Hello E2E Community,
As a few members may have noticed already, we have released a new version of TivaWare as of Friday April 24, 2020.
With Version 2.2.0.295, we sought to address three main points:
- Addressing a number of Bug Fixes reported through the past few years.
- Improving the offering of example projects for our LaunchPad's which are the primary evaluation kits offered for TM4C devices.
- Cleaning up the collateral offering to better reflect what EVM's we offer and the latest collateral available.
This release is one of many steps we will be taking throughout 2020 to help provide assurances regarding our long-term commitment to the TM4C portfolio.
The unique blend of integrated communication peripherals offered by TM4C including USB, CAN, and Ethernet (for TM4C129x) coupled with the Cortex-M4F ARM core and a strong peripheral set allow TM4C MCU's to be leveraged in a wide variety of applications, especially those within the Industrial space.
The TM4C family of devices are a stable MCU platform and all users should feel at ease developing with TM4C MCU's for their applications, including those which require long-term device availability.
Below is a summary of key changes regarding the additions and removals of content within this TivaWare release. The full release notes can be viewed here: http://www.ti.com/lit/pdf/spmu299
What's New
1) New Example Projects for EK-TM4C123GXL & EK-TM4C1294XL LaunchPad Evaluation Kit's
Feedback received in recent years is that there were gaps in the example project offerings for TivaWare for fundamental applications. As part of the planning for this release, we looked into what were recurring applications that were not well covered by TivaWare example projects that were able to be included.
These included better ADC and Hibernation module examples, improving the quality of I2C, SPI, and PWM examples, and improving our boot loader offering.
Further collateral improvements are being worked on to supplement TivaWare, aimed for release starting in the second half of 2020.
2) Updates to the Boot Loader User's Guide
Correct usage of both the ROM and flash boot loader capabilities for TM4C devices has been one of the most common topics, and a lot of questions stemmed from unclear documentation. With this update, we have aimed to improve the quality of information in the Boot Loader User's Guide to be able to better guide all users with how to correctly use both ROM and flash boot loaders. With this along with the new boot loader projects, our goal is to ease the development of boot loader applications and we will continue to look for ways to improve our delivery of information regarding boot loaders.
3) Proper coverage of MAP_ functions for TivaWare API's
The recommended practice of using MAP_ prefixed API's to allow TivaWare to use ROM_ API's wherever possible had an issue in that not all TivaWare API's had been covered by the MAP_ prefix. With this update, all TivaWare API's should now correctly have a valid MAP_ prefix version that can be referenced.
As a side note, to make it clear that the recommended practice is to use MAP_ API's, all TivaWare examples which had used ROM_ prefixed API's now use MAP_ prefixed API's instead.
Collateral Cleanup
As mentioned, we have removed many pieces of collateral to help provide a clearer picture of what is supported within TivaWare. We want to highlight a few of these to further explain the reasoning for the removal.
1) Removing the DK-TM4C123G examples folder
The DK-TM4C123G board has been obsoleted and therefore to remain consistent with other collateral removal for obsolete hardware, the examples folder for it was removed as well.
As part of our assessment, we also recognized that the EK-TM4C123GXL example project offering was not as robust, and we had often referenced users to port DK-TM4C123G example projects or provided such ports ourselves. To account for this gap, we ported as many projects from the DK-TM4C123G to the EK-TM4C123GXL as possible to release with TivaWare, and included additional new projects. This includes finally offering full boot loader support to the LaunchPad which did not exist before.
Projects that centered on the graphic display offered with the DK-TM4C123G were not ported, and graphics evaluation for TM4C is recommended with either the DK-TM4C129X or using the Kentec QVGA Display BoosterPack, BOOSTXL-K350QVG-S1.
The USB Host examples which were not included for the EK-TM4C123GXL will be released along with an application report later this year as the LaunchPad requires hardware modifications to supply via the 'Device' USB Port when in Host Mode. The application report will walk through the hardware modifications and provide a set of example projects compatible with TivaWare version 2.2.0.295.
2) Removing IQMathLib
IQMathLib had been a carryover from StellarisWare which supported the LM3S family of devices which did not contain a hardware Floating-Point Unit (FPU). IQMathLib provided a method to do floating point mathematical operations on a fixed-point MCU. However, as all TM4C MCU's have a hardware FPU included, there is no purpose to using IQMathLib. Therefore it has been removed to avoid user confusion (as evidenced by multiple E2E posts about it's use for TM4C MCUs).
3) Removing the CC3100-SDK & nfclib
In both of these cases, the offering in TivaWare was not the latest, and to ensure that the latest software is always available we are not including the current packages within TivaWare moving forward.
For CC3100, the CC3100 SDK should be downloaded from the Tool page on TI.com: http://www.ti.com/tool/CC3100SDK
For nfclib, the latest NFC stacks can be downloaded based on guidance from the TRF7970A FAQ guide which compares the two firmware offerings based on application requirements. Additionally, there is a referenced TI design with NFC support also mentioned in the FAQ documentation: http://www.ti.com/lit/pdf/sloa246
Generally support with implementation for these wireless technologies, along with others such as Bluetooth, will primarily be handled by the support teams who have more expertise with those wireless technologies.
To close, we are very excited about this TivaWare release and welcome feedback on what we can consider for further collateral improvements moving forward. This post will remain open for at least 30 days to facilitate any feedback & discussions about this release.
I also want to take a moment to give special thanks to our active E2E community members who have provided us multiple points of feedback throughout the years on how to improve our TivaWare offering. We are always appreciative of the extra time and energy you spend to help your fellow users and sometimes even educate us 'vendor staff'!
Our goal will remain focused on long-term support for TM4C MCU's, so keep an eye on the TM4C product folders on TI.com in the second half of the year for new application reports!
