10 POINTS TO TAKE CARE WHILE SELECTING THE MICRO-PROCESSOR/SOC for CUSTOM EMBEDDED BOARDS
Micro controller/Microprocessor is like heart of Every Embedded hardware Boards. For Low End boards it might be just a micro controller and for higher platform it will be microprocessors/FPGA. Some of the Examples for micro controllers are : MSP430G2 Series of Texas instruments , Atmega series of Atmel and PiC series of Micro chip.
Freescale, ST, TI, SiLabs, Atmel are the main vendors of high End Micro-processors.choosing the best is one of the toughest decision for an Embedded hardware design engineer.Here in this post i will explain the selection criteria's for choosing a microprocessors/controllers/soc in embedded hardware system.
- Point 1 : Use Dedicate controllers according to Application .
So First selection criteria is based on system application
ie .if the application is communication there should be required communication interfaces or if it is a video processing/display based applications, support of GPU is also important.
- Point 2 : Check whether the Microprocessor/SOC supports required Hardware Peripherals.
Hardware peripherals are -GPIO's,SPI,IIC,CAN,USB,ETHERNET,LCD etc. the requirement of hardware peripherals can be obtained by drawing a system level BLOCK diagram.
- Point 3 : Memory Support
Estimate the memory size required for the application and ensure that it will be supported by the Microprocessor/SOC. it is also important to check the type of memory technology that supports the Microprocessor/SOC . like some Microprocessor/SOC doesn't support DDR memories .
- Point 4 : CORE Parameters
- Core Frequency : it is an important factor while choosing Microprocessor/SOC .Clock frequency is the internal clock speed in which the core operates .
- MIPS : it is the count of instructions in millions executed per second.
MIPS=count/time *10^6MIPS=Frequency/No of clock *10^6 - BUS Throughput : Amount of data a processor can process in a certain time . it depends on the bus latency ,Bus width and the bus frequency.
- Data Bus width : comes in 8 bit / 16 bit and 32 bit . when data bus width increases amount of data processing also increases ie. BuS Throughput increases .
- Cache size : it is smaller but kind of faster memory in which frequent operated instructions are stored in cache .
- POINT 5 :Power consumption
Power consumption is an important factor in battery operated applications . there are lot of Microprocessor/SOC with different technologies used to reduce energy consumption. most of the Microprocessor/SOC will have low power modes ,sleep modes etc . PMIC is an advanced power regulator for TI based Microprocessor/SOC.
- POINT 6 : Development & Debugging
Availability of debugging tools and development IDE is also a main criterion while choosing the Microprocessor/SOC .J links[JTAG] is example for debugging tool for Atmel controllers . XDS 100/200/xx[JTAG] are examples for debugging tools for ti Microprocessor/SOC .
Development IDE : example TI Code composer studio
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| J LINK |
- POINT 7 : Availability & EOL
Make sure that the selected processor is available in stock and will not get EOL in near future .
- POINT 8 : Cost per Unit
Cost of the Microprocessor/SOC should also be consided while making the selection, especially for large productions.
- POINT 9 : DESIGN Support
It is the most important criteria while choosing Microprocessor/SOC .because support from manufactures will be required for resolving the issues happening in the development. Manufacture can support by providing reference designs,Technical documents,device drives ,Development boards etc.
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| Beagle Bone-AM335x development Board |
- POINT 10 : Availability of required packages
Ensure that the required packages are available for the selected Microprocessor/SOC and are in stock.
Thank you for Reading -AJ
