Power-efficient SoC modules suit medical and industrial applications

Direct Insight has created a QNX 7 Board Support Package for Toradex’s Colibri iMX8X embedded computing modules. Combining a feature-rich OS with real-time capability and mission-critical and the powerful ARM core processor ideally suits applications covering medical devices, navigation, industrial automation, avionics, POS, HMIs, data acquisition, robotics, and more.

The modules offer the NXP i.MX 8X family of embedded SoCs, including the top-tier i.MX 8QuadXPlus, which features four Cortex-A35 cores – currently ARM's most efficient ARM v8 core as the main processor cluster. The SoCs offer full 64-bit ARM v8-A support while keeping seamless backward compatibility with 32-bit Armv7-A software. The main cores run at up to 1.2GHz.

Comments David Pashley, Direct Insight’s MD: “The BSP unlocks the full benefits of the QNX OS on the power-efficient Toradex modules. QNX is perfect for real-time, safety-critical applications, and the BSP created by Direct Insight provides a great starting point for high-availability industrial designs.”

The Board Support Package contains all the basic features needed to run the OS on the board. Included are drivers for various interfaces, including Ethernet, Watchdog timer, I2C, SPI, USB, SD Card, UART. A display driver is also planned. The BSP is free to download as a demo system, and the source code can be licensed on a per-project basis for an affordable fee. The company also provides enhancements to the BSP, including further drivers and production-hardening and testing, as an additional services engagement.

Adds Daniel Lang, CMO at Toradex: “We designs its products for applications that demand high reliability, safety and security, such as medical devices. The QNX offering from Direct Insight further strengthens this positioning and allows our customers to use QNX while lowering the project risk and shortening the time-to-market.”