MCUs' diagnostic features establish a 'safe island'

Building on the SafeTI hardware development process certification and Hercules MCU platform architecture concept assessment, the TMS570LS12x/11x MCUs have been certified to meet relevant requirements of ISO 26262:2011 and IEC 61508:2010 to ASIL D and SIL 3 levels of safety integrity. Providing frequencies of up to 180MHz, the devices help developers create functional-safety-related applications for the automotive and transportation industry. To meet a variety of application requirements, the automotive-qualified TMS570LS12x/11x MCUs are offered with a wide range of performance, memory and peripheral options.

The Hercules RM46x MCUs, which support industrial and general-purpose functional-safety-related applications and provide frequencies of up to 220MHz, are certified to meet the relevant requirements of IEC 61508:2010 to SIL 3 levels of safety integrity. Alongside targeted motor control capabilities, the devices are offered with various performance and memory configurations.

To help establish a ‘safe island’ to perform safety-critical processing without significant software overhead, the Hercules MCUs integrate a high level of diagnostic features that detect and respond to runtime faults. Integrated diagnostics include dual ARM Cortex-R4 floating-point CPUs in lockstep, CPU and SRAM built-in-self-test, and transaction-based error correction codes on the flash and RAM interfaces and memory, which can detect dual-bit faults and correct single-bit faults.

To provide low-cost, entry-level options for developers who want to assess the certified MCUs’ functional safety features and performance, TI has also introduced two LaunchPad Dev Kits. To provide out-of-the-box evaluation, the kits contain a development board, USB cable and a quick start guide. Enabling the exploration of the advanced functional safety features integrated in Hercules MCUs, the Dev Kits feature on-board emulation and Hercules MCU functional safety demos.

The Hercules TMS570LS12x/11x and RM46x MCUs are available now, priced from less than $10 and sold in 10,000-unit quantities. The Hercules TMS570LS12x/11x LaunchPad (LAUNCHXL-TMS57012) and the RM46x LaunchPad (LAUNCHXL-RM46) are also available now for the assessment of the certified MCUs, and priced at $19.99.