicking on Start/Stop Debug Session (Ctrl + F5).

  7. It is not possible to attach to the CM4 core when using the J-Link.