C2000 and EtherCAT

N.AB

Hello,

As Concerto CHips Includes Both C2000 and Cortex-M3, is-it possible to communication through EtherCAT Protocol as M3 have Native Ethernet Hardware?

over 12 years ago

0 Igor Gorbachev over 12 years ago

Guru 20525 points

Hello!

С2000 series doesn't support EtherCAT. But F28M35 supports Ethernet 1588. As for the other TI-series, from the point of view of EtherCAT support TI has only AM335x.

Regards,

Igor

0 N.AB over 12 years ago in reply to Igor Gorbachev

Intellectual 390 points

From Wikipedia:

For synchronization a distributed clock mechanism is applied, which leads to very low jitters of significantly less than 1 µs even if the communication cycle jitters, which is equivalent to the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol standard. Therefore EtherCAT does not require a special hardware in the master device and can be implemented in software on any standard Ethernet MAC, even without dedicated communication coprocessor.

Therefor, Could the Cortex-M3 part of Concerto Architecture use its Standard Ethernet Hardware to implement EtherCAT Communication.

0 Igor Gorbachev over 12 years ago in reply to N.AB

Guru 20525 points

http://e2e.ti.com/blogs_/b/toolsinsider/archive/2013/03/19/ti-awarded-the-ethercat-conformance-test-certificate-from-ethercat-technology-group.aspx

Igor

0 N.AB over 12 years ago in reply to Igor Gorbachev

Intellectual 390 points

I know about Sitara, but it is not the ideal architecture for my application wich is Motor Control. C2000 are more suitable for that. I also need to communicate between motor controllers through EtherCAT. One Solution is to use a dedication external Chip that communicate with C2000 by XINTF or SPI. And I wonder if Concerto is an alternative solution

0 Igor Gorbachev over 12 years ago in reply to N.AB

Guru 20525 points

Well, maybe TI employees will propose you something another...

Regards,

Igor

0 David M. Alter over 12 years ago in reply to Igor Gorbachev

TI__Guru 61235 points

Neil,

EtherCAT is a daisy-chained topology. A message comes in the "IN" port, and the EtherCAT port quickly decides (in hardware) if the message is for that device. If it is, the message is received. If it is not, the message is immediately sent out the "OUT" port to the next device in the chain. So, a software based solution would require two distinct 10/100 ethernet MACs (one for IN, the other for OUT). Also, I believe there are message timing requirements that must be met (i.e., message IN to message OUT minimum timings), so a conventional software based solution may be difficult to meet the requirements with unless you had a dedicated on-chip co-processor to handle the EtherCAT software with. So far as C2000 goes, there is at most a single ethernet MAC, so you could not even attempt a software solution.

Best Regards,

David

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C2000 and EtherCAT