NXP unveils its i.MX 91 family of applications processors

NXP unveils its i.MX 91 family of applications processors

NXP has unveiled new i.MX 91 processors. The new chips should power Smart Factories and Smart Homes.

This week Dutch semiconductor giant NXP used the Computex event to announce the latest processor from its i.MX 9 series of applications processors. These are intended for industrial, medical, consumer and IoT applications.

The i.MX 91 family designs should enable them to be a long-life, cost-optimized, and flexible Linux-based application platforms. James Prior, the i.MX 9 Product Manager, wrote in the NXP Smarter World Blog: “Thousands of applications ranging from Industry 4.0, Medical, Consumer, and IoT markets can be developed and enabled using the i.MX 91 and i.MX 93 families common platform”.

Reliability and longevity

“As part of the i.MX 9 Series focus on edge-informed architectures, the i.MX 91 family focuses on reliability and longevity”, Prior states. The i.MX 91 family will be part of the NXP 15-year product longevity program. This should build a portfolio of products to enable a stable supply of embedded platforms.

“Emerging new product opportunities such as electric vehicle charging or Smart Home Matter devices are driving change in hardware and software, including new industry standards and protocols”, Prior continues. “The large open-source ecosystem for Linux enables adoption of new protocols and standards in easily supported and reusable ways”.

Smart Factories

The i.MX 91 is at the heart of NPX’s industrial automation offering. It connects EdgeLock, other devices, NXP’s PF5020 (the company’s multi-channel device for high-performance and industrial applications) and NXP’s N-Afe front-end. Specifically, this front-end runs sensors and actuators for industrial applications.

Smart Homes

The i.MX 91 family can complement the family of IW612 tri-radio communications solutions, enabling Wi-Fi 6, BlueTooth 5.2, and Matter, which is the new standard for Smart Home interoperability. The i.MX 91 family will be accompanied by a co-developed power management solution, and is compatible with the i.MX 93 family ecosystem, according to Prior.

“The combination of rich I/O and energy-efficient processing built for long-life platforms and reliable computing can enable thousands of edge processing platforms to be rapidly enabled”, Prior promises, adding that the new chips will be suitable even for “applications extending beyond what is built today”.