Is Linux or other OS is mandatory for iMX8X?

Technical Support
, , , ,
1

Dear All,

We are planning to purchase a “Colibri iMX8X” along with a carrier board. We are developing a Hardware for Aerospace Application.
Because it is a Avionics system, we cannot use any OS (like Yocto Linux) in A35 core. Instead, we are planning to build bare-metal (worst case a RTOS) M4F + A35 cores.

However, we are seeing that NXP and other partners (incl. Toradex) support SDK/RTOS only for M4F core. None support SDK/RTOS/Bare metal code for A35 cores and everyone is recommending OS (like Yocto/Jethro) for it.

Before we make purchase, we have following questions,

  • Is it mandatory to have OS (like Jethro/Yocto) running in A35 core? Are there any restrictions in micro-processor architecture?
  • We understand that A35 core and its sub-system are complex. Hence custom building an SDK/Bare metal code is difficult. But is it impossible?

(We are going to use NXP or partner supported SDK in M4F core)

Thanks & Regards,

Aravind D. Chakravarti,

2

Hi @aravindchakravarti

Welcome to toradex community.

No, it’s not mandatory to run Linux or any other OS.its up to the customer’s use case. our modules are generic in nature. So, Customers can load any OS(Linux,torizon, Android, QNX, etc) based on their requirements. We only support running operating systems on the Cortex-A cores on our SoMs. While it should be possible to run bare-metal C code on these cores, it’s not something we actually support. on the other hand, you can easily load bare-metal C applications to cortex-m4 cores. Please refer to theFreeRTOS article for more information.

Our modules also support QNX RTOS and hence you can load QNX to the cortex-A cores.