TS-4200 Atmel ARM9 with Very Low Powe

Hardware Description

The TS-4200 is a low profile, credit card sized TS-SOCKET Macrocontroller module which features a 396MHz Atmel ARM9 and a 3K tile low power Actel A3P125 FPGA. With 64MB or 128MB RAM and a bootable 256MB on-board flash drive with our new XNAND technology, the TS-4200 is a powerful and extremely reliable embedded solution. External devices can connect to the TS-4200 via Ethernet, USB host, USB device, I2C, SPI, UARTs, or GPIO. Additionally, an external 16-bit address/data bus can be implemented through the use of 21 DIO pins. The two 100 pin downward-facing general-purpose headers make it easy to interface the TS-4200 with a standard TS-SOCKET baseboard or a baseboard of your own design.

The TS-4200 can run at a full 396MHz while consuming under half a Watt. The following features help meet this goal:

• Efficient switching regulators
• Low power Atmel CPU containing individual peripheral clocks that can be disabled when not required
• Low power Actel FPGA clocked by the CPU only when needed
• Low power 1.8V mobile RAM
• Ethernet and SD card that can be disabled to save power

Hardware features include:

• Ethernet MAC and PHY
• 2 USB host (12 Mbps) and 1 USB device (480 Mbps)
• Up to 6 UARTs (1 Auto-485 capable)
• MicroSD card connector (or external full size SD)
• 256MB XNAND storage
• SPI
• I2C
• I2S
• 4 ADC inputs
• RTC*
• 8KB NV SRAM*
• Up to 78 DIO/GPIO**
• Temperature Sensor***
• Watchdog timer
• Random number generator

TS-SOCKET Description

TS-SOCKET is an embedded computer standard designed and controlled by Technologic Systems, Inc. It defines both a form factor and a connection pin-out and is based on two 100-pin low-profile connectors, allowing secure connection between a TS macrocontroller (CPU board) and a baseboard. Please refer to theTS-SOCKET Standard and Embedded Macrocontrollers resource for more information.

TS-4200 Power Consumption

Under normal operation with TS-8200 baseboard and RS-232 driver, the TS-4200 consumes about 375mW (75mA @ 5V) of power.

XNAND Technology

Technologic Systems XNAND technology is an ultra reliable and industrial grade user-space device driver that uses Reed-Solomon codes, extra checksums, and a RAID-based technique to allow any Linux filesystem to be used with confidence on SLC NAND flash. Our TS-BOOTROM can also boot from XNAND for an ultra-reliable bootup. Please refer to the XNAND whitepaper for more information.

Software Description

The TS-4200 SBC boots to Linux 2.6.36.2 from either a microSD card or on-board XNAND drive. The 256MB on-board XNAND drive is enough to store a bootable kernel image, initial ramdisk image, and a minimal version of emDebian "Squeeze (Grip)" Linux. Storage memory can be expanded through the microSD card socket. A bootable microSD card must contain a Linux kernel image, an initial ramdisk image and a valid Linux root filesystem. The fast Linux bootup solution was optimized for speed and includes kernel, initrd, and filesystem (Busybox) tweaks. Since this board boots to an initrd (initial ramdisk) with a read-only mounted filesystem, it is possible to have something other than a shell prompt running after bootup by editing the /linuxrc shell script on the initrd. Additional TS-4200 software features include:

• Boots Linux 2.6.36.2 out-of-the-box in less than 3 seconds (to a shell prompt).
• MicroSD card pre-installed with minimal Debian "Squeeze" Linux distribution.
• Un-brickable design ensures 100% recoverability from microSD card in case of on-board XNAND drive erasure.
• Startup Linux mini-root scripts allow flexible root and backup filesystem selection (microSD, XNAND, NFS, USB flash), as well as software field upgrade support.

Linux OS and Debian Support

Technologic Systems' TS-4200 ARM Systems on Modules (SoM) are compatible with a wide range of Operating Systems (OS's). The Linux choice is highly recommended and our products are totally integrated with the open-source vision. The board ships with Linux 2.6.36.2 Kernel running out-of-the-box. There is no proprietary source code in the kernel since all the hardware specific functionalities are handled by user-space utilities (such as sdctl, nandctl, xuartctl, etc.). The Linux kernel includes driver support for on-board hardware, enabling quick time to market of end-users applications. Examples and source codes are also available for downloading.

The compact initial ramdisk filesystem is based on Busybox and uClibc and is improved for performance and flexibility. Specific Linux scripts and utilities that handle the TS-4200 functions are included. In addition, the full Debian binaries and services are available from the initial ramdisk after mounting the microSD card.

The TS-4200 TS-SOCKET macrocontrollers are configured to load Debian "Squeeze" Linux from the on-board XNAND drive or microSD card during boot up time. The on-board XNAND flash uses a minimal emDebian "Squeeze (Grip)" Linux distribution that has been compacted to fit in the 256MB space and leave about 124MB free for the user and includes utilities such as apt-get for installing and removing programs. The microSD card uses a full featured Debian "Squeeze" Linux distribution which includes a complete GNU C/C++ embedded development environment. In addition, Apache Web Server, FTP, SSH, Telnet, and Samba network services are available with C/PHP/Perl for embedded CGI development.

Eclipse IDE for ARM and Windows

The Eclipse IDE configured for embedded development with the TS-SOCKET system running Debian Linux is provided on our FTP site. Technologic Systems makes use of the Eclipse Europa release and the DSDP+CDT plugins in order to provide an advanced embedded IDE. Installation is easy and includes support for ARM crosstool chains, cygwin runtime-libraries, and a Java Development Kit. The Eclipse environment is already configured to allow a quick start to TS-SOCKET development. At start-up, the installed 'helloworld' example shows the user how to use the Eclipse functionalities, including cross-compilation, build-management configurations, binary download to the ARM SBC target, target management via SSH, FTP, telnet or serial console, client-server debugging with Eclipse debug view, etc.