Freescale Adds IEEE 1588 Clock Synchronization to ColdFire Evaluation Platform
March 10, 2008 // Published as a news service by IHS
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Freescale Semiconductor collaborated with National Semiconductor, IXXAT Automation and CMX Systems to deliver a hardware and software evaluation platform designed to support the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1588 precision timing protocol (PTP) for real-time applications.
The IEEE 1588 protocol synchronizes clocks on multiple Ethernet-connected nodes to within tens of nanoseconds for time-sensitive applications such as industrial networking and motion control.
Developers can use the M5234BCCKIT hardware toolkit to evaluate embedded applications using the IXXAT IEEE 1588 protocol stack running on the Freescale ColdFire microprocessor family.
This evaluation platform builds on the Freescale IEEE 1588 tools previously offered for its PowerQUICC communications processors.
The M5234BCCKIT includes the Freescale 32 b MCF5234 processor based on the V2 ColdFire core. The device features a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet controller and a 16 or 32 channel enhanced time processor unit (eTPU), which can be used for motor control and other functions.
The evaluation kit incorporates the National Semiconductor DP83640 PHYTER device, an Ethernet physical layer (PHY) transceiver, which improves the IEEE 1588 time sync accuracy by time stamping Ethernet packets as they enter the board at the physical layer, the companies said.
Software support includes the IEEE 1588 software stack supplied by IXXAT and the TCP/IP stack supplied by CMX Systems.
The standard Ethernet controller used across the ColdFire product family allows the IXXAT IEEE 1588 stack and the CMX TCP/IP stack to be ported to any ColdFire device.
Freescale said it plans to support the M5234BCCKIT evaluation kit with a complimentary version of CodeWarrior development studio for microcontrollers (MCUs), a tool suite that supports software development for Freescale 8 b and 32 b MCUs.
Designers also will be able to accelerate application development with the tool suite's processor expert rapid application development tool, according to Freescale.
In addition, the evaluation board is designed to support in-circuit debugging through a program and evaluation (P&E) multilink background debut mode (BDM) interface.
Source: Freescale Semiconductor Inc