Reference Manual

Arduino® Portenta X8
11 / 20 Arduino® Portenta X8 Modified: 07/12/2022
8.1 NXP® i.MX 8M Mini Quad Core Microprocessor
The MIMX8MM6CVTKZAA iMX8M (U2) features a quad core ARM® Cortex® A53 running at up to 1.8 GHz for high performance
applications alongside an ARM® Cortex® M4 running at up to 400 MHz. The ARM® Cortex® A53 is capable of running a fully fledged
Linux or Android operating system through a Board Support Packages (BSP) in a multithreaded fashion. This can be expanded via
the use of specialized soware containers via OTA updates. The ARM® Cortex® M4 has lower power consumption allowing for
effective sleep management as well as optimal performance in real-time applications and is reserved for future use. Both
processors can share all peripherals and resources available on the i.MX 8M Mini, including PCIe, on-chip memory, GPIO, GPU and
Audio.
8.2 STM32 Dual Core Microprocessor
The X8 includes an embedded H7 in the form of a STM32H747AII6 IC (U20) with a dual core ARM® Cortex® M7 and ARM® Cortex®
M4. This IC is used as a I/O expander for the NXP® i.MX 8M Mini (U2). Peripherals are automatically controlled via the M7 core.
Additionally, the M4 core is available for real time control of motors and other time-critical machinery at a barebones level. The
M7 core acts as a mediator between the peripherals and the i.MX 8M Mini and runs a proprietary firmware inaccessible to the
User. The STM32H7 is not exposed to networking and should be programmed via the i.MX 8M Mini (U2).
9 Wi-Fi®/Bluetooth® Connectivity
The Murata® LBEE5KL1DX-883 wireless module (U9) simultaneously provides Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® connectivity in an ultra small
package based on the Cypress CYW4343W. The IEEE802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi® interface can be operated as an access point (AP), station
(STA) or as a dual mode simultaneous AP/STA and supports a maximum transfer rate of 65 Mbps. Bluetooth® interface supports
Bluetooth® Classic and Bluetooth® Low Energy. An integrated antenna circuitry switch allows a single external antenna (J4 or
ANT1) to be shared between Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth®. Module U9 interfaces with i.MX 8M Mini (U2) via a 4bit SDIO and UART
interface. Based on the soware stack of the wireless module in the embedded linux OS, Bluetooth® 5.1 is supported together
with Wi-Fi® conforming to the IEEE802.11b/g/n standard.
10 Onboard Memories
The Arduino® Portenta X8 includes two onboard memory modules. A NT6AN512T32AV 2GB LP-DDR4 DRAM (U19) and 16GB Forsee
eMMC Flash module (FEMDRW016G) (U5) are accessible to the i.MX 8M Mini (U2).