TDA4VM: eMMC for TDA4VM custom PCB

Gautham Angadi

Part Number: TDA4VM

Hi TI team,

On our custom PCB based on the TDA4VM and would like to use a Micron MTFC128GAZAQJP-IT 128-GB eMMC as the primary boot and storage device.

Our proposed hardware/software approach is as follows:

On the SK-TDA4VM, we observed that the MMC0 signals from the TDA4VM SoC are routed to the J11 connector.
On our custom PCB, instead of using J11 for the Wi-Fi module, we plan to route the available MMC0 signals from the SoC directly to the eMMC.
We will follow the TDA4VM SoC/eMMC reference schematic for the required eMMC connections, power supplies, reset, CMD, CLK, and data signals.
In the software, we plan to modify the device tree so that the corresponding MMC0 controller is enabled and configured as an eMMC device instead of the existing Wi-Fi/SDIO configuration.

Our main questions are:

1. Can we initially flash the eMMC using UART boot or USB DFU boot?

Our intended development flow is:

TDA4VM ROM
   |
   +--> UART boot / USB DFU
             |
             v
        SPL / U-Boot
             |
             v
        Flash eMMC
             |
             v
     Configure eMMC boot
             |
             v
        Reboot from eMMC

We would like to confirm whether UART boot or USB DFU can be used to load the bootloader into RAM and then use U-Boot/DFU to program the eMMC boot and user partitions.

2. Are there any additional hardware boot-mode changes required?

Since the SK-TDA4VM does not have an onboard eMMC, we assume that our custom board will need the appropriate TDA4VM boot-mode configuration/straps to select eMMC boot. Could you please advise which boot-mode configuration should be used for MMC0/eMMC boot?

3. Are there any specific U-Boot/SPL or device-tree changes required for an eMMC on MMC0?

We would particularly appreciate confirmation that the above approach will allow us to:

Boot the TDA4VM initially through UART or USB DFU.
Detect the MTFC128GAZAQJP-IT eMMC from U-Boot.
Flash tiboot3.bin, tispl.bin, u-boot.img, sysfw.itb, and the Linux/root filesystem to eMMC.
Configure the eMMC boot partition correctly.
Subsequently boot the custom PCB directly from eMMC without requiring an SD card or other boot media.

Any recommendations regarding the Micron MTFC128GAZAQJP-IT compatibility with TDA4VM MMC0, especially regarding boot partition configuration, and supported timing modes, would also be appreciated.

Can you provide FAE details of TDA4VM at Hyderabad, India.

19 days ago

0 Gokul Praveen 18 days ago

TI__Mastermind 18870 points

Hi Gautham,

Gautham Angadi said:
We would like to confirm whether UART boot or USB DFU can be used to load the bootloader into RAM and then use U-Boot/DFU to program the eMMC boot and user partitions.

Yes, this should be possible once the eMMC hardware support is done.

Gautham Angadi said:
2. Are there any additional hardware boot-mode changes required?

Since the SK-TDA4VM does not have an onboard eMMC, we assume that our custom board will need the appropriate TDA4VM boot-mode configuration/straps to select eMMC boot. Could you please advise which boot-mode configuration should be used for MMC0/eMMC boot?

Gautham Angadi said:
On the SK-TDA4VM, we observed that the MMC0 signals from the TDA4VM SoC are routed to the J11 connector.

On our custom PCB, instead of using J11 for the Wi-Fi module, we plan to route the available MMC0 signals from the SoC directly to the eMMC.

We will follow the TDA4VM SoC/eMMC reference schematic for the required eMMC connections, power supplies, reset, CMD, CLK, and data signals.

For all of these you can refer to the TDA4VM EVM(TI J721E EVM) schematics, and accordingly design your custom PCB.

Gautham Angadi said:
Can you provide FAE details of TDA4VM at Hyderabad, India.

I am not aware of that actually.

Best Regards

Gokul Praveen

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TDA4VM: eMMC for TDA4VM custom PCB