MCUXpresso SDK Release Notes
Overview
The MCUXpresso SDK is a comprehensive software enablement package designed to simplify and accelerate application development with Arm Cortex-M-based devices from NXP, including its general purpose, crossover and Bluetooth-enabled MCUs. MCUXpresso SW and Tools for DSC further extends the SDK support to current 32-bit Digital Signal Controllers. The MCUXpresso SDK includes production-grade software with integrated RTOS (optional), integrated enabling software technologies (stacks and middleware), reference software, and more.
In addition to working seamlessly with the MCUXpresso IDE, the MCUXpresso SDK also supports and provides example projects for various toolchains. The Development tools chapter in the associated Release Notes provides details about toolchain support for your board. Support for the MCUXpresso Config Tools allows easy cloning of existing SDK examples and demos, allowing users to leverage the existing software examples provided by the SDK for their own projects.
Underscoring our commitment to high quality, the MCUXpresso SDK is MISRA compliant and checked with Coverity static analysis tools. For details on MCUXpresso SDK, see MCUXpresso-SDK: Software Development Kit for MCUXpresso.
MCUXpresso SDK
As part of the MCUXpresso software and tools, MCUXpresso SDK is the evolution of Kinetis SDK, includes support for LPC, DSC,PN76, and i.MX System-on-Chip (SoC). The same drivers, APIs, and middleware are still available with support for Kinetis, LPC, DSC, and i.MX silicon. The MCUXpresso SDK adds support for the MCUXpresso IDE, an Eclipse-based toolchain that works with all MCUXpresso SDKs. Easily import your SDK into the new toolchain to access to all of the available components, examples, and demos for your target silicon. In addition to the MCUXpresso IDE, support for the MCUXpresso Config Tools allows easy cloning of existing SDK examples and demos, allowing users to leverage the existing software examples provided by the SDK for their own projects.
In order to maintain compatibility with legacy Freescale code, the filenames and source code in MCUXpresso SDK containing the legacy Freescale prefix FSL has been left as is. The FSL prefix has been redefined as the NXP Foundation Software Library.
Development tools
The MCUXpresso SDK is compiled and tested with these development tools:
MCUXpresso IDE, Rev. 24.12
IAR Embedded Workbench for Arm, version is 9.60.3
Keil MDK, version is 5.41
MCUXpresso for VS Code v24.12
GCC Arm Embedded Toolchain 13.2.1
Supported development systems
This release supports board and devices listed in following table. The board and devices in bold were tested in this release.
Development boards |
MCU devices |
|---|---|
EVKB-IMXRT1050 |
MIMXRT1051CVJ5B, MIMXRT1051CVL5B, MIMXRT1051DVJ6B, |
MCUXpresso SDK release package
The MCUXpresso SDK release package content is aligned with the silicon subfamily it supports. This includes the boards, CMSIS, devices, middleware, and RTOS support.
Device support
The device folder contains the whole software enablement available for the specific System-on-Chip (SoC) subfamily. This folder includes clock-specific implementation, device register header files, device register feature header files, and the system configuration source files. Included with the standard SoC support are folders containing peripheral drivers, toolchain support, and a standard debug console. The device-specific header files provide a direct access to the microcontroller peripheral registers. The device header file provides an overall SoC memory mapped register definition. The folder also includes the feature header file for each peripheral on the microcontroller. The toolchain folder contains the startup code and linker files for each supported toolchain. The startup code efficiently transfers the code execution to the main() function.
Board support
The boards folder provides the board-specific demo applications, driver examples, and middleware examples.
Demo application and other examples
The demo applications demonstrate the usage of the peripheral drivers to achieve a system level solution. Each demo application contains a readme file that describes the operation of the demo and required setup steps. The driver examples demonstrate the capabilities of the peripheral drivers. Each example implements a common use case to help demonstrate the driver functionality.
RTOS
FreeRTOS
Real-time operating system for microcontrollers from Amazon
Middleware
CMSIS DSP Library
The MCUXpresso SDK is shipped with the standard CMSIS development pack, including the prebuilt libraries.
Wireless EdgeFast Bluetooth PAL
For more information, see the MCUXpresso SDK EdgeFast Bluetooth Protocol Abstraction Layer User’s Guide.
Ethermind BT/BLE Stack
nxp_bt_ble_stack
coreHTTP
coreHTTP
NXP Wi-Fi
The MCUXpresso SDK provides driver for NXP Wi-Fi external modules. The Wi-Fi driver is integrated with LWIP TCPIP stack and demonstrated with several network applications (iperf and AWS IoT).
For more information, see Getting Started with NXP based Wireless Modules and i.MX RT Platform Running on RTOS (document: UM11441).
USB Type-C PD Stack
See the MCUXpresso SDK USB Type-C PD Stack User’s Guide (document MCUXSDKUSBPDUG) for more information
USB Host, Device, OTG Stack
See the MCUXpresso SDK USB Stack User’s Guide (document MCUXSDKUSBSUG) for more information.
TinyCBOR
Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) Library
Simple Open EtherCAT Master
Simple Open EtherCAT Master (SOEM) is an open source EtherCAT master stack that is used to write custom EtherCAT Master applications. For more information on how to use SOEM, see the Getting Started with MCUXpresso SDK for SOEM document.
SDMMC stack
The SDMMC software is integrated with MCUXpresso SDK to support SD/MMC/SDIO standard specification. This also includes a host adapter layer for bare-metal/RTOS applications.
PNG decoder
An ‘embedded-friendly’ PNG image decoding library.
PKCS#11
The PKCS#11 standard specifies an application programming interface (API), called “Cryptoki,” for devices that hold cryptographic information and perform cryptographic functions. Cryptoki follows a simple object based approach, addressing the goals of technology independence (any kind of device) and resource sharing (multiple applications accessing multiple devices), presenting to applications a common, logical view of the device called a “cryptographic token”.
Openh264
H.264 Codec Library
MCU Boot
Open source MCU Bootloader.
mbedTLS
mbedtls SSL/TLS library v2.x
Voice Seeker (no AEC)
VoiceSeeker is a multi-microphone voice control audio front-end signal processing solution. VoiceSeeker is not featuring acoustic echo cancellation (AEC).
Voice intelligent technology library
Voice Intelligent Technology (VIT) Library provides wake word and voice command engine for voice control
Audio Voice components
Audio Voice components for MCU
Maestro Audio Framework for MCU
Maestro Audio Framework library for MCU
lwIP
The lwIP TCP/IP stack is pre-integrated with MCUXpresso SDK and runs on top of the MCUXpresso SDK Ethernet driver with Ethernet-capable devices/boards.
For details, see the lwIP TCPIP Stack and MCUXpresso SDK Integration User’s Guide (document MCUXSDKLWIPUG).
lwIP is a small independent implementation of the TCP/IP protocol suite.
eIQ
The package contains several example applications using the eIQ TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers library.
eIQ machine learning SDK containing:
Arm CMSIS-NN library (neural network kernels optimized for Cortex-M cores)
Inference engines:
TensorFlow Lite Micro
DeepView RT
Example code for TensorFlow Lite Micro, Glow, and DeepView RT
LVGL
LVGL Open Source Graphics Library
llhttp
HTTP parser llhttp
LittleFS
LittleFS filesystem stack
JPEG library
JPEG library
FreeMASTER
FreeMASTER communication driver for 32-bit platforms.
File systemFatfs
The FatFs file system is integrated with the MCUXpresso SDK and can be used to access either the SD card or the USB memory stick when the SD card driver or the USB Mass Storage Device class implementation is used.
emWin
The MCUXpresso SDK is pre-integrated with the SEGGER emWin GUI middleware. The AppWizard provides developers and designers with a flexible tool to create stunning user interface applications, without writing any code.
NAND Flash Management Stack
NAND Flash Management Stack
cJSON
Ultralightweight JSON parser in ANSI C
AWS IoT
Amazon Web Service (AWS) IoT Core SDK.
Release contents
Provides an overview of the MCUXpresso SDK release package contents and locations.
Deliverable |
Location |
|---|---|
Boards |
INSTALL_DIR/boards |
Demo Applications |
INSTALL_DIR/boards/<board_name>/demo_apps |
Driver Examples |
INSTALL_DIR/boards/<board_name>/driver_examples |
eIQ examples |
INSTALL_DIR/boards/<board_name>/eiq_examples |
Board Project Template for MCUXpresso IDE NPW |
INSTALL_DIR/boards/<board_name>/project_template |
Driver, SoC header files, extension header files and feature header files, utilities |
INSTALL_DIR/devices/<device_name> |
CMSIS drivers |
INSTALL_DIR/devices/<device_name>/cmsis_drivers |
Peripheral drivers |
INSTALL_DIR/devices/<device_name>/drivers |
Toolchain linker files and startup code |
INSTALL_DIR/devices/<device_name>/<toolchain_name> |
Utilities such as debug console |
INSTALL_DIR/devices/<device_name>/utilities |
Device Project Template for MCUXpresso IDE NPW |
INSTALL_DIR/devices/<device_name>/project_template |
CMSIS Arm Cortex-M header files, DSP library source |
INSTALL_DIR/CMSIS |
Components and board device drivers |
INSTALL_DIR/components |
RTOS |
INSTALL_DIR/rtos |
Release Notes, Getting Started Document and other documents |
INSTALL_DIR/docs |
Tools such as shared cmake files |
INSTALL_DIR/tools |
Middleware |
INSTALL_DIR/middleware |
Known issues
This section lists the known issues, limitations, and/or workarounds.
safety_iec60730b cloned project fails to build
When you use the MCUXpresso Config Tool to clone the “safety_iec60730b” project in MCUXpresso SDK package, the created project fails to build.
The build fails because the post-build setup for CRC is incorrect. Therefore, It is recommended to use the “safety_iec60730b” project in MCUXpresso SDK package.
The bee example does not complete successfully on MCUXpresso IDE
The bee example fails when built and run via MCUXpresso IDE due to misconfigured default memory configuration.
Examples: bee
Affected toolchains: mcux