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Choice of Microcontroller for a medical device

michel canagasabey
Prodigy 240 points

I am designing a medical device. It is a heating system. TI offers the Hercules RM series for medical devices as far as I am aware. But they are new to the scene and looks expensive and I fear it could be an overkill for the Job.

Would I be able to use a different version of Hercules such as TMS570 which are automotive grade microcontrollers.? .TI has not specified these devices for medical applications. Is there a reason to/not to choose them?

Would it help to get the UL and medical device certifications if I am using the RM series? 

Also does anybody have any experience in using the RM series? 

  • 0
    TI__Guru 59540 points
    Hello Michel,

    There really is no specific reason why a TMS570 could not be used in a medical application provided it supports the application requirements. Both the RM and TMS570 products are designed for functional safety and both will or are certified to IEC61508 which will aid in acceptance by the FDA and/or UL certifications. The primary difference between the devices are the peripheral sets, the performance levels, and temperature grade. Also, the RM devices are natively little endien devices where the TMS570 devices are big endien. Also, the TMS570 devices are additional certified/planned to be certified to ISO26262 which is the automotive standard for functional safety.

    In regard to product selection, you can find a product selection guide here: http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/microcontrollers_16-bit_32-bit/c2000_performance/safety/products.page

    In general, there is a wide selection of devices in the Hercules product line. This ranges from a low end 80MHz device w/128KBytes of Flash up to the high end 330MHZ device with 4MBytes of flash. All have lockstep cores and support a high level of diagnostic capability for support of critical functional safety application.

    I have also copied one of our business development managers so that they can help provide further details should you have any additional questions.
  • 0 in reply to Chuck Davenport
    TI__Mastermind 23000 points
    Hello Michael,
    To be clear on one point, the Hercules MCUs, whether RM or TMS570 series, are not developed compliant to the IEC 60601 series of standards for medical devices. These products target the IEC 61508 and ISO 26262 standards, which introduce functional safety requirements at the component level for compliant hardware. Because IEC 61508 and IEC 60601 have many core concepts in common, use of an IEC 61508 compliant component may help reduce development effort for IEC 60601 system developers.

    Regards,
    Karl