Best Evaluation Kit with PoC

Eitan Michaelson1

Hello,

I'm attempting to develop a POC for a unit that could be an Rx only SPI slave, that could handle a master sending data at 20mHz.

Those data frames in turn should be sent to a network server over TCP., integrated SD card would be great though not mandatory.

Obviously I need an evaluation kit that has a FAST cortex, integrated NIC and plenty of RAM for buffering.

Could you please point me to a board that could perform those tasks?

Thank you,

Eitan

over 4 years ago

0 LeonardEllis over 4 years ago

TI__Guru 71516 points

Hello Eitan,

Please provide additional information as the the type of interface and design specifications. There are many implementations of PoC, so please provide more detail as to what this is to be used in conjunction with.

There are Reference Designs that might be useful for your purpose ( http://www.ti.com/sitesearch/docs/universalsearch.tsp?searchTerm=poc#q=poc&t=everything&linkId=1 ). For example:

TIDA-01323

ACTIVE

ADAS multi-sensor hub reference design with quad 4-Gbps FPD-Link III, dual CSI-2 output, and PoC

TIDA-01130

ACTIVE

Automotive 2-MP camera module reference design with MIPI CSI-2 video interface, FPD-Link III and POC

As well, there are E2E posts pertaining to PoC:

https://e2e.ti.com/support/interface/f/138/t/862968 and https://e2e.ti.com/support/interface/f/138/t/836526 .

Looking forward to your prompt reply.

~Leonard

0 Eitan Michaelson1 over 4 years ago in reply to LeonardEllis

Prodigy 170 points

Thanks,

POC : proof of concept :)

I'm looking for an evaluation kit that has NIC and can reliably handle SPI in slave mode at 20Mhz (most boards I've tested can't handle this).

Eitan.

0 LeonardEllis over 4 years ago in reply to Eitan Michaelson1

TI__Guru 71516 points

Hi Eitan,

Thanks for the clarification, and I still need more information. The NIC requirement (Network Interface Card, correct?) what protocols/buses do you have to interface with? PCIe? Ethernet? And I'm assuming there would be a processor on this card, so please give some basic requirement there as well. A block diagram of the overall system would be very helpful.

Thanks,

~Leonard

0 Eitan Michaelson1 over 4 years ago in reply to LeonardEllis

Prodigy 170 points

OK,

To achieve this ‘SPI sniffer’ I was thinking of a Cortex M? unit that running a thin RTOS (FreeRTOS or TI RTOS ).

The SPI slave is configured to use DMA and a dedicated task will manage the data arriving from the master through the DNA interrupts , probably using double buffer logic.

A second task will initialize the network interface (Lwip ?) , don’t know the interface type, it should support 100Mbit . It shall pend on a q and once the SPI buffer is received, it will be relayed to the network .

Now,

I’ve tested initially few SBC’s however, Linux and SPI, specially a slave is a bad combination . Other evaluation kits by ST worker with many lost frames due to problems. with the hardware implementation of its SPI machine .

0 Rex Chang over 4 years ago in reply to Eitan Michaelson1

TI__Guru 50170 points

Hi, Eitan,

If you don't limit the core being a Cortex-M, then TI C66x has SPI up to 66 MHz, but doesn’t have SD card. It's product page is https://www.ti.com/product/TMS320C6678 and you can get more details on its SPI User's Guide under Technical documentation tab.

If you want to stick with Cortex core, TI Hercules is Cortex-R and support SPI. You can refer to its product page at http://www.ti.com/microcontrollers/hercules-safety-mcus/overview.html

There is another Sitara family SoCs, AM335x, AM437x which you may want to look into. Their product pages are:

https://www.ti.com/product/AM3352

https://www.ti.com/product/AM4378

There are SPI examples in TI RTOS Processor SDK for C66x and Sitara devices. You can download corresponding SDK from their product pages and follow instruction in section 1.4.5.1.4 PDK Example and Test Project Creation. For Hercules devices, please follow instruction in its product page.

Rex