Texas Instruments Introduces the Fastest HerculesTM MCU to Meet Developers' Functional Safety Industrial, Medical, and Other Design Requirements

[Big Bits] Recently, Texas Instruments (TI) has expanded its SafeTITM design with the latest 32-bit dual-core lock-step Hercules® RM5x and TMS570LC microcontrollers (MCUs) for developer-oriented functional safety applications. Component product line.

For the Hercules MCU platform, these two new floating point devices are unique in that their performance is up to 50% better than any of TI's existing ARM® CortexTM-R MCUs, enabling system designers to take advantage of a single The Hercules MCU replaces multiple discrete MCUs or some FPGA-MCU combination. In addition, these new Hercules MCUs offer the largest available on-chip flash and RAM in the Hercules platform, as well as several security enhancements. With integrated real-time instruction and data tracking support, system and software developers gain insightful, efficient and powerful code analysis debugging experience and greater execution visibility.

To simplify development reuse and product scalability, these new lockstep and cache MCUs are software and pin compatible with TI's existing Hercules MCU product line. The new Hercules RM5x MCUs make it easier and faster for developers to meet IEC 61508 functional safety standards for a wide range of applications, including railway signals, aviation skid, programmable logic controllers, motors and drives, and medical equipment. Similarly, the new Hercules TMS570LC MCUs will help designers more quickly and easily meet ISO 26262 functional safety standards for transportation applications such as advanced driver assistance systems, domain controls, electronic propulsion systems and off-road vehicles.

Features and benefits of HerculesTM RM5x and TMS570LC MCUs:

Meets higher application performance needs with a lock-step ARM Cortex-R5 core in a cache-type memory architecture with speeds up to 330 MHz, offering 55 (peak) DMIPS, 660 (peak) MIPS and up to 330 MFLOPS. These MCUs help further improve system performance with a new memory architecture that supports additional parallel bus master access and a multiport direct memory access (DMA) controller.

· ECC-capable maximum-capacity on-chip memory in the Hercules product line to support growing application code length requirements and expand system functionality with up to 4 MB of integrated program flash and 512 KB of on-chip random access memory (RAM) And 128 KB of data flash for EEPROM emulation.

· Accelerate IEC 61508 SIL-3 with Hercules MCUs and accompanying SafeTI design package components including TI's safety-related semiconductor components, high-quality manufacturing processes, safety development processes, safety-related documentation, tools and software Compliance with ISO 26262 ASIL-D standards and certification progress for end product applications.

· Easy software development with TI's diagnostic library and HALCoGen driver software. In addition, TI offers MCAL to support AUTOSAR 4.0.3 for TMS570LC devices. TI's ARM Compiler Qualification Kit helps developers document, analyze, validate, and qualify TI TI compilers to help meet IEC 61508 and ISO 26262 standards.

· Enhanced on-chip diagnostics to simplify functional safety application design. These new devices add a new lock-step vectorization interrupt manager, new on-chip interconnect diagnostics, and expanded memory protection for CPU and bus masters based on the existing Hercules MCU security features. In addition, these devices provide unit error correction and two-bit error correction through ECC for instruction and data caches as well as specific peripheral RAM buffers.

· Network, data collection and field software upgrades with on-chip Ethernet, FlexRay and CAN connectivity.

· TI's companion TPS65381-Q1 multi-rail power supply (PMIC) for SafeTI chipsets for functional safety designs that require multiple power rails, integrated sensor power supplies, functional safety diagnostics and support documentation.

· Leapfrog development with the full-featured Hercules Development Kit (TMDXRM57LHDK or TMDXTMS570LCHDK) including a development board, TI Code Composer StudioTM Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Timer Coprocessor IDE, HALCoGen Peripheral Configuration Tools and security demos.

· Improved debugging experience with out-of-the-box tracking capabilities. At 6 Gbps bandwidth, the Hercules RM57x and TMS570LC MCUs use ARM's Embedded Trace MacrocellTM (ETM) to support cycle-accurate instruction and data tracing capabilities. Get a Hercules Tracking Development Kit now (product number: RM57-PROTRACE, 570LC-PROTRACE).

Availability

The new Hercules RM57x MCUs and the Flex100-compliant Q100-compliant Hercules TMS570x MCUs are available immediately, and customers can order in bulk. A variety of tools are available at different prices (for full-featured real-time debug tracking) and the free software listed above.

Innovation is at the heart of TI MCU

TI is committed to adding unique system architecture, intellectual property, and real-world system expertise to leading-edge process technologies, and continues to enrich its MCU innovations for more than 20 years, including ultra-low-power MSP MCUs, real-time control C2000TM MCUs, Tiva TM ARM? MCU and HerculesTM Safety MCU. Designers can accelerate their time-to-market with industry tools through TI tools, software, wireless connectivity solutions, and a variety of design networking products and technologies.