TI Korea (CEO Kent Jeon, www.ti.com/ww/kr ) September 19, 2012 – TI (CEO Kent Jeon) announced the availability of a new SafeTI™ design package for use in safety-critical medical, industrial, and energy motor control applications. This design package includes 15 new Hercules RM4x ARM Cortex-R4 safety microcontrollers and an auxiliary TPS65381-Q1 Multi-rail Power Supply (PMIC). The Hercules RM4x microcontrollers and PMIC “safety chipsets” maximize fault detection and mitigation while minimizing software overhead. The SafeTI-61508 design package, which includes these microcontrollers and PMICs, not only facilitates the easy achievement of IEC 61508 certification for safety products but also helps accelerate time-to-market.

With the addition of these Hercules RM4x safety microcontrollers, the Hercules microcontroller family has expanded its product line to a total of 35 configurations, allowing customers to freely select the microcontroller best suited for their applications. The new Hercules RM46x floating-point safety microcontroller offers additional memory and performance configurations as well as enhanced motor control capabilities, and is pin-compatible with the Hercules RM48x safety microcontroller released last year. The new Hercules RM42x safety microcontroller meets safety specifications and integrates a motor control interface, providing an affordable entry-level solution in a more compact package. PMICs compatible with these microcontrollers enable the saving of design time and board space by providing multiple power supplies as a single device and integrating safety functions such as voltage monitoring.

Key Features and Benefits of the Hercules RM4x Safety Microcontroller
• Expanded Memory Options and Enhanced Performance: Offering 100MHz–220MHz lockstep ARM Cortex-R4 cores and 384KB, 1MB, and 1.25MB flash, providing designers with a wide range of choices and scalability for multi-functional safety products.
• Achieved IEC 61508 SIL-3 Certification: With these safety microcontrollers, achieve IEC 61508 SIL-3 certification more easily in system design through components that comply with industrial safety standards.
• Hardware safety features offering diverse capabilities: high-level online diagnostic performance using a lockstep core, memory protection for the CPU and bus master, Error Correction Code (ECC) for Flash and Single-bit Error Correction and Double-bit Error Detection (SECDED) for RAM, CPU and RAM built-in self-test (BIST) for potential fault detection, an intelligent error signaling module for executing actions based on safety errors, parity for peripheral RAM, redundant analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and timers, continuous voltage and clock monitoring, etc.
• Integrated Motor Control Functions: The number of external components has been reduced through the integration of motor control functions, including enhanced PWM (pulse width modulation), sensor acquisition, and a quadrature encoder interface. Additionally, a 32-channel timer coprocessor operates as redundant motor control channels, enabling PWM integrity verification of the motor control loop.
•&nbSP; On-chip Ethernet, CAN, and USB connectivity integration: Enables networking and provides options for data acquisition and field software upgrades.
• Provision of safety materials, including safety manuals and safety analysis reports: These materials include documentation on how to design safety applications using Hercules microcontrollers, fault modes, the impact of faults, and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA) that provides information on fault rates required to meet safety standard criteria.

Key Features and Benefits of TI's First Functional Safety PMIC, TPS65381-Q1
• Includes multiple power supply rails in a single device: An asynchronous buck-switched power supply converter with internal FETs converts the input battery voltage into a 6V pre-regulator output to power other regulators. Two linear regulators with internal FETs supply power to the CAN (controller area network) and microcontroller I/O, while a single linear regulator controller supplies power to the microcontroller core. Integrating multiple power rails in this way reduces design time and saves valuable board space.
• Additional sensor power supply: Provides protection against short circuits to ground and battery, enabling power supply to sensors outside the ECU (Electronic Control Unit).
• Integration of various functions through functional safety architecture: Integration of functions such as a question-and-answer watchdog, MCU error signal monitor, clock monitoring for internal oscillators, self-checking for the clock monitor, CRC for non-volatile memory, and reset circuits for the microcontroller. In addition, BIST features enable device function monitoring during startup, and dedicated diagnostic functions allow the microcontroller to test PMIC safety functions. By integrating these safety functions, the need for an additional monitoring microcontroller is eliminated, saving cost, board space, and software development time.
• Provision of safety materials, including safety manuals and safety analysis reports: These materials include documentation on how to design PMICs for safety applications, failure modes, the impact of failures, and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA) that provides information on failure rates required to meet safety standards.

Tools, software, and support for easier safety application design
• Hercules Development Kit – Fast execution is possible through an affordable USB stick (TMDXRM48USB) or development board, TI's Code Composer Studio™ integrated development environment (IDE), HALCoGen peripheral configuration tools, and fully functional development kits (TMDXRM42HDK and TMDXRM46HDK) that include a safety demo (demonstrating BIST execution and fault forcing modes).
• Hercules Motor Control Kit – The Hercules RM46x Motor Control Kit (DRV8301-RM46-KIT) allows you to safely run motors within minutes. This kit includes the RM46x controlCARD (TMDXRM46CNCD) (available separately), TPS65381-Q1 power supply, DRV8301 EVM, and Teknic servo motors. In addition, this kit provides TI's MotorWare™ software, which includes field-oriented-control (FOC) algorithms that support sensorless feedback as a redundant/safety channel for position sensors, ARM CMSIS DSP libraries, and example projects using the HALCoGen peripheral library that supports safety functions.
• SafeTI ARM Compiler Verification Kit – Utilizing TI’s new compiler verification kit increases confidence in development tools and enables documentation, analysis, and verification of the TI ARM compiler usage to meet ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 certification requirements. Early adopter release is scheduled to begin in October 2012, with a general launch expected in the first quarter of 2013.

Price and Supply Timing
The TPS65381-Q1 is scheduled to be available in December 2012 as an HTSSOP-32 (DAP) PowerPad package at a price of $2.60 per unit for orders of 1,000 units. The Hercules RM4x microcontroller is currently available for order at prices ranging from $3 to $26. Additionally, as described above, various free software and tools ranging from $79 to $599 are available.

TI's diverse MCU and software portfolio
TI provides the widest range of microcontroller solutions, from general-purpose ultra-low-power MSP430™ MCUs to Stellaris® Cortex™-M MCUs, real-time control C2000™ MCUs, and Hercules™ safety MCUs. You can accelerate time-to-market by utilizing TI's complete software and hardware tools, comprehensive partner products, and technical support tools.

More detailed information about TI's microcontrollers, tools, analog devices, and software
• New Hercules Microcontroller Overview Video: www.ti.com/hercules-rm4x-pr-v
• PMIC Video: www.ti.com/hercules-pmic-pr-v
• White Paper: Hercules Safety Microcontroller: www.ti.com/hercules-rm4x-pr-wp
• Hercules Safety Microcontroller: www.ti.com/hercules-rm4x-pr-lp
• Make the Switch to TI MCUs: www.ti.com/hercules-rm4x-pr-lp1
• TI eStore: www.ti.com/hercules-rm4x-pr-es
• View all of TI's SafeTI™ products:p://www.ti.com/hercules-safeti-pr-lp" target=_blank>www.ti.com/hercules-safeti-pr-lp