Ti Hercules MCU series vs general purpose MCU

Federico Massimi

Hi, I'm looking for a microcontroller for safety critical applications. Searching the internet I found the Ti Hercules MCU series.

By informing me I realized that the difference with a general purpose MCU is in the fact that they are based on Cortex-R instead of cortex-M - looking on the internet I saw that the Cortex-R is the core suitable for real-time applications, but I wanted ask: is this the only difference?

Let me explain better, if I have a safety critical application in which I don't need real-time, do I still have the advantages of using the Hercules series or does it become equivalent to a general purpose MCU? Besides real-time, does the Hercules series have other features make it an MCU suitable for safety critical application?

over 3 years ago

+1 Fleenor over 3 years ago

TI__Mastermind 25593 points

Hello Federico,

There are additional precautions and steps taken during the design of functional-safety critical MCU's. These requirements are defined in the ISO 26262 (Automotive) and IEC 61508 (Industrial) international standards for functional safety of electrical and/or electronic systems. Both Cortex R and Cortex M based MCU's can be functional-safety compliant.

I have included a TI Training video link below that discusses the advantages of using Hercules Safety MCU's

Safety Critical Design and Programming with Hercules (TM) Safety MCUs | TI.com Video

Depending on your system/application use case, I would also encourage you to look into the latest Sitara MCU's that are also targeted for functional safety compliance.

https://www.ti.com/product/AM2634

https://www.ti.com/product/AM2732

https://www.ti.com/product/AM2434

Best Regards,

Zackary Fleenor

0 Federico Massimi over 3 years ago in reply to Fleenor

Prodigy 20 points

OK, they're very interesting.
I just have a couple of questions:
1) The MCUs you pointed out to me are all great high performance multi-core MCUs, is there even something regarding low performance MCUs in the Sitara functional safety line (something equivalent to a single CortexM0 or M4 as example)?

2) I would be interested in training some of my engineers to work on these products, do you know if there are courses (even for a fee) with which I can enable my engineers to work on these products in a short time?

0 Bruce McKenney over 3 years ago

Guru 102065 points

I think the significant features in the Hercules are (a) dual-core lock-step architecture (b) extensive internal BIST functions (c) memory ECC. These are all relevant to Functional Safety -- they aren't Required, but they cover a number of "check boxes" (without your having to construct them).

0 Fleenor over 3 years ago in reply to Federico Massimi

TI__Mastermind 25593 points

Hey Frederico,

1) The Sitara MCU portfolio currently only covers Cortex-R based MCU's but future devices will stretch into Cortex-M based devices. You may post a thread in the MSP forum to see if there are any functional-safety options in that portfolio. ((+) MSP low-power microcontroller forum - MSP low-power microcontrollers - TI E2E support forums)

2) I would highly encourage this course of action. One of the goals of the Sitara MCU portfolio is scalability between platforms. All these devices use the same core MCU+SDK development platform, thus simplifying the requirements for porting code between different Sitara MCU's. When engineers begin training now with the current device options, they will be in a good position for utilizing future devices as well. We have created the MCU+ Academy to enable quick customer development ramps (and it is free to all). Including links below.

Sitara MCU+ Academy for AM263x (ti.com)

Sitara MCU+ Academy for AM273x (ti.com)

Sitara MCU+ Academy for AM243x (ti.com)

Best Regards,

Zackary Fleenor