pyATK (Python ATK) is an attempt at replacing the Advanced Toolkit (ATK) program distributed by Freescale Semiconductor for their i.MX series processors.

pyATK is a Python library (supporting 2.6+) that allows you to develop custom bootstrap tools for i.MX processors. It also comes with a command-line and GUI utility for common operations, doubling as a useful API example.

This project is in no way affiliated with or supported by Freescale Semiconductor. For official support, you must use their officially supplied tool. Do not contact Freescale about this program.

This project is in early development, and currently targets the i.MX25 platform. While the program attempts support for other i.MX processors, the author does not have access to these chips and cannot test them.

You are welcome to provide the project maintainer(s) with test devices to provide or fix support for your particular PDK. As always, if you have devices you can test and can add support yourself, patches are welcome!

The serial boot protocol is a protocol exposed by the i.MX boot ROM. Consult the i.MX RM for your design for how to enter the CPU boot ROM.

pyATK supports the serial boot protocol out of the box, allowing you to execute test applications directly, as well as read and write memory for initialization purposes. The boot ROM supports the HAB secure boot framework, but this is not currently implemented in pyATK.

In order to access the SDRAM used in your design, you must provide a memory initialization file that sets up the SDRAM controller with proper timings. Currently, no example initialization files are provided with pyATK; some are provided with the stock Freescale ATK installation (none are included in the ATK source code!). pyATK directly supports initialization files used with the Freescale ATK.

The serial boot protocol ROM has no concept of any flash device on the board. In order to make it simple to program your application into MMC, NOR, or NAND, the ATK uses the concept of the "RAM Kernel" to abstract away device flash operation.

The ATK source code contains a RAM kernel that can be extended for your design's flash chip (NAND, MMC, eSDHC, etc.). The ATK program loads and executes this kernel in SDRAM, exposing the RAM kernel protocol for unified flash identification, erase, programming, etc.

The pyATK implementation supports the protocol exposed by Freescale's default RAM kernel implementation, but does not provide any implementation of the kernel itself. If your design has a custom NAND flash chip unknown to the stock ATK RAM kernels, you must compile your own using the source code provided on the Freescale website. Freescale provides an excellent manual for adapting the RAM kernel to your design[1]. This manual also documents the RAM kernel protocol.

[1] I.MX Platform Advanced Toolkit Reference Manual