dspZONE Products for the week of October 15, 2007
Texas Instruments Says…
Floating-Point F28335 eZdsp Starter Kit Speeds Development For Greener Industrial Applications
Digital signal controllers and analog solutions provide innovation for higher energy efficient industrial applications
Texas Instruments Incorporated has made it easy for engineers to evaluate and develop software on its recently introduced floating-point S320F2833x digital signal controllers (DSCs) by introducing the F28335 eZdsp starter kit. Now sampling, the F28335 controller is the industry's first floating-point DSC, supplying developers of industrial systems with the inherent floating-point advantages of performance and simplified software development over fixed-point devices. In addition to these digital processing solutions, TI offers engineers a broad portfolio of complementary analog solutions for development of greener variable speed motor control, digital power supplies and intelligent sensing applications.
Stand-Alone Module Provides Wide Range of Features to Simplify Evaluation and Development
The F28335 eZdsp starter kit, produced by Spectrum Digital, Inc., a member of the TI DSP Third Party Network, is a stand-alone tool that provides developers a platform to easily develop software for the F2833x controllers. Only $495, this low-cost development platform provides all the hardware and software necessary for evaluation and software development, ultimately cutting design cycle time and associated costs.
The F28335 eZdsp comes complete with an F28335 target board, TI's Code Composer Studio Integrated Development Environment (version 3.3), universal AC power adapter and USB cable. The target board features the 150MHz/300 MFLOPS F28335 DSC with 512KB flash and 68KB RAM, 128Kx16 off-chip SRAM.
Performance and Reduced Development Time Help Enable Greener Industrial Applications
The simplified software development and performance boost common to floating-point processors offer better power efficiency for greener industrial applications. For example, the F2833x devices enable variable speed alternating current (AC) drives, which use one-eighth the energy compared to constant speed counterparts. The floating-point devices also enable clean energy through solar power inverters that more efficiently convert energy from photovoltaic (PV) panels.
The new F2833x floating-point controllers can increase performance by an average of 50 percent over TI's previous leading digital signal controllers while operating at the same 150 MHz clock rate. Some algorithms, such as a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) used for complex calculations, will see a 200 percent improvement over an equivalent 32-bit fixed-point implementation.
Embedded software engineers typically prefer to design and prototype control systems in floating-point arithmetic, but final designs are usually implemented in fixed-point arithmetic. By removing the need to convert from floating point to fixed point, F2833x devices can save weeks or months of development time and eliminate the required modifications to scaling, saturation and adjustment of numerical resolution.
EN-Genius Says…
TI’s new DSC development platform packs the right level of features and usability to make it easier for engineers to make the transition from traditional embedded systems to embedded signal processing. Both the TMS320F28335 (reviewed here June 2007) and its fixed-point cousins in the TMS320F280xx family (reviewed here June 2006) have been stirring up lots of trouble in the green power arena for some time now. Starting at a bit over three bucks, they add flexibility and efficiency to darned near any power application much more complex than a boost regulator. But, despite all the advantages they offer, a signal processor’s weird architecture and instruction sets can be a bit outside the comfort zone of the average designer who’s much more accustomed to microcontrollers and RISC processors. Thankfully, the F28335 eZdsp kit will help ease your transition with a well-provisioned hardware platform that bristles with useful I/O and a set of software tools that are tailored to advanced high power applications.
 Rather than blather on, as I usually do, here is a listing of all the neat resources TI packed onto this handy little board:
- TMS320F28335 Floating-Point Digital Signal Controller
- 150 MHz operation
- 512 kbyte on-chip flash memory
- 68 kbyte on-chip RAM
- 12-bit ADC with 16 input channels
- 128 kbyte x 16 off-chip SRAM
- Clamshell socket for the F28335 DSC
- RS-232 interface with on-board transceiver and 9-pin DSUB connector
- CAN interface with on-board transceiver and 9-pin DSUB connector
- Multiple expansion connectors provide access to all F28335 I/O signals
- Embedded USB JTAG Controller
- Operates from a single 5 V supply with provided ac adapter
- IEEE 1149.1 JTAG emulation connector
Software Features:
- Code Composer Studio Integrated Development Environment for C2000 including C compiler, assembler, linker, real-time debug support, data visualization, a profiler and a flexible project manager.
- eZdsp diagnostic software, including test examples for UART, CAN, I2C, and memory
- Texas Instruments Flash APIs to support the F28335
- Texas Instruments F28335 header files and example software
Besides the tremendous energy savings that you get from precisely shaping the waveforms going into a motor, adding a DSC to the control loop gives you much more precise control over speed, acceleration and start-up characteristics that can cut wear and tear on an expensive drive train -- or whatever it’s driving. In solar applications, digital waveform synthesis can help deliver great conversion efficiencies as well as tight grid synchronization. And while TI does not mention it, I suspect that there are ways to add power factor correction to many applications at little or no extra cost.
By providing a library of example software along with its development environment, TI helps you get up and running much quicker. If you are developing control algorithms yourself, Code Composer Studio’s clean interface to MatLab and other development tools will also make your life much easier.
Developers can now order samples of the S320F28835 in TQFP-176. Complete documentation supporting the F2833x controllers is available.
Developers can also place orders for the F28335 eZdsp kit priced at $495.
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