September 2016
25
C
ontrollers
& P
rocessors
The AM335x integrates one instance of the
Industrial Communication Subsystem – com-
prising two cores of PRUs – enabling fieldbus/
real-time Ethernet or position feedback sup-
port. The AM437x integrates one instance of
the Industrial Communication Subsystem
plus one instance of a reduced Industrial
Communication subsystem - providing quad-
core PRUs with optimized memory set-up,
and enabling one real-time Ethernet protocol
and one position feedback protocol for exam-
ple. The AM57x integrates two full instances
of the Industrial Communication Subsystems
– quad-core PRUs - which enable multiple pro-
tocol options simultaneously including two
real-time Ethernet protocols for example.
Starting at field level the AM335x support
scalable ranges of I/O modules with slave
communication, where the application is
implemented in the ARM core running TI
RTOS and fieldbus or industrial Ethernet run-
ning in the PRU-ICSS. Also at field level we
find industrial drives; these are best imple-
mented in the AM437x combining slave com-
munication on one PRU-ICSS, motor position
feedback in the second PRU-ICSS and run-
ning the main application and the motor con-
trol functions (such as field oriented control)
in the floating point optimized Cortex A9.
The AM437x enables innovative single chip
drives architectures.
Moving up to the control level we see the
complete Sitara family supporting Program-
mable Logic Controllers where the selection
of the processor depends on a number of
different factors such as the type and num-
ber of I/Os. Also key for the selection is the
type of master/slave communication needed
- important is the software compatibility
offered across the different Sitara families,
supported with the latest TI integrated Pro-
cessor Software Development Kit.
At operator level, the AM57x highly inte-
grated platform running TI RTOS or a high
level operating system such as Linux offers
the best computing performance combined
with industrial communication for both
slave and master and high performance
peripherals such as PCIe for extra connectiv-
ity. For video- and graphics-intensive appli-
cations, such as human machine interfaces,
the AM57x includes video and graphics
acceleration cores that enable 1080p60 High
Definition video; 2D and 3-D graphics; up to
three LCD outputs and one HDMI; and six
or more camera inputs.
The Sitara processors are extensively sup-
ported by both hardware and software
development kits. The TI RTOS Industrial
Software Development Kit (SDK) for the
Sitara processors gives developers the abil-
ity to easily add key functions to automation
applications such as: real-time industrial
communications, support for motor feed-
back protocols such as EnDAT and a Del-
ta-Sigma Decimation filter; and more. The
SDK also includes a real-time, low-footprint
SYS/BIOS kernel with boot loader and sam-
ple applications to get started quickly. These
complement all the hardware features sup-
ported by the various scalable hardware
development kits.
n
Figure 2. Features of the various Sitara processor versions
