A better HW match for Ada power?

A better HW match for Ada power?

[darek]

Hi All,
 Some time ago Infineon has introduced a new family of microcontrollers for automotive applications [1]. One of the chips is available on a development board called "ShieldBuddy" which should generate some attention among hobbyists [2][2a].

Compare to the STM32Fxx -based devices this piece of HW is rather expensive (EUR 120 with taxes)  but you have a silicon solution design for safety applications [3] (other dev kits with the TriCore CPUs  are more expensive). 

It comes with the whole toolchain (gcc 4.6.4, c, c++) and it is supported by the ArduinoIDE with a specialised multi-core extension (more [4]). 

Probably without talking to Infineon there is a slim chance to get Ada support in their gcc. 

What do you think about it? 
Cheers,
  Darek 

P.S. I got this board some time ago but did not have enough time to dive into it ... 

P.P.S. The is also a version of the chip (TC264DA) with the hardware FFT-engine. 

[1] http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/microcontroller/32-bit-tricore-tm-microcontroller/aurix-tm-family/channel.html?channel=db3a30433727a44301372b2eefbb48d9

[2]  http://www.hitex.co.uk/index.php?id=3650
[2a] https://www.ehitex.de/starter-kits/fuer-aurix/2535/hitex-shieldbuddytc275-aurix-powered-arduino-uno-r3-hardware-compatible-platform?c=33

[3] TC275A -http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/microcontroller/32-bit-tricore-tm-microcontroller/aurix-tm-family/aurix-tm-family-%2013-tc27xt/channel.html?channel=db3a30433cfb5caa013d01df64d92edc
[4] http://aurduino.boards.net

Re: A better HW match for Ada power?

[Paul Rubin]

darek <darek.maksimiuk@gmail.com> writes:
>  Some time ago Infineon has introduced a new family of
>  microcontrollers for automotive applications [1]. One of the chips is
>  available on a development board called "ShieldBuddy" which should
>  generate some attention among hobbyists [2][2a].

A whole nother processor architecture?  Like, who needs that?

These might also be of interest:

http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/tools-software/launchpads/launchpads.page#safety

Re: A better HW match for Ada power?

[Luke A. Guest]

darek <darek.maksimiuk@gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> It comes with the whole toolchain (gcc 4.6.4, c, c++) and it is supported
> by the ArduinoIDE with a specialised multi-core extension (more [4]). 

4.6.4 is ancient and especially buggy for Ada 2012, there's noexcuse for
not using 4.9+ these days.

Luke

Re: A better HW match for Ada power?

[darek]

Hi All, 
> A whole nother processor architecture?  Like, who needs that?
Apparently there is a market for it - a substantial part of the car industry. The Cortex-R was introduced in 2011 where the TriCore arch is on the market since 1999 (http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/microcontrollers/32-bit/channel.html?channel=ff80808112ab681d0112ab6b64b50805). 

In the past, the automotive industry used extensively PowerPC based devices. Since the Freescale went to NXP, and NXP has been acquired by Qualcomm I am not sure how these devices survive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPC5xx). 

The TriCore has a time management unit which is probably more complex than the CPU itself (https://www.pls-mc.com/generic-timer-module-gtm-support/features-a-725.html).

Cheers,
 Darek 

> 
> These might also be of interest:
> 
> http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/tools-software/launchpads/launchpads.page#safety