Hello Aiden,

AM26x/AM27x devices would be max out at 100MHz I/O speeds, I am not entirely sure how the I/O speed would translate to your sample rates but if that wouldn't be sufficient you'd likely be getting outside of microcontroller territory and more into microprocessor territory.

Best Regards,

Ralph Jacobi

Digging a bit deeper here it may be possible to get towards 150-200MHz on the I/O lines using the SC1 bit to enable high slew rate, but we've not interfaced with an ADC via serial CMOS with those devices before. Overhead from drivers may still pose a problem for an application use case at the speeds you are seeking?

Best Regards,

Ralph Jacobi

Thanks Ralph! Perhaps if I can set a parallel communication such as SDR (or DDR) between the MCU and ADC, it should work. E.g., at 100 MHz I/O, if I can connect 10 (or 14) pins of the ADC (corresponding to 10 bits or 14 bits) to the ADC, it should work. AM335x has dedicated DDR SDRAM data I/O for memory communication. I though I could use these pins (called ddr_d0 to ddr_d15) to communicate with the ADC. Are these pins only suitable for memory, or I can use them for any kind of ddr communication including ADC? 

Hi Aiden,

I can't speak to AM335x at all. For AM26x such as AM2634, the only interface option would be to directly control I/O via GPIO registers to implement whatever protocol you need. There's no SDR or DDR interfaces on those MCUs.

If you need something with that level of support I can defer this to another team but it would likely exit the 'microcontroller' territory at that point.

Best Regards,

Ralph Jacobi

Dear Ralph, Please defer me to the other team. So far, I have learned it is not trivial to connect this high speed ADC to an MCU. At least I can understand, whether it would work with a processor (such as AM335x). The EVM for the ADC uses an FPGA (TSW1400EM) and uses LVDS. Thanks!

Hi Aiden,

Not sure on the number of channels.

AM64x could be considered. 

Did you have a look at the Am64x.

Regards,

Sreenivasa

Hello Kallikuppa, Thanks for the suggestion! I had not looked into AM64x. I checked it out. But it was not immediately clear to me how I can setup AM64x to read from the ADC at >10Msps. I found a youtube video (from TI) that explains how to connect AM64x or AM243x to ADCs (specifically ADS8588). However, the sampling rate of ADS8588 is far lower than 10Msps. How are you exactly suggesting to connect AM64x to ADC3542? 

If the sampling is not continuous, one can perhaps use a FIFO buffer between the MCU/MPU and ADC. But what if the sampling is continuously at 10 Mbps!?

Maybe you can tell me which parallel ports on AM64x can be used to interface ADC? Any GPIO  would do it?

Hi Aiden,

Thank you.

We have the PRU-ICSSG on the AM64x that could be used.

Regards,

Sreenivasa

Hi Aiden,

Out PRU experts answer a similar query that is relevant.

https://e2e.ti.com/support/processors-group/processors/f/processors-forum/1347011/am6411-implement-proprietary-32bit-parallel-bus-with-pru/5136552#5136552

Regards,

Sreenivasa