Gateworks Catalina Family Support
 Getting Started |
 Catalina Software |
 Peripherals |
 User Manuals |
 Wireless / WiFi Radios |
 Cellular Modems |
 GPS |
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The Gateworks Catalina product family utilizes the NXP i.MX 95 SoC (System On Chip) family offering a large variety of peripherals with a focus on Networking, Security, and Performance. See here for a product comparison matrix.
Links
Please note: This is a subset of information for Catalina, however, please visit our Main Wiki for all other information
Software
- Software Section - Bootloader, Boot Firmware, Operating Systems, Kernel, etc
Security
Peripheral Support
- Connector Pinouts - see Hardware User Manual
- Connector and Cable Information
- Serial Console Access
- USB Support - Note the standard Catalina family supports USB 2.0 on the front panel (USB 3.0 only supported on FSA Sockets)
- SPI Support
- I2C Support
- GPIO Control
- LED Control
- mSATA Information
- GPS Support
- CAN Bus Support
- PCIe Accessory Cards
- MultiMediaCard (microSD/eMMC) Information
- Gateworks System Controller (GSC) - Temperature, voltage, RTC, GPIO, Digital IO, I/O, pushbutton, etc
- TPM / Trusted Protection Module / Security
- Alternate / Optional Connectors / Headers
Other Info
- Product Info
- Where to Buy
- Linux Kernel Device-Tree info
- End of Life - EOL Dates
- View Catalina Revision Notes
User Manuals
Catalina Software
Catalina Software is comprised of many pieces, including the following:
- GSC (Gateworks System Controller) Firmware
- Boot Firmware (ARM Trusted Firmware, DDR controller Firmware, U-Boot Bootloader)
- Operating System (including kernel / rootfs) (different flavors of Linux)
Ubuntu Linux is pre-installed on all Catalina boards before they ship.
Please view the following links for the appropriate software section:
- Choosing an OS - Linux Software - Ubuntu, Buildroot, Yocto, etc
- GSC Firmware
- Catalina Mainline Linux kernel support
- Booting Third Party Linux Distro's on Catalina
- Catalina JTAG Programming
- Native Compile Hello World Example
- Buildroot Linux
Choosing a BSP
Gateworks offers several Linux Board Support Packages for the Catalina Product family. Which one we recommend depends a bit upon what your goal is and what your experience level is. Note: By default Catalina boards are pre-programmed with and Ubuntu root filesystem and Gateworks kernel.
Ubuntu
Gateworks offers a pre-built Ubuntu Linux root filesystem using the latest Gateworks kernel as well as instructions on how to build your own Ubuntu based distribution.
Catalina pre-built Ubuntu root filesytem image:
- Recommended for developers trying to heavily leverage opensource software packages or libraries that are not supported by the other BSP's. This is the most user-friendly for developers new to Embedded Linux but will not produce a very trimmed down filesystem image.
- The Gateworks Ubuntu image can boot to login in about 26 seconds (removing the U-Boot bootdelay) and takes about 1.5GiB of FLASH storage. Several seconds of that time is spent waiting for the network interfaces to come up which can be disabled. Much of the required space is taken up by various packages we pre-install however it is difficult to get Ubuntu pruned down below 1GiB or booting much faster.
- Able to use mainline kernel.
- Supports all Catalina features.
- Documentation provided to use Ubuntu pre-built packages and debootstrap to create a root filesystem in minutes
- Native compilation: no SDK or cross-toolchain needed
Buildroot
Gateworks provides documentation on building your own compact and customized Linux distribution using Buildroot:
- Intended for custom applications (low flash and memory footprint)
- A standard buildroot image can boot to login in about 8 seconds (removing the U-Boot bootdelay) and can take less than 32MiB of FLASH storage (both of which can be reduced by turning off the console output and reducing the kernel features)
- Fairly up-to-date and/or vanilla kernel support
- Wide variety of packages
- Console-based build system
- exportable Toolchain available to build apps on a development host outside of the buildroot environment
Third Party Linux Distros
While Gateworks cannot fully support all Linux distros, it is relatively simple to overlay a Gateworks Catalina kernel onto any non-Gateworks third party Linux distro rootfs image.
The following links will describe what is needed:
- Linux kernel supporting Catalina: linux/kernel
- Root Filesystem: see below
- Bootable media: linux/blockdev
Root filesystem Sources
There are several sources of pre-built root filesystems that are compatible with Catalina. As Catalina uses an ARM 64bit based SoC, you need to use something that is compatible with an ARM64 instruction set. Many pre-built distributions will reference 'arm64' which means 'ARM 64-bit' which is appropriate for the i.MX 95 SoC.
Some popular third-party sources:
- Ubuntu Core - this is a minimal filesystem that you can build off of at runtime by adding packages from various repositories.
- Linaro - Linaro has several root filesystems including server, nano, developer, core, and ALIP. Each root filesystem will have different things installed for different purposes. Choose carefully which will work for you.
Notes:
- some root filesystems may require you to manually add a user before booting (ie Ubuntu Core)
Mainline Linux Kernel support
Gateworks actively participates in the development of the Linux kernel.
Entire Raw Index of Catalina Wiki Pages
