Texas Instruments and Hitex Development Tools introduce SafeTI™ Hitex Safety Kit, helping ease development of safety-critical applications

DALLAS, June 12, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN), in collaboration with Hitex Development Tools, introduces the new SafeTI™ Hitex Safety Kit, enabling developers to evaluate SafeTI components  for use in their designs requiring compliance to functional safety standards such as ISO26262 and IEC 61508. The state-of-the-art kit provides an example system with capabilities for hardware fault injection, application and run-time profiling of fault diagnostics and system response monitoring in real-time.

The SafeTI Hitex Safety Kit enables customers to easily evaluate performance of SafeTI components for use in their safety-critical designs. The cost-effective hardware platform allows customers to evaluate the individual TI hardware components, either Hercules™ TMS570LS31x microcontrollers (MCUs) or RM48x MCUs and TPS65381-Q1 power management integrated circuit (PMIC) – with TI's Hercules SafeTI Diagnostic Library.

Features and benefits of the SafeTI Hitex Safety Kit:

• Enables customers to evaluate SafeTI components for potential use in designs requiring functional safety and targeting compliance to functional safety standards such as IEC 61508 and ISO 26262.
• Integrates key capabilities for fault injection, application of diagnostics, reaction monitoring and run-time profiling of fault diagnostic routines for the example system.
• Provides a demo software application which can be used as a starting point for evaluating TI Hercules MCU and PMIC combination chipset.
• Offers a user-friendly, host-based graphical-user interface (GUI) that provides capability to inject faults, apply diagnostics, profile run-time of fault diagnostics, time-stamp system response and set configurations; and communicates with the development board to request status information enabling visualization of system response timing.
• Includes a second MCU on the evaluation board, which acts as test control and monitor unit, and manages communication with the GUI.
• Includes an on-board JTAG emulator, accelerometer, CAN transceiver, LCD module, temperature sensor and host/debug interface with a USB HUB controller and a serial communication port converter.
• Utilizes an industry-standard DIMM form factor with 100-pin connector footprint for plugging into select TI motor control kits.
• Supports use of select non-TI third-party debug tools with a 20-pin external JTAG header for further design flexibility.
• Includes user-friendly documentation including a quick-start tutorial, user's guide, hardware schematics, and documentation for the diagnostic library to help ease evaluation and kit use.
• Provides easy-to-use SafeTI Hercules software framework, which makes it easy to start development of safety-critical applications using SafeTI components. The SafeTI software framework includes:
  • HALCoGen, a GUI-based code-generation tool
  • SafeTI Hercules Diagnostic Library, offering a simple interface and a framework for enabling safety diagnostics/features recommended by the safety manuals of the Hercules MCU and the TPS65381-Q1 PMIC.
  • Evaluation version of SAFERTOS® from Wittenstein High Integrity Systems.
• Includes well-documented source code for the demo application, the monitoring application and the diagnostic library. 
• Provides latest version of TI's Eclipse-based Code Composer Studio™ IDE for use with the emulator.

Availability and ordering
The SafeTI Hitex Safety Kits are available for order now from Hitex Development Tools:

• $499 for the Hercules RM48x MCU-based SafeTI Hitex Safety Kit for medical and industrial designs.
• $499 for the Hercules TMS570LS31x MCU-based SafeTI Hitex Safety Kit for automotive and transportation designs.

For more information:

• TI's SafeTI web page: www.ti.com/herc-hitex-pr-lp5
• Hercules MCUs:  www.ti.com/herc-hitex-pr-lp3
• Hitex Development Tools: www.ti.com/herc-hitex-pr-lp4

TI's broad portfolio of microcontrollers (MCUs) and software
Leading the industry in MCUs for low-power, real-time control, safety and connectivity and, TI continues its 20+ years of microcontroller innovation to offer the broadest microcontroller portfolio in the industry: Ultra-low-power MSP MCUs, real-time control C2000™ MCUs,  Tiva™ ARM^® MCUs and Hercules™ ARM MCUs. Designers can accelerate time to market by tapping into TI's tools, software, wireless connectivity solutions, extensive Design Network offerings and technical support.

About Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is a global semiconductor design and manufacturing company that develops analog ICs and embedded processors.  By employing the world's brightest minds, TI creates innovations that shape the future of technology.  TI is helping more than 100,000 customers transform the future, today.  Learn more at www.ti.com.

Trademarks
Tiva, C2000, Hercules, SafeTI and Code Composer Studio are trademarks of Texas Instruments Incorporated.  All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

SOURCE Texas Instruments Incorporated