NXP Adds a New String to the i.MX 9-Series Bow: The Low-Power High-Security i.MX 91 Family
Designed to be platform-compatible with the i.MX 93 range, the i.MX 91 optimizes power and pricing — but drops the neural coprocessor.
NXP has announced a new family of application processors, the i.MX 91 — entering the i.MX 9-series range as a family specifically targeted at bringing intelligence to the edge of the Internet of Things (IoT).
"The i.MX 91 family is defined to be the essence of long-life, cost-optimized and flexible Linux-based application platforms," claims NXP's James Prior of the company's latest processor family. "Thousands of applications ranging from Industry 4.0, medical, consumer and IoT markets can be developed and enabled using the i.MX 91 and i.MX 93 families' common platform."
The common platform is likely to be key to the success of the i.MX 91 range: the new chips are designed to be fully compatible with their i.MX 93 counterparts, launched two years ago and NXP's first to include an Arm Ethos-U65 neural networking coprocessor to boost the performance of machine learning workloads on edge devices. Anyone working with the i.MX 93 now, then, should be able to jump across to the i.MX 91 without difficulty.
Those doing so will find a familiar device, but one optimized for a lower power draw rather than raw performance. Precise specifications vary by part, but every model in the family is built atop a single Arm Cortex-A55 microcontroller core with NEON acceleration and floating-point unit, lacking the neural coprocessor of the i.MX 93 range. There's support for LPDDR4 memory, three SD/SDIO/eMMC channels, octal SPI flash with inline cryptography support, secure JTAG debugging, and a video output for 24-bits per pixel (BPP) parallel RGB displays with eight-bit parallel RGB camera support.
On the input/output side, the chips include eight hardware UARTs along with eight SPI, eight I2C, two I3C, and two CAN-FD buses, two 32-pin FlexIO connectors, a four-channel 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), two gigabit Ethernet ports one of which supports Time Sensitive Networking (TSN), two USB 2.0 ports, four I2S transmit-receive channels, an eight-channel PDM microphone input, and what NXP categorizes as "medium quality" stereo audio output.
Finally, the chips include NXP's "EdgeLock" secure enclave system, which includes cryptographic accelerators, automatic tamper detection, a secure clock, secure boot, eFuse-backed key storage, and a true hardware random number generator. On the software side, NXP is promising full compatibility with Linux, Green Hills, and QNX platforms.
Sadly for those seeing something worth chasing in that impressive list of features, the chips aren't quite ready yet: NXP has said that that samples will be available to "select customers and partners" in the second half of this year, with general availability not expected until late 2024. That hasn't stopped at least one of the company's partners from announcing a design built around the i.MX 91, though: Variscite is showing off a pre-release system-on-module, the VAR-SOM-MX91, at COMPUTEX in Taipei this week, and again promises evaluation hardware in the second half of the year.
More information is available on NXP's website.