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RT/Ethernet MCU reference-board designs

Innovasic Semiconductor designed its 32-bit fido microcontroller to provide secure and robust communications and control functions in embedded systems. fido stands for “flexible input, deterministic output” —referring firstly to its four universal I/O controllers, each of which is a dedicated RISC engine that you can program to support any of a variety of I/O protocols, including standard 10/100 Ethernet. “Deterministic output” describes the real-time performance that results from the “RTOS Kernel in a Chip” architecture. The fido chip includes an RTOS kernel built into the silicon that manages task switching and scheduling to provide deterministic performance for real-time communications and fail-safe control applications.

Innovasic has now announced two reference designs for its fi do 1100 realtime MCU family. Printedcircuit- board modules based on these designs will be available for purchase from Innovasic and third-party manufacturers. The company intends them as both evaluation and development vehicles, but also as products for direct integration into low-volume production of customers’ products.

Two modules are available, one for embedded real-time Ethernet and one for non- Ethernet embedded control applications. The Real-Time Ethernet Module (RTEM) reference design includes schematics, circuit-board layout, bill of materials and software to enable almost any embedded device to connect to a 10/100 Ethernet network. It provides a highly deterministic response, allowing reception and transmission of highpriority packets with extremely low jitter. The fi do architecture also allows, Innovasic claims, fail-safe operation with immunity from system crashes and denial-of-service attacks, adding that recent third party tests have shown that the fi do1100 outperforms conventional solutions in terms of jitter under high-traffi c-load conditions.

The module provides failsafe, real-time control capability with support of a wide range of I/O interfaces. It has programmable I/O engines that, with an external components, will support many serial and parallel interfaces, including UARTs, GPIO, LCD, SPI, I2C and CAN.

For development and debug, you can interface both of these modules to a separate breakout board that provides power-conditioning interface drivers and a prototyping area. The complete fi do1100 toolchain, with available RTOS and TCP/IP stacks, supports the modules. European distribution is via Future Electronics (www. futurelectronics.com), and, in Germany, via ED-V (www. ed-v.de). In the UK, Marketron (www.marketron.co.uk) is a representative. A spokesman at Marketron noted that the fi do microcontroller line is a relatively recent addition to the company’s product line in Europe. Previously, Marketron marketed Innovasic’s obsolescence- management products: “The microcontroller is an excellent fi t for applications that need the robust Ethernet communications. … It’s a big step to ask a design team to adopt a new MCU, but if your application has this real-time/communications profi le, it offers a good solution.”

Innovasic, www.innovasic.com