New SoC Family from TI Simplifies Ethernet Communication to Lower Manufacturing Costs

This News Brief takes a look at the Sitara AMIC110 SoC from Texas Instruments.

Texas Instruments recently introduced the family of Sitara AMIC SoCs. The Sitara AMIC110 SoC, a multiprotocol industrial communication processor can be used in place of static solutions for industrial communications, connected industrial drives, and backplane I/O. Designers can integrate the AMIC110 SoC into existing non-networked designs in place of the traditional ASIC, which can only support a single industrial Ethernet standard.

The AMIC110 SoC has the ability to support more than 10 industrial Ethernet and fieldbus communication standards. It can support a variety of protocols: EtherCAT, Profinet, Ethernet/IP, PROFIBUS master and slave, HSR, PRP, POWERLINK, SERCOS III, and CANopen. More protocols are currently being added.

The Sitara AMIC110 SoC is meant to be utilized by industrial engineers in tandem with the Sitara processor platform which claims flexible peripherals, industrial temperature ranges, and unified software support. With the AMIC110's SoC's software, the same device can be utilized in different designs that require different protocols.

AMIC110 SoC Specs

• Up to 300-MHz Sitara™ ARM® Cortex®-A8 32‑Bit RISC Processor
• On-Chip Memory (Shared L3 RAM)
• External Memory Interfaces (EMIF)
• Programmable Real-Time Unit Subsystem and Industrial Communication Subsystem (PRU-ICSS)
• Power, Reset, and Clock Management (PRCM) Module
• Peripherals:
  • Up to Two USB 2.0 High-Speed OTG Ports With Integrated PHY
  • Up to Two Controller-Area Network (CAN) Ports
  • Up to Six UARTs
  • Up to Two Master and Slave McSPI Serial Interfaces
  • Up to Three MMC, SD, SDIO Ports
  • Up to Three I2C Master and Slave Interfaces
  • Up to Four Banks of General-Purpose I/O (GPIO) Pins
  • Up to Three External DMA Event Inputs that can Also be Used as Interrupt Inputs
  • Eight 32-Bit General-Purpose Timers
  • One Watchdog Timer
  • 12-Bit Successive Approximation Register (SAR) ADC

Within the Sitara AMIC110 family is also a dev board: the AMIC110 Industrial Communication Engine development board. The Sitara AMIC110 SoC can be utilized as a communication device to an MCU, such as TI's C2000 MCU. 

For more information about the Sitara AMIC110 SoC and it's full list of features, click here.