i.MX8 - GPU

i.MX8
Introduction
SoC Overview Carrier Boards i.MX6 vs i.MX8
iMX8M Evaluation Kit (EVK)
Overview Getting Started Selecting Boot Mode System Setup Software Support Android_SD_Partitions_RidgeRun_Script Loading pre-built images Yocto Support Building Yocto Installing an Image Alternative image loading Android Support Building Android Installing an Image System Recovery
Nitrogen8M
Overview Getting Started Selecting Boot Mode System Setup Software Support Loading pre-built images Yocto Support Building Yocto Installing an Image Alternative image loading Customizing Boot Sequence Android Support Building Android Installing an image System Recovery
Multimedia
GPU OpenGL OpenCL OpenVX OpenVG Vulkan VPU Encoding System Decoding System ISP Support V4L2 Drivers Porting Guide GStreamer Support Package Installation Pipeline Examples Hardware-accelerated plugins RidgeRun Products GstRtspSink GstWebRTC GstPTZR GstQtOverlay
Reference Documentation
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General Description

According to the i.MX8 Reference Manual, the chip incorporates the following Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) features to provide 2D/3D acceleration:

• 4 shader.
• Run up to 800 MHz at 0.9V nominal voltage
• Support 267 million triangles/sec
• Support 1.6 Giga pixel/sec fill rate
• Support 25.6 GFLOPs 32-bit, 51.2 GFLOPs 16-bit
• Support OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1
• Support OpenCL 1.1/1.2 FP
• Frame Buffer Compression – Lossless compression of buffers.
• TrustZone support using a local MMU to manage secure regions.

TrustZone is a hardware architecture by ARM which main porpuse is to enable the construction of a programmable environment that allows the confidentiality and integrity of almost any asset to be protected from specific attacks. Read more about TrustZone in here.

Software

The GPU driver is divided into two layers:

• The first layer is running in kernel mode: represents the base driver for the whole stack. This layer provides the essential hardware access, device management, memory management, command queue management, context management and power management.
• The second layer is running in user mode: implements the stack logic and provides the APIs (OpenGL ES, OpenCL, OpenVX, Vulkan) to the upper layer applications.

Hardware

You can see all the functional blocks that compose the GPU structure in the following image:

Image source: https://www.nxp.com

For detailed information about the GPU blocks, please refer to the i.MX8 Reference Manual. At this time, there are four main product families for i.MX8 that have different features and facilities. The summary of such features can be found in the following table:

	GPU Libraries & Extensions
Product Family	GPU	OpenGL ES	OpenVX	OpenCL	Vulkan
i.MX8	2	3.1	Yes	2.0	Yes
i.MX 8M	1	3.1	No	1.2	Yes
i.MX 8M Mini	1	2.0	No	No	No
i.MX 8X	1	3.1	No	1.2 EP	Yes