netX 90 Development Kit

Description

Development board for the netX 90 dual Cortex-M4 ARM

The netX 90 advanced SoC design brings together two separate system paradigms in one tiny package, i.e. one CPU for real-time industrial communications and one for your own industrial application. It’s a highly integrated Industrial Ethernet node in a 10x10 mm2, 144-pin BGA footprint with two Cortex™-M4, on-chip Flash, Ethernet PHYs, DC/DC converter and POR circuit, which reduce the BOM costs for the hardware interface to a few passive components.

One of the highlights of the chip’s internal architecture is the logical separation of the communication tasks and the application tasks, both from software quality and security aspects. The partitioning restricts the software access to on-chip peripherals on either side. For the communication, Hilscher provides a scalable software solution in terms of protocol functionality and flexibility. The application makes full use of a separate Cortex-M4 at 100 MHz with DSP and FPU support, enhanced by a feature-rich set of on-chip peripherals with connectivity. The inter-CPU data exchange between both systems, based on a consistent and uniform API, enables application developers to use the software protocol stack for communication tasks as loadable firmware (LFW), fully tested and pre-certified by Hilscher.

The SoC features two flexible communication (xC) IPs, which support all popular Industrial Ethernet standards, i.e. hard real-time. Most importantly, the xC architecture flexibly adapts by software to emerging standards and future network requirements such as TSN. Built-in security features enable developers to apply a ‘secure by design’ concept by building layers of security as outlined in the IEC 62443, coupled with built-in diagnostics to monitor operating conditions for IIoT-enabled cloud services, e.g. predictive maintenance.

The netX Studio from Hilscher includes all components required to configure, develop, and debug embedded applications. The compartmentalised project manager features a set of utility tools to set up the protocol stack in three user-friendly steps.