[Sound-open-firmware] NXP 8M Plus platform suitable for SOF getting started

[martin.roessler at roessler-netz.de]

Hello SOF Team,

I would like to get started with SOF: I'm interested in audio signal processing, audio driver programming and hardware.
I do this to some extend during my normal work, however, for new things to learn there is never time.

So, I’m looking for a suitable NXP board for SOF. I would like to use the new i.MX8M Plus if possible or is it better to use one of the NXP platforms mention in the sof documentation?

I could not find any NXP "native" 8M Plus board on the web page, however, there is a device tree file imx8mp-evk-sof-wm8960.dts indicating there is one?
All 3rd party 8M Plus board vendors I contacted so far are not so familiar with the Hifi4 core, so not much help, especially when asking about JTAG access to this core.
Could you give any recommendation of a not so expensive board (> ~ 500 US$) suitable for SOF?

Also I'm unclear how to get technical information of the Hifi4 core. Nothing mentioned in the SOC datasheets so far.
I could use one of the Tensilica licenses of my company I work for. But do I need to contact NXP or Cadence?. Any NDA required?

I have already a i.MX 8M Mini EVK for Android learning and a i.MX RT600 EVK just for fun. 
So, just a maybe stupid question: 
Any plans to support SOF together with a "normal" Cortex-M4 / Cortex-M7 accelerator core on the (NXP) SOCs?
Now that it is possible to use Zephyr as RTOS, I think this would be possible, at least for some not too complex audio pipelines.

Thanks for some help.

Regards Martin