ARM+DSP heterogeneous SoC upgraded again, adding powerful new core for industrial applications
At a recent media meeting, Bao Zhen, TI's embedded processor business development manager, introduced the highlights and features of TI's latest Sitira AM57x processor series to a number of professional electronic industry media, which received widespread attention from the media and the industry. Today we share with you the on-site observations of Zhang Yinghui, a reporter from Electronic Engineering Times (original article "TI applies the latest automotive heterogeneous SoC technology to industrial Sitara processors")
TI's Sitara processors AM335x and AM437x have been very popular in the field of industrial processors since their release. Recently, TI released the Sitara AM57x series, which
upgraded the processor core to ARM Cortex-A15 and integrated TI's powerful DSP technology, Cortex-M4 core, multimedia processing capabilities and PRU (real-time control unit), becoming the most powerful SoC in the series, which can be widely used in industrial applications such as industrial robots, machine vision, medical imaging and motion control.
Figure: Bao Zhen, business development manager of TI's embedded processor business, said that TI is in the leading position in the industry in heterogeneous architecture processors.
At a media meeting, Bao Zhen, business development manager of TI's embedded processor business, introduced the newly released Sitira AM57x processor series to a number of professional electronics industry media, including the Electronic Engineering Times.
"The Sitira AM57x processor has up to two ARM Cortex-A15 cores and two C66x DSPs built in, and has very powerful computing and digital information processing capabilities. It also has a 1080P 60 HD video codec core, SGX544 3-D graphics and GC320 2-D graphics, up to three LCD outputs and one HDMI output. It can receive six or more camera inputs at the same time," Bao Zhen said, "so it can be used for high-speed image processing such as machine vision and medical imaging."
At the same time, this processor is also equipped with 2 ARM Cortex-M4 cores up to 213MHz, which can be used as coprocessors. It also has 4 PRU cores up to 200MHz, which can achieve better I/O latency control and better real-time processing. In terms of interfaces, it has 2 PCIe, 2Gb Ethernet, USB3 and USB2, SATA, 2 DCAN, QSPI, 10 UART, 8 McASP and 5 I2C interfaces.
"In the domestic industrial control field, many machines still use UART interfaces. Our rich and diverse configurations of interfaces can meet the application requirements of different scenarios," Bao Zhen said. "At the same time, as a long-term chip supplier in the field of industrial applications like TI, we can guarantee a supply cycle of more than ten years to our customers."
Considering that this is an industrial-grade application, the chip is equipped with an encryption processor that supports encryption technologies such as AES, SHA-256/-512, 3DES, and TRNG.
In addition to the fields that require image processing capabilities such as machine vision and medical imaging, another possible application of such a powerful processor is industrial robots. One reason is that industrial robots (robotic arms) require very powerful control and information processing capabilities, and another reason is that the operation of the robotic arm requires a computer with an Intel CPU, and the cost of such industrial computers is also very high.
Bao Zhen explained, "Customers have told us that if the computer can be operated without Intel CPU, and instead have a motherboard with an embedded processor and run on WinCE, Linux or even Android interface, it can save a lot of costs."
Therefore, in terms of development and support ecology, TI has cooperated with third-party partners such as Adeneo and Beagleboard.org. Customers can now use TI's own Linux series, WinCE or Android systems for development. "Soon we will also work with domestic partners to make development boards to help domestic customers reduce development costs and get better and more comprehensive technical support," Bao Zhen said.
When asked by the reporter of Electronic Engineering Times whether industrial customers would have confidence in this industrial-grade processor with such cutting-edge technology, Bao Zhen responded, "The heterogeneous technology combining ARM's powerful core with DSP is TI's strength in processor technology. The 'predecessor' of this chip is TI's Jacintinto SoC processor used in automotive ADAS."
From the information, we can see that the Jacinto 6 processor released by TI last year is equipped with dual ARM Cortex-A15 cores, two ARM Cortex-M4 cores, two C66x floating-point DSPs and multiple 3D/2D graphics processors GPU (Imagination).
Bao Zhen explained, " The performance and reliability of the heterogeneous processor Jacinto 6 with a similar configuration has been proven in the automotive field. We are confident that the Sitara AM57x processor series can be applied to industrial applications."
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