Wondering how to power your i.MX 8M processor?

Look no further than the BD71847AMWV power management IC, according to Rohm, which optimised it particularly for those very NXP i.MX 8M mini application processors

Built on a BCD process, the chip can produce all power rails required by the processor as well as feed DDR and system IO.

Its dc-dc converters operate at up to 95% efficiency, it has a programmable power sequencer, and both OTP and software control over: output voltage, power state transitions and reset behaviour.

On-board are:

6 dc-dc buck converters
6 LDOs
a 1.8V/3.3V power switch for SDXC cards
a 32-kHz crystal driver and buffered output clock
monitoring
protection (soft start, power rail error detection, over-voltage, over-current)
programmable sequencer
power state control logic
Power-control hardware sideband signaling compatible with i.MX 8M Mini’s
Power button functionality
IMHz I2C interface

The 2.7-5.5V input range includes single-cell Li-ion batteries and USB power sources.

It comes in a 56pin 7 x 7mm QFN package whose “pin layout is carefully designed to ensure easy connection to NXP’s i.MX 8M Mini applications processor and DDR memory”, said Rohm. “With 2-sided mounting, the board size could be as small as 300mm².”

Samples are available, with production planned for August.

There is an evaluation kit – pictured (and listed below) – and driver software is available.

A similar chip, the BD71837MWV, was introduced a year ago to support the higher-performance i.MX 8M Quad and Dual applications processors.

i.MX 8M Mini processors can be used to implement a voice interface for audio and video streaming devices. They have up to four 1.8GHz Arm Cortex-A53 cores, plus a 400MHz Arm Cortex-M4/M7 for low stand-by power consumption. 1080p video processing, 2D/3D graphics and audio are supported.