UART and CAN-Lite PRU Daughter Cards

Texas Instruments Inc.'s two new programmable real-time unit(PRU) daughter cards and free software allow customers to add differentiated peripherals and designflexibility for reduced development costs to extendthe functionality of their AM1xSitara ARMmicroprocessor-based systems.

The universalasynchronous receiver/transmitters (UART) PRU and controller areanetwork lite (CAN-lite) PRU daughter cards can be used in evaluation with theAM1x Sitara ARM MPUs or as a standalone reference design to jumpstart customers'product development. The daughter cards snap into the PRU peripheral connectionon the AM1x Sitara ARM MPUs evaluation modules, and once the software isloaded, customers have additional design flexibility for embedded industrial,medical and consumer designs.

TheAM1x Sitara ARM MPUs come in a variety of performance and power options andsupport multiple industry-specific peripherals and interfaces. The addition ofthese daughter cards address the needs of systems requiring:

Withthese PRU daughter cards, TI provides free, optimized software to help reducedevelopment time and costs. The tested software code help developers focus ontheir intellectual property, rather than spending large amounts of time writingcode. Developers can install their application software and begin developmentimmediately.

PRUsare common peripherals on all AM1x Sitara ARM MPUs and future devices in theproduct line. Future AM1x Sitara ARM MPU devices will also offer PRU daughtercard peripherals and software that will extend to both future versions or theAM1x product line and future TI ARM Cortex-A8 based products.

TheUART daughter card is $72, and the CAN daughter card is available for $77. Bothare available now from MistralSolutions.The production-quality software code for both daughter cards is free for download from Mistral Solutions.

You can also develop and deploy their designs with several available AM1x SitaraARM MPU evaluation kits and modules, which vary by product and the contents ofthe kit or module. All three kits include a software development kit for Linuxkernel 2.6.33 board support package.