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AM4379: PRU EtherCAT firmware

Rohit Rampa
Intellectual 460 points

Part Number: AM4379
Other Parts Discussed in Thread: SYSBIOS, , AM3357, TLK105L

Hi

I have been trying to port EtherCAT firmware to another RTOS;

Currently Im clueless at two places in the porting activity.

1) Designing the communication between ARM and PRU;

- What should be the ideal design for the inter processor communication?

- SysBIOS' communication mechanism:

- Im not able to find much documentation about the design details of inter processor communication in SysBIOS environment. If there is a documentation of the SysBIOS method, it could be of      great help.

-  Linux's RPMsg & RemoteProc:

- Since RPMsg and RemoteProc are basically Linux only frameworks, porting this framework to the another RTOS yeilds the same and deterministic functionality which is guaranteed by etherCAT protocol?

2) Can I re-use the PRU firmware binaries in the SysBIOS SDK 2.1.0.1(<Install Dir>:\ti\sysbios_ind_sdk_2.1.0.1\sdk\protocols\ethercat_slave\firmware\v2.0)  for use in my RTOS?

Answers to the above questions will be of great help.

Thanks in advance.

Rohit

  • 0
    TI__Guru**** 393215 points
    Hi,

    The EtherCAT team have been notified. They will respond here.
  • 0
    TI__Mastermind 44306 points
    Rohit,
    two quick comments to get you on track here:
    1) actually EtherCAT slave requires full ICSS resources (two PRUs...). So don't consider them cores as in a multi-core app. However EtherCAT ESC as designed by TI has a register interface similar to ET1100 and the driver on ARM side is interfacing to this. This is more like any other peripheral on the device that has registers and interrupts/events. So no inter processor communication or rpmesg needed here. You already got the interface with the IA-SDK. Now port this to your OS... can't help with that...
    2) yes, the PRU firmware files are OS agnostic. It only depends on device HW. RTOS interface should be very similar to what we supply for Sys/Bios.

    Regards,
  • 0 in reply to Frank Walzer
    TI__Mastermind 44306 points
    Rohit,

    sorry, I forgot to mention that you should always use latest IA-SDK for firmware and drivers. See the release notes for updates and fixes. We are at 2.1.3 right now. According to the EtherCAT firmware API guide v1.0 folder is for AM3357/9 and v2.0 folder for AM4379.

    regards.
  • 0 in reply to Frank Walzer
    Intellectual 460 points
    Thanks for the information Frank.
    - Another couple of questions, If Im able to load the firmware on to the PRUs, what are the basic tests that I can perform to ensure the firmware loading and execution is successful?
    - The TLK105L ports also requires drivers for the slaves to communicate in a network or the communication is handled by the ESC afirmware itself?
    Do I really have to implement EMAC for the slaves to communicate in a network?

    Thanks & Regards
  • 0 in reply to Rohit Rampa
    TI__Mastermind 44306 points
    Rohit,
    ESC firmware requires full driver to work. Basic tests are meaningless as the firmware will run anyway if the code has loaded (compare with mem test if required). For ESC testing I recommend to look at EtherCAT Conformance test tool. You will need that anyway.
    Don't understand the other question(s). Obviously our solution includes phy management (especially for TI TLKs...). Also EtherCAT does not need or use EMAC. Did you read the documentation and look at the SDK files yet? EtherCAT basics can be seen on ETG and Beckhoff web sites.

    regards,