Freescale Webinar Q&A "Changing the Direction of Embedded Design"

e14 Contributor — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:27:36 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by e14 Contributor on 6/5/2011 12:27:36 AM

To view Freescale's webinar from 5/25 "Changing the Direction of Embedded Design"

Q&A from Webinar with responses from presenter Danny Basler

Q: Can the Flex Memory be setup into two chunks with different configurations such as two regions each with a different endurance setting?

A: FlexMemory as EEPROM will support in the near future two regions with varying endurance. This feature is known as EEE split. The user will have the ability to select a total EEPROM size and select a EEE split setting (currently fixed to 50/50 ratio; why you have equivalent endurance for all EEPROM selected) where you have two EEPROM subsystems. With a non-50/50 ratio selected you will have varying endurance between the two subsystems as one will be a smaller EEPROM array being recorded in EEPROM backup memory divided by 2 (FlexNVM/2) as the larger EEPROM array also being recorded in EEPROM backup memory divided by 2 (FlexNVM/2). Below is a picture that demonstrates the mechanism.

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Q: how many channels of DAC does Kinetis K60N512 microcontroller have?

A: 2ch 12-DAC available with external output pin

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Q: Are there I/O capabilities to accomodate quadrature encoders for motor control?

A: Yes, the 2ch. FTM1 and FTM2 (FlexTimer1 and 2) modules have built in quadrature decoder feature for motor control. All FTMs have other motor control specific features like dead time insertion and complimentary PWMs with fault control.

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Q: I have a MC9S08JM60 on a DemoJM board using Code Warrior to program. Will I be able to continue using Code Warrior to program these new MCUs?________

A: Yes, CodeWarrior supports the Kinetis MCU's as well. Thanks for joining‑

CodeWarrior MCU v10.1 supports all RS08, HCS08, V1-V4 ColdFire, Kinetis families and the Qorivva MPC560xP, MPC5643L and MPC567xK families

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Q: Can we get more info on the FPUs - anticipated power use + will M-4 power management allow control of the FPU?

A: Yes, you can find details here: http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dui0553a/BABGHFIB.html

No power data yet for devices with FPU

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Q: But to use the Kinetis support, you will need to upgrade to CW 10.1

A: Yes.‑

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Q: For the K60 and K70 with the NAND Flash Controller, what is the page size and the # of ECC bits supported?

A: ECC = 32-bit

NFC Page Size:

• For devices with pages of 2KB and smaller, this is the same size of the page

• For devices with pages larger than 2KB, the pages are split into multiple virtual pages. In this case, the sector size is the size of the virtual page

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Q: Is the flex memory 10 M endurance over temperature, or only at 25 C?

A: The FlexMem endurance is over temp. It is calculated from the base flash cycling endurance. This is spec’d in the datasheet as nnvmycd = 10K cylces. The footnote states that this is the cycling endurance is over the full temp range

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Q: what is the licensing for the MQX RTOS?

A: No licensing fee associated. More details can be found at www.freescale.com/mqx

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Q: Do you have similar Webinar for i.MX?

Priority: N/A‑

‑Ryan Crouch - 10:50 AM

A: We appreciate the feedback, we'll work to put one together for you. We'd be glad to offer one on the i.MX53. Is that of interest to you? MCIMX53-STARTMCIMX53-START would be the focus.‑

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Q: Support for Windows CE?

A: Win CE requires an MMU. Kinetis will not run WinCE

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Q: I prefer to use a breakout board for prototyping. Are any of the products discussed here availbe in this form factor?

A: The TWR-PROTO module can be used with the Kinetis TWR boards (TWR-K40X256-KIT or TWR-K60N512-KITTWR-K60N512-KIT) details @ www.freescale.com/tower

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Q: How is performance affected by USB and Ethernet being used simultaneously? Particularly, are there isues one must consider if one needs to read/write a USB drive while running a Profinet I/O RT or Ethernet/IP stack?

A: Good question. The answer depends on how the system is using memory. The crossbar switch allows for concurrent, non-blocking bus cycles. So if the USB is accessing the on-chip RAM (tightly coupled memory) and the Ethernet is accessing the FlexBus instead, then the two modules wouldn’t actually conflict with each other at all. The performance might be slowed because the core needs to do processing on both data streams, but the USB and Ethernet modules wouldn’t directly slow each other down.

In a more typical use case, both the USB and Ethernet would be accessing the same type of memory (the same crossbar slave port). In that case, the performance of one or both of the modules would probably be impacted. The crossbar switch will allow you to program the priority of each bus master on a per slave basis. This means that if the USB and Ethernet will be accessing the same slave port, you could give one priority over the other or you could use the round robin priority option so that they share fairly evenly based on the requirements for the system.

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Q: Which emulators are suggested that support the Kinetis?

A: CW MCU v10.1 has OSJTAG, Segger J-Link, P&E Multilink Universal and Cyclone MAX support.

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Q: I have noticed that most of Kinetis products families can support dual CAN busses. Are there any of these chips that can support 3 CAN busses? If not is there any plan to come out with a chip that can support this?

A: No. No plans at present

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Q: Do the K60's have external memory buses?

A: Yes. The K60’s have a FlexBus

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Q: I heard a few recommendations, but say again. What is the lowest cost entry(includes everything) entery point packaged?

A: MK10DN32VFM5 (K10 family, 50MHz, 32KB Flash, No FlexMemory, 8KB SRAM, DSP (no FPU), 1x16-bit ADC, 2x ACMP, 8ch PWM = 2ch QDEC, LPT, PIT, PDB, CMT, 3xUART, 4x SPI, IIC, IIS, 32QFN, 1.71-3.6V)

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Q: Can you have two versions of CodeWarrior installed at the same time?

A: Yes, since FSL went to the CW Suite model in 2008, we have tested the products to ensure they can be co-installed.

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Q: Tell us more about the Flexbus.

* It’s a multi-function external bus interface capable of interfacing to external memories, gate-array logic, or an LCD.

• Supports up to 2 GB addressable space

• 8-, 16- and 32-bit port sizes with configuration for multiplexed or non-multiplexed address and data buses

• Byte-, word-, longword-, and 16-byte line-sized transfers

• Programmable address-setup time with respect to the assertion of chip select

• Programmable address-hold time with respect to the negation of chip select and transfer direction

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Q: When will USB HS be available on the Kinetis 20?

A: Q4 2011

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Q: I missed part of this web cast, question is are USB virtual com port drivers available for Win, Mac, Linux?

A: Yes, the MQX and stand-alone USB stacks support USB CDC class

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Q: What is the lowest price chip that will support TCP/IP with protocols like SNMP, telenet, bootloading (TFTP), DCHP, SNTP. Is the RTOS necessary for this stack? When is this chip available and what is the cost?

A: MK60DN256ZVLL10 (K60 family, 100MHz, 256KB Flash, No FlexMemory, 128KB SRAM, DSP (no FPU), 100LQFP, $4.56 10K# SRP)

MQX RTOS is not necessary – bare metal TCP/IP stack is available.

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