Cortex-A53 MCUs cover industrial applications

These microcontrollers are optimised for industrial applications, including Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and motor drives, which require a unique combination of communications and real-time processing with applications processing.

The AM64x combines two instances of the Sitara device’s gigabit TSN-enabled PRU-ICSSG with up to two Arm Cortex-A53 cores, up to four Cortex-R5F MCUs, and a Cortex-M4F MCU.

The MCU provides flexible industrial communications capability, including full protocol stacks for EtherCAT SubDevice, EtherNet/IP adapter, PROFINET device, and IO-Link Master.

PRU-ICSSG further provides the ability for gigabit and TSN-based protocols. In addition, the PRU-ICSSG also enables additional interfaces in the SoC, including absolute encoder interfaces and sigma-delta decimation filters.

Functional safety features can be enabled through the integrated Cortex-M4F and dedicated peripherals, which can all be isolated from the rest of the SoC. The AM64x also supports a secure boot.

Applications for the AM64x Sitara microcontrollers include programmable logic controllers (PLC), motor drives, remote I/O, industrial robots and condition-monitoring gateways.