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New TI MSP432 the next step above msp430 — Parallax Forums

New TI MSP432 the next step above msp430

tonyp12tonyp12 Posts: 1,951
edited 2015-05-14 16:01 in General Discussion
Probably provides a easy path to learn Cortex programming as it looks like something between a 16bit msp430 and TIVA's
Lowest power in the industry. TI have always been innovative and is beginner friendly. $12.99 Launchpad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXVUlnnyAGA
http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/microcontrollers_16-bit_32-bit/msp/low_power_performance/msp432p4x/overview.page#MSP432P4xxKeyFeatures
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/msp432p401r.pdf

Comments

  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-03-22 20:51
    Interesting move, and one that seems more about branding.

    Like ST, who now have STM32 and STM8, and joining them SiLabs with EFM32 and EFM8, TI seem to have grasped they had a dogs-breakfast of ARM part codes (anyone remember Stellaris ? )

    Using the 'common root' system the others have, means they also drive sales to the MSP430, as well as MSP432

    Nice price on their LaunchPad, but I wonder what "Advanced Emulation BoosterPack" means at the $53.99(USD) pricepoint ?

    Hmm.. No USB on the first models, modest ESD ratings, and not 5V tolerant on the IO.
    Also not clear if it can do 32 bit Capture on timers.
    Why do some vendors put 16b timers in 32b parts, esp M4's?!
    Modest UART Baud rates, for a M4 part. No FIFOs mentioned either ?
    Timer_A is only spec'd at 12MHz(1.2V)/24MHz(1.4V), for a PWM timer, that is a pretty lame figure.
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-03-22 22:31
    Pretty impressive having an M4F core using less power than an M0+.
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-03-24 10:49
    Available in TI's "LaunchPad" format: http://www.ti.com/tool/MSP-EXP432P401R
    ... for $12.99 + shipping charges.

    Quick run-down:
    MSP432P401R MCU 48MHz 32-bit ARM Cortex M4F with Floating Point Unit and DSP acceleration
    Power consumption: 95uA/MHz active, and 850nA RTC standby operation
    Analog: 24Ch 14-bit differential 1MSPS SAR ADC, Two Comparators
    Digital: Advanced Encryption Standard (AES256) Accelerator, CRC, DMA, HW MPY32
    Memory: 256KB Flash, 64KB RAM
    Timers: 4 x16-bit, and 2 x 32-bit
    Communication: Up to 4 I2C, 8 SPI, 4 UART

    40 pin BoosterPack Connector, and support for 20 pin BoosterPacks
    Onboard XDS-110ET emulator featuring EnergyTrace+ Technology
    2 buttons and 2 LEDs for User Interaction
    Back-channel UART via USB to PC
    Additional I/O available at the bottom edge of the board.
  • tonyp12tonyp12 Posts: 1,951
    edited 2015-03-24 12:37
    Glad I waited instead of getting one from digikey at $25
    I also got the CC3100 wifi shield, the Advanced Emulation add-on is just to debug the CC3100 more thoroughly.

    >Why do some vendors put 16b timers in 32b parts, esp M4's?!

    The 432 seems to be using the same TA timers available on 430's, does make it an easy transition for us who know how to use them.
    16bit is enough 90% of the time when it comes to PWM
    It's easy to make it 17bit by just checking the IFG bit (overflow) without the IRQ even being enabled, with IRQ enabled adding 1 to a 16bit software counter makes 32bit possible.
    And future versions probably will have the Timer_D and maybe later a new 32bit Timer_F(?)
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-03-24 12:47
    tonyp12 wrote: »
    >Why do some vendors put 16b timers in 32b parts, esp M4's?!

    The 432 seems to be using the same TA timers available on 430's, does make it an easy transition for us who know how to use them.

    Yes, I was coming to the conclusion this was a quick paste a M4 into a MSP430, given the rather plain peripherals for such a core. I think Freescale are doing a similar HC08-paste.
    tonyp12 wrote: »
    16bit is enough 90% of the time when it comes to PWM
    Yes, but poor for capture, and 24MHz is also very slow for PWM timing.
    I'm not really seeing a wide market for this - as you say, the niche of '430 upgrades'.
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-03-24 15:19
    MSP432 has two 32 bit timers with interrupt ability (blasphemy?), able to be divided into 4 x 16 bit, in addition to the 4 16 bit TimerA modules.
  • tonyp12tonyp12 Posts: 1,951
    edited 2015-03-24 15:59
    But it looks like the 32bit timers can only be used to create IRQ's, good if you're in deep sleep for a very long time and need a timer to kick you out of bed.
    They can not be used to be stopped (capture mode) at the wait of a signal change. the 16bit timer version can do that, it stops and generate a IRQ so the ISR can read the value and do what it has do to with it.
    I would like to test the DMA to see if I can create a blue/white tile VGA 640x480 screen.

    It uses bit-banding for set/clr individual bits, a fake memory location that is 8x larger than the actual registry/sram location, so you write 0 or 1 to a byte that gets remapped to a bit atomically.
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-03-24 22:12
    True, but running at 48MHz, should be able to provide better than 24MHz PWM with variable duty.
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-03-24 23:19
    abecedarian wrote: »
    True, but running at 48MHz, should be able to provide better than 24MHz PWM with variable duty.

    One might expect that, but the data says otherwise
    " the maximum CPU operating frequency is 48 MHz and maximum input clock frequency for peripherals is 24 MHz."
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-03-25 14:49
    I can see limiting MSP430 based peripherals to 24MHz, as that's the fastest clock they've developed to.
    But Timer32 is inherited from the Cortex M4F, not MSP430, so wonder why they'd cripple it?
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-03-27 23:45
    https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/msp430/f/166/p/411594/1462732#1462732
    Timer32 runs on MCLK and can run as fast as the processor can run at for the Vcore you are using i.e. at Vcore0 max frequency is 24MHz, and at Vcore1 max frequency is 48MHz.
  • cbmeekscbmeeks Posts: 634
    edited 2015-04-29 13:29
    Sorry to bring up an old topic (well, not THAT old). Anyway, I'm curious. What do you guys use these TI chips for? I mean, I have many Arduino compatible boards that I still use for certain things. But mainly because most tutorials I find are for Arduino. But I usually find a way to do it with the prop.

    Anyway, just curious.
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-04-29 13:51
    The MSP432 is so new only Eval boards are out, but an appeal of 32b MCU like this is the FPU.

    I think the new Renesas RX23T
    http://am.renesas.com/products/mpumcu/rx/rx200/rx23t/index.jsp
    looks better than the MSP432- for smallish 32b engines with FPU/DSP, the RX23T also works on 5V so suits PowerMOSFET drive and control apps.
    Waiting on the Eval board price on RX23T, but the MSP423 board is certainly low cost @ $13
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-05-01 11:03
    cbmeeks wrote: »
    Sorry to bring up an old topic (well, not THAT old). Anyway, I'm curious. What do you guys use these TI chips for? I mean, I have many Arduino compatible boards that I still use for certain things. But mainly because most tutorials I find are for Arduino. But I usually find a way to do it with the prop.

    Anyway, just curious.
    Since MSP432 is new and not much is known about commercial usage yet, maybe MSP430 information would be helpful since the 432 uses 430 peripherals?
    Among both commercial and private / hobbyist things, there are multi-meters, speed sensors (including anti-lock braking systems used on cars and such), motor control, battery chargers, capacitive touch screen interface, musical instruments / synthesizers, DMX controllers, infrared receivers / transmitters, utility metering, various IoT things, reflow oven controllers... long list of things.

    MSP432 doesn't yet support the following but some MSP430 have peripherals that do analog / digital conversion without core intervention at all, waking the core from LPM only when necessary, and multi-segment LCD display driving, so it'll likely be only a matter of time before those and similar things are made available on the 432.

    Since you mention Arduino, you might be interested in Energia- an environment based on Wiring / Arduino IDE. On the MSP432 it integrates an RTOS allowing you to run multiple sketches in a cooperative multi-thread way on this LaunchPad, and is eventually going to integrate other LaunchPads including those using TM4C (TIVA) chips. Porting between Arduino / Energia may not be easy, but is possible.
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-05-01 11:15
    jmg wrote: »
    The MSP432 is so new only Eval boards are out, but an appeal of 32b MCU like this is the FPU.

    I think the new Renesas RX23T
    http://am.renesas.com/products/mpumcu/rx/rx200/rx23t/index.jsp
    looks better than the MSP432- for smallish 32b engines with FPU/DSP, the RX23T also works on 5V so suits PowerMOSFET drive and control apps.
    Waiting on the Eval board price on RX23T, but the MSP423 board is certainly low cost @ $13
    Would you mind doing a side-by-side comparison based on the publicly available specifications for these?
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-05-01 15:03
    abecedarian wrote: »
    Would you mind doing a side-by-side comparison based on the publicly available specifications for these?

    I do not have a side by side, but your browser can come close with

    Renesae have anice summary page here
    http://am.renesas.com/products/mpumcu/rx/rx200/rx23t/index.jsp

    TI info is more fragmented
    http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/microcontrollers_16-bit_32-bit/msp/low_power_performance/msp432p4x/overview.page#MSP432P4xxKeyFeatures
    http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/microcontrollers_16-bit_32-bit/msp/low_power_performance/msp432p4x/products.page

    That indicated TI has more RAM, bigger packages, more Serial channels, but Renesas has more numeric grunt & 5V. Indications are Renesas is cheaper, not surprising.
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-05-02 18:57
    jmg wrote: »
    I do not have a side by side, but your browser can come close with

    Renesae have anice summary page here
    http://am.renesas.com/products/mpumcu/rx/rx200/rx23t/index.jsp

    TI info is more fragmented
    http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/microcontrollers_16-bit_32-bit/msp/low_power_performance/msp432p4x/overview.page#MSP432P4xxKeyFeatures
    http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/microcontrollers_16-bit_32-bit/msp/low_power_performance/msp432p4x/products.page

    That indicated TI has more RAM, bigger packages, more Serial channels, but Renesas has more numeric grunt & 5V. Indications are Renesas is cheaper, not surprising.
    Correct: Renesas is cheaper? No price listing = can't tell. MSP432 is ~$5 per chip in 100's, but you can sample them right now.

    Not sure why you went to so many pages when http://www.ti.com/product/MSP432P401R/compare tells you most everything. But I can't really compare a chip I can hold in my hand against one I can't.

    Overall though, I'd still have to tip the hat to 432 for being more "better" in most ways- 2x FLASH, 6x+ SRAM, more ADC with more bits (24 channels | 14 bit for MSP432 | 10 channels / 12 bit for RX23T), more UART / IIC / SPI, better timers, capacitive touch sense on most GPIO, better low-power consumption... overall, just "more".

    And if you've ever used Renesas' "IDE"....
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-05-02 20:47
    abecedarian wrote: »
    Correct: Renesas is cheaper? No price listing = can't tell.

    If you mean not listed in stocked distributor, yes, but there is this price
    R5F523T3ADFL: 48-pin QFP, 64 KB USD 1.25 @10k
    For what is on-board, that's quite a good price.

    Of course TI's parts should be 'better' if you ignore price, and many users do not care about price.
    Many hobbyists will only buy the Launchpad, and that is very good value. @ ~$13
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-05-11 23:27
    jmg wrote: »
    If you mean not listed in stocked distributor, yes, but there is this price
    R5F523T3ADFL: 48-pin QFP, 64 KB USD 1.25 @10k
    For what is on-board, that's quite a good price.

    Of course TI's parts should be 'better' if you ignore price, and many users do not care about price.
    Many hobbyists will only buy the Launchpad, and that is very good value. @ ~$13
    As far as I can tell, the MSP432 is still pre-production / experimental so all chips available at the moment are from TI so no distributors as of yet.

    Bold move, I feel, to put an X chip out on a board for the masses to play with, but they must have some confidence whatever errata are out there can be avoided / worked around for now, and will be mostly eliminated when certified for production. Also, mashing an ARM M4F core with MSP430 peripherals must've taken some arm twisting by the engineers; even bolder, I think, putting the debug interface on the board and allowing it the ability to debug / program external circuits using their chips. The ICDI / debug probe on the MSP432 can program many of TI's ARM M4F chips, so for $13, you have a little dev board and a programming interface for many things, whereas the stand-alone programming interface can cost 3 times that or more.

    Wonder if the Renesas' board will offer the same.... I have a Renesas RX62n kit and I don't believe that lets you program off-board chips.
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-05-11 23:43
    abecedarian wrote: »
    ..... even bolder, I think, putting the debug interface on the board and allowing it the ability to debug / program external circuits using their chips. .
    That's more simply catching up, not bold.
    Other vendors have had low cost boards, with Debug that can do off-board Pgm/Debug for a while now. (ST, Nuvoton, EnergyMicro(Silabs)...)

    Any company that 'forgets' to give off-board access these days, looks like they are out of touch - and when you try to sell to an expert audience, that is a big mistake to make.
    Parallax should be watching this carefully too.

    Even Atmel are jumping on board, even if only with 3 XMINI 's out so far.
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-05-12 21:28
    jmg wrote: »
    That's more simply catching up, not bold.
    Other vendors have had low cost boards, with Debug that can do off-board Pgm/Debug for a while now. (ST, Nuvoton, EnergyMicro(Silabs)...)

    Any company that 'forgets' to give off-board access these days, looks like they are out of touch - and when you try to sell to an expert audience, that is a big mistake to make.
    Parallax should be watching this carefully too.

    Even Atmel are jumping on board, even if only with 3 XMINI 's out so far.
    Well, I guess if the board itself is cheap enough, on board ICDI not supporting off-board processors is a non-issue. $10-15 for the 'brain' of some 'copter or bot won't break the bank for those that can afford breaking things.

    In the mean time, I'm going to relax and wait for the new "Hercules" LaunchPads due in a couple/few weeks.... P2 has some serious competition.
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-05-12 22:18
    abecedarian wrote: »
    Well, I guess if the board itself is cheap enough, on board ICDI not supporting off-board processors is a non-issue.
    I think it actually makes good commercial sense to have the low cost board also act as programmer.
    Less total product lines to support and simpler for the customer, who also has a ready means to verify his programmer is working, and that equates to less support cost too.
    With separate programmers, users faced with a pgm fail are never sure if the PGMR-pins, or their target is the issue.
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-05-12 22:30
    abecedarian wrote: »
    In the mean time, I'm going to relax and wait for the new "Hercules" LaunchPads due in a couple/few weeks.... P2 has some serious competition.

    Yes, some truly powerful parts showing here
    http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/launchpads-hercules.html
    and the slightly nutty situation were the $19.99 launchpad for a high end part, costs less than the chips do !!
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-05-13 10:45
    jmg wrote: »
    I think it actually makes good commercial sense to have the low cost board also act as programmer.
    Less total product lines to support and simpler for the customer, who also has a ready means to verify his programmer is working, and that equates to less support cost too.
    With separate programmers, users faced with a pgm fail are never sure if the PGMR-pins, or their target is the issue.
    Well, I'd ask then, where are the "cheap" programmers for AVR and PIC?

    I could be wrong, but last I saw was you needed one to program one. Ebay might be wrong, though. ;)
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-05-13 10:50
    jmg wrote: »
    Yes, some truly powerful parts showing here
    http://www.ti.com/ww/en/launchpad/launchpads-hercules.html
    and the slightly nutty situation were the $19.99 launchpad for a high end part, costs less than the chips do !!
    That boggles me too, since ~$20 gets a board with a part that costs ~$30... and the TM4C129 used on the ICDI. I'm going to guess the cost is demand based, and since these are realistically niche parts the demand is somewhat low so the price to get people "in" to it is low.

    Still, though, a dual-core ARM with a single/dual core VLIW co-processor isn't cheap by any metric if there's no volume.

    Anyways... back to the 432....
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-05-13 12:37
    abecedarian wrote: »
    Well, I'd ask then, where are the "cheap" programmers for AVR and PIC?

    Try USBasp on that eBay thinggie you mentioned ?
    Nicely cased programmers for $5-10 and USB bare boards for a couple of dollars... and there is a well supported SW called AVRdude.
    I think the new XMINIs work with AVRdude to pgm most Atmel parts..
    Less sure about PICs, but who uses those ? ;)
  • abecedarianabecedarian Posts: 312
    edited 2015-05-14 15:13
    jmg wrote: »
    Try USBasp on that eBay thinggie you mentioned ?
    Nicely cased programmers for $5-10 and USB bare boards for a couple of dollars... and there is a well supported SW called AVRdude.
    I think the new XMINIs work with AVRdude to pgm most Atmel parts..
    Less sure about PICs, but who uses those ? ;)
    Have heard of AVRdude, not sure I really want to go at yet another MCU architecture. TI is keeping me busy enough with MSP430, ARM M4F and now the MSP432 tweaker.
    I have a standalone programmer for MSP430 and the MSP432 can program most of TI's ARM chips so I'm satisfied with TI's offerings.
    And I like that if I can't get what I need done with Energia, I can always hop over to Code Composer Studio, import the sketch, and work in a more 'proper' environment.
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2015-05-14 16:01
    abecedarian wrote: »
    ..TI is keeping me busy enough with MSP430, ARM M4F and now the MSP432 tweaker.
    I have a standalone programmer for MSP430 and the MSP432 can program most of TI's ARM chips so I'm satisfied with TI's offerings.
    Certainly pays to stay with what you know.

    On the new-chips topic, I see a NXP device LPC18S57 - sub $10,
    http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers/product_series/lpc1800/LPC18S57JBD208.html

    and Microchip have a new dsPIC33, $3~4 region
    http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?product=dsPIC33EP64GS506
    Claims
    1.04 ns PWM Resolution (frequency, duty cycle, dead time and phase)
    & this
    Dual Partition Flash Program Memory with Live Update (64-Kbyte devices)
    Supports programming while operating
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