According to Texas Instruments, its Concerto MCUs enable developers to accomplish both real-time control and connectivity within one microcontroller, eliminating the traditional need to choose between optimal performance and advanced connectivity.
Houston, Texas: The Texas Instruments C2000 Concerto 32-bit dual-core microcontroller series combines TI’s high-performance C28x core and control peripherals with an ARM Cortex-M3 core and connectivity peripherals to deliver a clearly partitioned architecture that supports real-time control and advanced connectivity in a single, cost-efficient device.
“Concerto is the best of two worlds,” said Michael Seidl, business development Manager, embedded processing Europe, at TI. “The C28x for real-time control, and the ARM Cortex-M3 for communications: Customers can use the right core for the right task.”
Greener applications require the performance of a real-time control MCU to execute complex algorithms needed for precise, efficient power conversion, which is the essence of efficient motor control, renewable energy, and smart grid technologies.
But to take that efficiency to new levels that can dramatically save energy, these applications must also be connected for remote data sharing, diagnostics, monitoring, and control.
TI says its Concerto MCUs enable developers to accomplish both real-time control and connectivity within one microcontroller, eliminating the traditional need to choose between optimal performance and advanced connectivity (see the figure).
The real-time control subsystem is based on TI’s C28x core with floating point and the Viterbi Complex Math Unit. It delivers 13 times the performance of existing MCUs as well as the control peripherals required to design the most reliable, efficient, green applications.
The robust host communication subsystem is based on Cortex-M3 and connectivity peripherals such as Ethernet, USB On-The-Go, dual CAN, and multiple serial communication ports. Performance can be tailored to different applications with options for 150/75 MHz, 100/100 MHz, or 60/60 MHz on the C28x and Cortex-M3 cores, respectively.
Safety and security features include up to 1 Mbyte of flash and 132 kbytes RAM with error correction, parity on CAN and interrupt registers, redundancy for functions, and lock protection.
TI’s Concerto F28M35x Experimenter Kit includes an F28M35x controlCARD and docking station to enable developers to easily begin evaluation and development. The modular controlCARD is hardware compatible with TI’s C2000 application-specific development kits. Software to further support development on the kits will be available later this year.
Texas Instruments
www.ti.com