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ARM9 Micros Target Industrial and Medical Apps

April 6, 2010
Texas Instrument's has released four new Sitara ARM9-based microprocessor families that target industrial, medical and consumer applications. The chips are pin-to-pin compatible with TI’s OMAP-L1x processors.

Sitera is pin-compatible with the OMAP-L1x

Sitera ARM9 AM1707 block diagram

Sitera ARM9 AM1808 block diagram

AM1707 TMDXEM1707 EVM development board

AM1808 TMDXEVM1808L EVM development board

Texas Instrument's (TI) has released four new Sitara ARM9-based microprocessor families that target industrial, medical and consumer applications. The chips are pin-to-pin compatible with TI’s OMAP-L1x processors. The new chips include AM1808, AM1806, AM1707, and AM1705.

The processor core is based on the ARM926EJ-S with MMU and a 16 Kbyte cache for instructions and another for data. A 4 Kbyte embedded trace buffer (ETB) is included with JTAG support for debugging. There is 8 Kbytes for the vector table and a 64 Kbyte ROM that includes the StellarisWare runtime. StellarisWare is a free set of libraries that support a range of applications including motor control.

The new processors include a range of peripherals including serial ATA (SATA), universal parallel port (uPP), TI’s  Programmable Real-time Unit (PRU), USB 2.0 on-the-go (OTG) with integrated PHY, USB 1.1 with integrated PHY, 10/100 Ethernet MAC, LCD, and MMC/SD interfaces. The AM180x line has a more robust set of audio and video interfaces. All have external flash support. The AM170x has SDRAM support while the AM180x has MDDR and DDR2 support. The ARM9 chips are available in 375 and 450 MHz versions.

Developers can check out the new Sitera chips using the $445 TMDXEXP1808L experimenter kit, the $1150 AM1808-based TMDXEVM1808L EVM (evaluation module) board and AM1707-based $845 TMDXEM1707 EVM board. The AM1808-based EVM has touch screen support. The EVMs have 128 Mbytes of DDR RAM, SATA and Ethernet interfaces plus a range of other connectors providing access to the chip's other peripheral interfaces. The development kits includes a Linux kernel 2.6.33 board support package, PRU configuration tool as well as PRU CAN, PRU UART and touch screen demos. Other operating systems such as Windows Embedded CE will be available later in the year.
  

Texas Instruments
TI Sitera website
TI AM170x
TI AM180x

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William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

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