Texas Instruments (TI)launched a new high-performance microcontroller (MCU) product series, which promotes real-time control, network interconnection and intelligent analysis at the edge. With the new Sitara AM2x series of MCUs, engineers can use 10 times the computing power of previous flash-based MCUs. The high-performance AM2x series bridges the ever-increasing performance gap between MCUs and processors, enabling designers to break performance limitations in applications such as factory automation, robotics, automotive systems, and sustainable energy management.
"People's demand for industrial automation, next-generation automobiles, intelligent analysis, and the Internet of Everything pushes up the performance requirements of edge-side microcontrollers - faster and more accurate. Providing more advanced and efficient processing capabilities for distributed systems is One of the key steps to achieve Industry 4.0," said Chris Morris, senior research analyst at Omdia.
The Sitara™ AM2x MCU product series are based on high-performance Arm ® MCU cores, including single-core and multi-core devices running at up to 1 GHz, and integrate dedicated peripherals and accelerators. Easy-to-use tools and software can simplify the customer's evaluation process, reduce the overall system design complexity and cost, and easily obtain high-performance processing capabilities.
"Designers increasingly need to achieve higher performance at lower system costs to meet people's needs for precise control, fast communication, and complex analysis. In our new Sitara MCU product series, TI combines the industry’s advanced processing performance, Real-time control and advanced network functions are seamlessly combined, enabling engineers to break performance barriers in emerging applications," said Mike Pienovi, general manager of TI's Sitara MCU product line.
Low-power MCU with processor-level performance
AM243x MCU is the first AM2x series device available, with up to four Arm Cortex ® -R5F cores, each core running at up to 800MHz. This kind of high real-time processing speed is very important in factory equipment such as robots. Among them, fast computing power and high-speed access to MCU internal memory can help improve the robot's motion accuracy and speed at the same time, thereby increasing productivity. The additional processing power enables designers to further analyze functions such as predictive maintenance, thereby reducing downtime on the factory floor. In typical applications, AM243x devices can reach this level of performance without consuming less than 1W of effective power, enabling factory operators to extend power supply life and reduce operating costs and energy consumption.
Integrated design realizes real-time control and networking functions at the edge
Sitara AM243x MCUs integrate sensing and driving peripherals, enabling factory automation to achieve low-latency real-time processing and control, and simplify the realization of industrial networks through communication acceleration modules. AM243x devices expand TI's support for multiple Gigabit Industrial Ethernet protocols and Time Sensitive Networks (TSN), enabling next-generation factory networks. With AM243x, engineers can use the certified protocol stack directly provided by TI to support EtherNet/IP™, EtherCAT ®, PROFINET ® and IO-Link master stations, etc., so as to meet the evolving industrial communication standards. The on-chip safety functions of AM243x MCUs support new encryption requirements. The integrated functional safety mechanisms, diagnostics and auxiliary functions can help system integrators meet the safety integrity level (SIL) 3 requirements of the IEC 61508 standard in their industrial designs.
Simplify high-performance designs with easy-to-use tools and software
In order to reduce the complexity of design and development, TI created the Sitara AM243x LaunchPad™ development kit to quickly evaluate high-performance MCUs. With the help of evaluation tools and Sitara MCU+ software framework, developers can immediately begin to experience the out-of-the-box precise real-time control and industrial networking functions of AM243x MCUs. Developers can also access reference examples for specific applications, powerful tools and software ecosystems, and the MCU+ Academy training website to simplify design and speed time to market.
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