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:

  • IAR Embedded Workbench for Arm, version is 9.60.3

  • 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

EVK-MIMX8ULP

MIMX8UD7CVP08, MIMX8UD7DVK08, MIMX8UD7DVP08,
MIMX8UD3CVP08, MIMX8UD3DVK08, MIMX8UD3DVP08,
MIMX8UD5CVP08, MIMX8UD5DVK08, MIMX8UD5DVP08,
MIMX8US3CVP08, MIMX8US3DVK08, MIMX8US3DVP08,
MIMX8US5CVP08, MIMX8US5DVK08, MIMX8US5DVP08

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.

VoiceSpot

VoiceSpot is a highly accurate, small memory and MIPS profile wake word engine supporting custom voice trigger words and phrases. MCUXpresso SDK version of VoiceSpot is trained to “Hey NXP” wake word only and has 25 hour trial timeout.

TinyCBOR

Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) 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”.

Multicore

Multicore Software Development Kit

mbedTLS

mbedtls SSL/TLS library v2.x

llhttp

HTTP parser llhttp

FreeMASTER

FreeMASTER communication driver for 32-bit platforms.

NatureDSP for FusionF1

Digital Signal Processing for Xtensa FusionF1 DSP Audio Engines.

DSP Codecs for FusionF1

DSP Codecs for FusionF1

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.

Fusion DSP may load wrong data from shared SRAM on Silicon A0.1 with specific command sequence

There is issue in the shared SRAM controller prefetch logic for silicon A0.1.

A back-2-back access to the same memory location without any “nop” cycle in between corrupts the prefetch buffer under the following conditions.

First cycle access is a read to address N, immediately followed by the second cycle-partial write (1 byte or halfword (16-bits)) to address N.

The partial write is not updated to prefetch buffer. Subsequent reading from the Shared SRAM address N returns incorrect data.

Real-Time Domain cannot normally resume from the power-down mode due to EdgeLock secure enclave (S400) failure

There is an issue in EdgeLock secure enclave (S400) during state restoring phase for silicon A0.1. When Real Time Domain (RTD) is about to enter the power-down mode, S400 is promoted to save the current state to the memory. However, once RTD wakes up, S400 encounters an error when trying to restore the state.

This error can cause S400 decide to reset RTD, which means RTD cannot normally resume from the power-down mode.

Flexcan_ping_pong_buffer_transfer case loses first 8 bytes data for armgcc flash_debug

To prevent flexcan_ping_pong_buffer_transfer case from losing the first 8 bytes data for armgcc flash_debug, apply the fix below.

a/flexcan/example/ping_pong_buffer_transfer/flexcan_ping_pong_buffer_transfer.c
+++ b/flexcan/example/ping_pong_buffer_transfer/flexcan_ping_pong_buffer_transfer.c
@@ -539,10 +539,11 @@ int main(void)
         else
         {
             /* Wait until Rx queue 1 full. */
-            while (rxQueueNum != 1U)
+            while (rxQueueNum == 0U)
             {
             };
-            rxQueueNum = 0;
+            if (rxQueueNum == 1)
+                rxQueueNum = 0;
             LOG_INFO("Read Rx MB from Queue 1.\r\n");
             for (i = 0; i < RX_QUEUE_BUFFER_SIZE; i++)
             {

Lpspi_interrupt_b2b_master/slave example transfer fail on iar/armgcc flash target

The lpspi_interrupt_b2b_master/slave example transfer fails to send the data from the master to the slave on iar/armgcc flash target.

DSP examples build failure in IAR 9.50.1

In IAR version 9.50.1, there are build issues when building dsp_examples. To build the dsp_examples, use an older version of IAR. This issue will be fixed in the next version of IAR tool.

DSP examples cannot boot the Fusion core

The examples in the dsp_examples folder can not run properly since they can not boot the Fusion DSP core. It can be fixed by removing line 633 from board.c: TRDC_MbcSetMemoryBlockConfig(TRDC, &mbcBlockConfig); under comment /* non secure state can access CGC0 (Pbridge0, slot 47) for HIFI4 DSP */. This will be fixed in the next release.

For the dsp_voice_spot_demo there is a wrong incbin.S file used. Please use the same file as for the rest of the DSP examples.

Examples hello_world_ns, secure_faults_ns, and secure_faults_trdc_ns have incorrect library path in GUI projects

When the affected examples are generated as GUI projects, the library linking the secure and non-secure worlds has an incorrect path set. This causes linking errors during project compilation.

Examples: hello_world_ns, hello_world_s, secure_faults_ns, secure_faults_s, secure_faults_trdc_ns, secure_faults_trdc_s

Affected toolchains: mdk, iar

Workaround: In the IDE project settings for the non-secure (_ns) project, find the linked library (named hello_world_s_CMSE_lib.o, or similar, depending on the example project) and replace the path to the library with <build_directory>/<secure_world_project_folder>/<IDE>/, replacing the subdirectory names with the build directory, the secure world project name, and IDE name.