SPC56L Discovery Kit!

[mobyfab]

Hey,

ST just release a Discovery Kit for their SPC56L range of devices.

http://www.st.com/web/catalog/tools/FM1 ... 5/PF259171

No clue about the pricing though.

Edit: seems to be $125.

There's 2 other discovery kit in preparation:
http://www.st.com/web/catalog/tools/FM1 ... 5/PF259176
http://www.st.com/web/catalog/tools/FM1 ... 5/PF259175

[Giovanni]

I have one already but I am not sure it is readily available already.

There will be also cheaper Discovery boards soon with an on-board debugger, much like those for the STM32. In 2014 SPC56x devices will be accessible like the STM32s.

Giovanni

[mobyfab]

I hope they make a discovery board with the MCUs equiped with a TPU.

[colin]

So Giovanni, it sounds like you are a fan of the SPC56 processors. I have never heard of it except that I saw you mention it on the ChibiOS/RT forum before.

What is special about SPC56, and why might someone prefer it over STM32? Can you briefly compare STM32 and SPC56 for me?

[Giovanni]

Hi,

The main differences:
- SPCs are automotive grade. See qualification, temperature range etc.
- CPUs are based on Power Architecture e200z cores (Z0, Z2, Z3, Z4 and Z7).
- Peripherals are more oriented to automotive applications, no USB but lots of SPIs, UARTs, CANs and very peculiar stuff.
- There are monsters with dual core and 4MB of flash but also tiny devices with 128k of flash.
- Some devices include mechanisms oriented to functional safety (ISO26262).
- There are devices able to work at 5V.
- Peripherals are in general much more complex and powerful than STM32 equivalents.
- Lots of DMA channels from 16 to 64 depending on the device.
- RAM and flash with CRC check. Separate data flash on all devices.
- Dual sourced ST and Freescale.

Very complex stuff, until now only directed to huge customers until few months ago, now these devices are also targeted to "mass market" so you will start to see cheap boards etc etc. SPC5Studio supports ChibiOS on those devices so friendly environment if you are used to ChibiOS on STM32.

If you see me interested it is because it is what I work on daily, STM32 is "hobby" for me.

Giovanni

[tronicgr]

That sounds very interesting, especially that they can work on 5v and the functionality safety. I'll have a look on those too as safety must be assured for motion controllers that operate heavy machinery (1.5HP AC motors!!!)

Thanos

[Giovanni]

You should look at the SPC560Pxx devices.

Giovanni

[colin]

Thanks for the summary, Giovanni. Very interesting! It's great to hear that this complex and powerful platform is made accessible to the masses through ChibiOS and SPC5Studio

What do you think of Power vs. ARM architecture? Is it inconsequential? I guess Power arch has more testing and verification and miles on it of reliability testing than ARM Cortex, perhaps.

When you say dual-sourced ST and Freescale, do you mean that both manufacturers produce the exact same chip just in different fabs? Or have they separately developed compatible parts?

As for 5V support, Freescale has Kinetis E line which can run on 5V, but this is an entry-level line, not a high reliability or automotive oriented part. So it's different than SPC5 in most respects. But I wonder how much should one care if the MCU runs on 3.3V or 5.0V, is there a huge difference in susceptibility to noise etc.? Or is it more about being compatible with peripherals and other circuits that are all 5V in the system?

[Giovanni]

Most SPC56x devices (MPC56xx for FSL) have been jointly developed by ST and FSL so it is the same design produced in different fabs. There are also models/variants that are specific of ST or FSL.

PPC vs ARM, hard question, I overall like Cortex-M more because code density and better interrupts handling, PPC should be a bit more efficient at executing general code because the higher number of internal registers but I don't see huge differences in ChibiOS-related tests. PPC is used a lot in automotive and aerospace, I think because its roots, ARM Cortex is relatively recent.

There are 5V parts because there is demand for that in automotive applications, mainly because noise immunity as you guessed, same for automotive-specific peripherals like ST's Smart Power devices.

SPC5Studio is becoming better and better with each release, its framework is based on the ChibiOS HAL but it can be used with other RTOSes as well, for example there is a demo using the HAL with an OSEK compliant RTOS. SPC5Studio is ST-specific

Giovanni

[Giovanni]

I hope they make a discovery board with the MCUs equiped with a TPU.

I asked, in few weeks a low cost board based on the SPC563M64 should be released, it is an 80MHz powertrain device with ETPU.

Giovanni