UART and CAN modules to support the extended system peripheral needs of developers

Furthering its initiatives on Texas Instruments (TI) platforms, Mistral has announced daughter cards for TI evaluation modules (EVMs) based on TI’s Sitara™ AM1x microprocessors (MPUs) and OMAP-L1x application processors for embedded industrial, medical and consumer designs.

These TI platforms address customer concerns of cost, connectivity, power efficiency and ease of development of applications by providing a platform with robust operating systems support, rich user interfaces and high processing performance. These processors feature a unique rich peripheral sub-system known as the Programmable Real-time Unit (PRU). The PRU sub-system consists of dual 32-bit RISC processors, specifically designed for manipulation of packed memory mapped data structures and for implementing system features that have tight real-time constraints. It offers flexible and configurable input/output controls, enabling developers to extend peripheral capabilities and add custom interfaces to their designs.

Mistral offers two plug-in daughter cards helping developers leverage the benefits of the PRU features on the AM1x and OMAP-L1x processors:

• The UART daughter card has interfaces for soft UART, hard UART and soft DIR.
• The CAN daughter card provides soft CAN and hard CAN bus interfaces.

Mistral has worked extensively on TI’s leading technology platforms, providing professional services in the areas of custom board design, reference designs, driver development, board support packages and software integration across various technology domains.

“Mistral has been in the forefront of providing a host of well-received offerings on TI platforms,” said Samyeer Metrani, Vice President, Services (USA), Mistral. “Our two daughter cards for TI’s AM1x and OMAP-L1x lines of processors allow developers to leverage the PRU functionality, thereby helping customers build solutions targeted at the industrial and automotive markets. Mistral will also offer development and customization services to customers planning to build next-generation devices around the Sitara and OMAP platforms.”

“TI is committed to offering resources to help make development easier for our customers’ hardware and software engineers,” said Seán Murphy, Marketing Manager, Sitara, TI. “By working with Mistral to develop the daughter cards and software, customers can enjoy benefits including low customer development costs and improved connectivity. The daughter cards enable customers to eliminate the development cycle from the design process by providing the source code for the PRU, enabling the cards to be easily snapped onto the EVMs for extra capabilities, ultimately allowing for a shortened time to market from faster proto-typing.”