Two of TI's Hercules family of safety MCUs are now available in low-cost development boards. Part of TI's growing Launchpad ecosystem, the Hercules TMS570LS04x and Hercules RM42x platforms provide developers with out-of-the-box functionality for evaluating the safety features of the MCUs, as well as expansion opportunities for more advanced development.

Purchased directly from TI's online store, the Hercules Launchpad boards are less than $20 USD.

The Hercules family of MCUs target safety-critical applications such as medical, industrial, and automotive system designs. Based on the ARM Cortex R4, Hercules MCUs feature a dual-lockstep processor configuration along with error-detection hardware that can instantaneously determine if either core has suffered a fault or glitch. The cores execute the exact same code with the second core running two clock cycles behind so that transient events do not affect both cores the same way.

The Hercules safety features extend far beyond the CPU core, however. All flash and RAM blocks incorporate hardware ECC (error correction coding), the memory and CPU cores have built-in self-test (BIST), and parity checks are in place on all peripheral, DMA, and interrupt-controller RAM. Other test features include loopback capability on IO, ADC self-test, and on-chip clock and voltage monitoring.

With MCUs becoming a central element in many formerly electromechanical systems, particularly in automotive steering, braking, and engine control, the need for safe MCU design has grown substantially. Safety-critical systems cannot tolerate single-point or undetected failures in key components. The traditional approach has been to create redundant systems so that should one element fail, the other could take over or at least provide a reference for detecting the failure.

For many developers, however, the core concepts of safety-critical design are new territory. For those with experience in the approach, dual-core lockstep MCUs are a new option. The Hercules Launchpad development boards give both groups an inexpensive way to begin their investigations into the use of these devices in safety applications.

The boards come pre-loaded with demonstration code, a USB cable for powering the device from a PC, and access to both the Code Composer Studio IDE and the HALCoGen GUI-based code generation tool for creating and loading additional software into the board. An on-board JTAG emulator eliminates the need for any additional tools.

Because of the extensive ecosystem developing around TI's Launchpad platform, developers also have the ability to take their Hercules Launchpad beyond the demonstration phase into custom development. By plugging Launchpad BoosterPacks onto the board's 40-pin header, developers can quickly add functionality such as touch sensors, RF modules, and motor controllers. Drivers for the Educational BoosterPack, with LEDs, potentiometer, accelerometer, speaker, microphone, and LCD display, are already available for the Hercules LaunchPads.

So, now that it's cheap and easy, what's your application for safe MCU design?

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