Apalis Arm Family
Apalis is a Computer on Module architecture that aims at seamlessly complementing the existing Colibri Arm family. Apalis comes with a wide range of new and exciting features, ensuring customers can develop the most advanced, robust products with minimum overhead and risk. Apalis supports a wide variety of industry standard interfaces, while at the same time providing advanced multimedia and high speed connectivity making it suitable for an almost unlimited number of applications.
The Apalis specification has been developed from in-depth research into diverse existing and emerging technologies. While primarily aimed at supporting Arm® based processors such as the NVIDIA® Tegra™ and NXP®/Freescale i.MX™, this standard is specifically designed to be device and chip architecture independent. The objective is to ensure future proofing of the interfaces, benefiting customers by providing for long product lifecycles and by continuing to offer access to leading edge technologies without compromise. Windows Embedded Compact, Embedded Linux and Android, support is available for these modules.
The Apalis standard white paper summarizes the many benefits of this architecture
The following document is a design guide for Apalis carrier boards, but also applies to any high speed hardware designs
Apalis carrier board design guide
| ×Apalis iMX8 | ×Apalis TK1 | ×Apalis T30 | ×Apalis iMX6 | |
 |  |  |  | |
| Datasheet - TBD | Datasheet | Datasheet | Datasheet | |
| detail... | detail... | detail... | detail... | |
| CPU Details | ||||
| CPU Name | NXP® i.MX 8QuadMax | NVIDIA® Tegra™ K1 NXP® Kinetis™ K20 Companion MCU | NVIDIA® Tegra™ 3 | NXP®/Freescale i.MX 6Quad / NXP®/Freescale i.MX 6Dual |
| CPU Type | 2x Arm Cortex™-A72 4x Arm Cortex™-A53 2x Arm Cortex™-M4 | 4x Arm Cortex™-A15 1x Arm Cortex™-M4 (Companion MCU) | 4x Arm Cortex™-A9 / Arm Cortex™-A9 | 4x Arm Cortex™-A9 / 2x Arm Cortex™-A9 |
| CPU Clock | 1.6GHz (A72) 1.26GHz (A53) 266MHz (M4) | Up to 2.1 GHz (A15) 100 MHz (M4) | Up to 1.4 GHz | 800 MHz / 1.0 GHz |
| Floating Point Unit | Yes | VFPv4 | VFPv3 | VFPv3 |
| NEON | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| CUDA | — | Yes | — | — |
| L1 Instruction Cache | 48KB (A72), 32KB (A53), 16KB (M4) | 32KB per core | 32KB per core | 32KB per core |
| L1 Data Cache | 32KB (A72), 32KB (A53), 16KB (M4) | 32KB per core | 32KB per core | 32KB per core |
| L2 Cache | 1MB (A72), 1MB (A53) | 2MByte | 1MByte | 1MByte |
| Memory | ||||
| RAM | 4GB LPDDR4 (64 Bit) | 2GB DDR3L (64 Bit) | 2GB DDR3L (32 Bit) / 1GB DDR3L (32 Bit) | 2GB DDR3 (64 Bit) / 1GB DDR3 (64 Bit) / 512MB DDR3 (64 Bit) |
| Flash | Up to 16GB eMMC | 16GB eMMC | 8GB eMMC / 4GB eMMC (8 Bit) / 4GB eMMC | 4GB eMMC |
| Connectivity | ||||
| USB 3.0 | 1x Host | 2x Host | — | — |
| USB 2.0 | 2x Host / 1x OTG | 1x Host / 1x OTG | 2x Host / 1x OTG / 2x Host (High Speed) 1x OTG (High Speed) | 4x Host / 1x OTG |
| Ethernet | Gigabit with AVB (+2nd RGMII) | Gigabit with IEEE 1588 | Gigabit with IEEE 1588 / 10/100/1000 Mbit with IEEE 1588 | Gigabit with IEEE 1588 |
| Wi-Fi | Dual-band 802.11ac 2x2 MU-MIMO | — | — | — |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth 5 ready | — | — | — |
| PCIe | 2 (x1 Gen 3) | 1 (x2 Gen 2) + 1 (x1 Gen 2) | 1 (x1 Gen 1) + 1 (x4 Gen 1) / 1 x1 (Gen 1) 1 x4 (Gen 1) | 1 (x1 Gen 2) |
| I2C | 7x | 7x | 4x | 3x |
| SPI | 4x | 5x | 4x | 4x |
| One-Wire | — | — | 1x | — |
| UART | 7x | 10x | 5x | 5x |
| IrDA | 1x | 1x | 1x | 1x |
| PWM | 6x | 16x | 4x | 4x |
| GPIO | up to 133 | up to 83 | up to 127 / — | up to 135 |
| Analog Input | 8x | 21x | 4x / 4x (12 Bit) | 4x |
| Serial ATA | 1x (SATA-III) | 1x (SATA-II) | 1x (SATA-II) | 1x (SATA-II) |
| SDIO/SD/MMC | 1x 8 Bit, 1x 4 Bit | 3x 4 Bit (2x UHS-I) | 2x 8 Bit (1x UHS-I) 1x 4 Bit | 3x 8 Bit |
| CAN | 3x | 2x | 2x | 2x |
| Multimedia | ||||
| Display Controller | Quad, Independent | Dual, Independent | Dual, Independent / 2x | Dual, Independent |
| Graphics Controller | Dual Vivante GC7000XSVX | NVIDIA® Kepler™ GPU | Integrated Ultra-low power NVIDIA GeForce GPU | Vivante GC2000 |
| Video Decoder | Yes | H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MJPEG, VC-1, WEBM, XviD | DiVX 4/5/6, H.263, H.264, JPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9 VC-1, XviD | DivX 3/4/5/6, H.263, H.264, MJPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC1 |
| Video Encoder | Yes | H.263, H.264, MJPEG, MPEG-4, VC1, WEBM VP8 | H.263, H.264, JPEG, MPEG-4 | H.263, H.264, MJPEG, MPEG-4 |
| Display Serial Interface | 1x single lane MIPI DSI | 1x Quad + 1x Dual Lane MIPI DSI | 2x Dual Lane MIPI DSI / 2x Dual Lane | 1x Dual Lane MIPI DSI |
| LVDS | 3x 1366 x 768 x 24bpp Single / 1x 1920 x 1200 x 24bpp Dual + 1x 1366 x 768 x 24bpp Single | 1x 1920 x 1200 x 24bpp Single | 1x 1280 x 1024 x 24bpp Single / 1 x 2048 x 1536 x 24bpp Dual / 1x 1280 x 1024 x 24bpp Single / 1 x 2048 x 1536 x 24bpp Dual | 2x 1366 x 768 x 24bpp Single / 1x 1920 x 1200 x 24bpp Dual |
| Digital Audio | 1x AC97 or I2S | 1x I2S | 1x HDA or 1x I2S | 3x AC97 or 3x I2S, 1x ESAI |
| S/PDIF In / Out | 1x / 1x | 1x / 1x | 1x / 1x / 1x | 1x / 1x |
| 2D Acceleration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 3D Acceleration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| HDMI | 4K UltraHD (V2.0a, 2160p) | 4K UltraHD (V1.4b, 2160p) | Full HD (V1.4a, 1080p) | Full HD (V1.4a, 1080p) |
| Display Port | 1x eDP 1.4 or 1x DP 1.3 | 1x eDP | — | — |
| VGA | — | — | — | 1280 x 1024 |
| RGB | — | — | 2048 x 1536 x 24bpp | 1920 x 1200 x 24bpp |
| Resistive Touch | 4-wire | 4-wire | 4-wire | 4-wire |
| Camera Parallel Interface | — | — | 1x 8/10 Bit / 1x | 2x 8/16/20 Bit |
| Camera Serial Interface | 2x Quad Lane MIPI CSI-2 | 2x Quad + 1x Single Lane MIPI CSI-2 | 1x Quad / 2x Dual Lane MIPI CSI-2 / 1x Quad Lane or 2x Dual Lane | 1x Quad Lane MIPI CSI-2 |
| Analog Audio Line in | 1x (Stereo) | 1x (Stereo) | 1x (Stereo) | 1x (Stereo) |
| Analog Audio Mic in | 1x (Mono) | 1x (Mono) | 1x (Mono) | 1x (Mono) |
| Analog Audio Headphone out | 1x (Stereo) | 1x (Stereo) | 1x (Stereo) | 1x (Stereo) |
| Operating System | ||||
| Windows Embedded Compact 7 | — | — | Supported | Supported |
| Windows Embedded Compact 2013 | — | — | Supported | Supported |
| Embedded Linux | Supported | Supported | Supported | Supported |
| Android | — | Supported by third party | Supported by third party | Supported by third party |
| QNX | — | — | — | Supported by third party |
| FreeRTOS | Supported | — | — | — |
| Preinstalled OS | Linux | Linux | Linux | Linux |
| Physical | ||||
| Size | 82.0 x 45.0 x 6.0 mm | 82.0 x 45.0 x 6.0 mm | 82.0 x 45.0 x 6.0 mm | 82.0 x 45.0 x 6.0 mm |
| Temperature | 0 to 70°C / IT: -40° to +85°C(3) | -25° to +85° C | 0° to 70° C / -40° to +85° C | -40° to +85° C / 0° to 70° C |
| Power Dissipation | TBD | 3 - ~15 W | 1.4 - ~6 W | 1.9 - ~7 W |
| Minimum Product Commitment(1) | 2030 | 2025 | 2025 | 2028 |
(2) SuperSpeed only in Host Mode
(3) Depending on assembly option
General: Some interfaces are available on pins that are not entirely compatible within the Apalis Computer on Module family. There are restrictions to using different interfaces simultaneously, please check the respective datasheet for exact details.
