Ultimate DSP Solutions
TORNADO AMC MMC Gen 2 Software Development Kit for MMC Controllers of AdvancedMC (AMC) Modules
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Key features
Benefits
Details
Technical Support and Services
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 Block Diagram of the TAMMC® based MMC firmware (click to enlarge)
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Overview
Module Management Controller (MMC) is a must on-board component of every PICMG® AMC.0 compliant Advanced Mezzanine Card module (AdvancedMC, AMC), as it is stated in PICMG® 3.0 Rev.3.0 and AMC.0 R2.0 specifications (www.picmg.org). The MMC communicates detailed information about the AMC to the upper-level management controller, which includes the manufacturer name, p/n, specifications compliance, backplane I/O ports details, power consumption, sensors details, etc. The MMC is also responsible for the AMC activation and system health monitoring under the control of the upper-level controller.
Although the MMC hardware design is rather simple, the MMC firmware design is not as simple as it may seem at a first glance because it requires detailed knowledge of multiple tightly coupled industry standard specifications and clear understanding of system data flow and synchronization. This becomes even more complicated in the event the hardware design engineer designs an all in one and has the requirements to add other important board management tasks to the AMC on-board microcontroller going beyond AMC MMC compliance. These add-on tasks may include backend power management, extended board temperature and "health" monitoring, communication with on-board processors, management of installed VITA57 FMC submodules, and many more in order to increase system reliability and safety and to extend microcontroller functionality beyond MMC compliance by taking advantage of all the highly integrated resources of the microcontroller chip used to implement the AMC MMC.
Estimation of a total AMC MMC firmware project release time indicates about 8-15 months of employment for an experienced programmer starting from scratch with learning the specifications and ultimately delivering minimal functional, debugged MMC firmware code. However, this does not guarantee that all bugs are fixed and assumes no full featured documentation is released for further project management and support.
Isn’t it worth it to look at a market ready well debugged and documented AMC MMC code instead?
MicroLAB Systems has recognized this problem and introduces the TAMMC® SDK (TORNADO AMC MMC Software Development Kit), which is an extremely easy to use and proven off-the-shelf building block to quickly add AMC MMC functionality to the on-board microcontroller of your newly designed and redesigned AMC modules.
Not only is the TAMMC SDK a must have, second to none tool for companies that are designing their first AMC modules, but, it is also a useful tool for those companies who already have AMC module design experience and want to bring their AMC on-board MMCs to a next firmware level with complex real-time system management and control going beyond basic AMC MMC compliance.
The TAMMC SDK is royalty free, well structured and accurately documented C-code, which is bundled with a TAMMC Multi-platform EVM AMC-module for immediate testing of developed MMC firmware.
The TAMMC is deployed on all MMC controllers of AMC-modules from MicroLAB Systems, which feature safe and reliable functionality and are designed for operation in 24/7 industrial environments.
MMC platforms
First release of TAMMC SDK came in '2015 and supported low-cost, low power, highly integrated, space saving 8-bit Atmel AVR XMEGA microcontrollers. This MMC platform is great and remains a recommended MMC platform for most AMC-modules.
As an example, minimal TAMMC project perfectly fits into the Atmel AVR XMEGA 4KB RAM and 46KB of program memory in case nothing else other than minimal AMC MMC functionality is required. Low-cost Atmel ATxmega128A4U-MH 44-pin chip with on-chip 8KB RAM and 128KB FLASH memory is sufficient to accommodate this design with only 7x7mm of valuable board space occupied.
However, small on-chip memory capacity, low performance and lack of on-chip EMAC do not allow the AVR XMEGA microcontrollers to meet tough requirements for MMC controllers of state-of-the-art AMC-modules with the cutting edge FPGA and FMC+ sites, which typically require high-performance real-time complicated system management and complicated math computing at the top-level MMC firmware along with basic TAMMC MMC functionality.
This issue was addressed in TAMMC Gen2 SDK (released in '2019), which added support for MMC with 32-bit ARM Cortex-M cores. The ARM based MMC platforms deliver dramatic enhancement for MMC performance and functional capabilities, especially in case industrial grade RTOS is used.
More MMC platforms are expected to be added in future TAMMC releases.
Software structure and components
The TAMMC SDK is a RTOS-based multitasking environment. The RTOS takes care of scheduling the TAMMC tasks, which are designed to be unblocking tasks each consuming only a minimum of the microcontroller’s valuable time. This allows releasing the maximum amount of microcontroller time for execution of top-level firmware with multiple system control and management tasks.
As default, the TAMMC SDK comes with an open source, compact, royalty free FreeRTOS® operating system from Amazon Web Services (AWS), former Real Time Engineers Ltd (before '2017). This RTOS is supported for all MMC platforms of TAMMC SDK and delivers adequate reliability and medium system and networking performance.
However, open source RTOSs are provided 'as is' and are known to be not optimized, not well tuned for high system and networking performance, and do not have technical support in principal. As long as it does not matter, then all is well. However, this is may be an insurmountable obstacle for design of high-performance industry grade firmware for MMC controllers with further certification requirement to comply the industry grade demanding applications.
This issue was addressed in TAMMC Gen2 SDK ('2019), which introduced TAMMC/ThreadX SDK toolkit based on commercial high-performance pre-certified industry-grade Microsoft Azure ThreadX® RTOS. Not only the TAMMC/ThreadX SDK with ThreadX® RTOS and its NetX®, NetXDuo®, FileX® middleware allows to develop industry-grade MMC firmware for demanding industrial applications with further product certification (UL, TUV), it also provides the highest performance vs known open source RTOSs. This is approved by Thread Metric test (RTOS performance and quality) and IPERF test (throughput of the RTOS networking option), which have been conducted in MicroLAB Systems.
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The TAMMC/ThreadX SDK toolkit comes in several configurations with special pricing schedule, which allows "iterative" development of high-performance industry-grade MMC firmware upon user requirements and budget with further product certification for demanding applications. Contact MicroLAB Systems Sales or your local distributor for more details.
The most attractive option with the TAMMC SDK is the opportunity to be easily integrated as only one of many building blocks into top-level complex MMC firmware for AMC-module, which provides AMC MMC functionality as only one of its many tasks. The MicroLAB Systems TORNADO-A6678 DSP/FPGA AMC module is a good example. It populates the Atmel 64-pin ATxmega256A3U chip (16KB RAM, 256KB FLASH) with only 9x9mm footprint as a full featured board management controller providing AMC MMC compliance, accurate on-board power management and monitoring, extended temperature monitoring, power and temperature health status indication via AMC LED1/LED2, sending notifications to the on-board DSP, communication with DSP, remote management COM-port console, and many more features. All this significantly increases AMC module reliability and safety.
The TAMMC supports run-time notification messages (RTM) and run-time debug messages (DM), which are enabled individually for every TAMMC task and can be also globally enabled/disabled. DMs are useful during hardware debugging to dump incoming/outgoing IPMI packets, display received IPMI commands and events, activity tracking, etc, whereas RTMs are useful in the final firmware release to indicate ongoing MMC events and exceptional conditions. Both DMs and RTMs are output either via local TAMMC UART Console or via UART console of top-level MMC firmware.
Portability
Porting the TAMMC onto user hardware is as easy as editing several lines inside local OEM port file including localization of manufacturer name, board name and p/n, board revision, number of temperature sensors and their names, sensors parameters, hardware mapping of macros, i.e. actually as much as it is required by user AMC module design. However, minimal porting to just check functionality requires no editing at all.
All TAMMC features along with the device specific IPMI SDR and FRU data records are individually configured for each MMC firmware project. The configuration is kept local for the project inside TAMMC project configuration file.
Evaluation platform
The TAMMC Gen2 SDK comes with a TAMMC Multi-platform EVM rev.2A mid-size AMC module for MMC firmware debugging and immediate testing. All supported MMC platforms are included.
Included on-board are AMC BLUE LED and AMC LED1/LED2, USB COM-port for the TAMMC UART console, temperature monitor, backend power controller, general purpose LEDs and GPIO header. The temperature monitor chip supports built-in PCB temperature sensor and connectors for two supplied external temperature sensors at a 30cm (12”) long cable in order to simulate and test different temperature environments.
For extended MMC functionality, the TAMMC Multi-platform EVM includes 4-channel 1GbE switch with front-panel RJ45 port and front-panel microSD slot. These options are supported by the ARM MMC platforms only.
The TAMMC EVM allows an immediate check of ported AMC MMC functionality, to observe and fine tune MMC temperature event generation, to simulate functionality of backend power supplies, i.e. as much as designer imagination can advise to do. Full schematic, BOM and manual are included.
Technical Support and Optional Services
The TAMMC SDK and TAMMC EVM board are covered by the lifetime warranty and full featured lifetime technical support and software updates.
Optional Custom Design service is available to design a full featured complete MMC hardware environment and full featured TAMMC-based MMC firmware upon Customer specifications. This service allows to minimize time-to-market for Customer designed AMC-module(s) with full-featured MMC firmware including standard MMC functionality in accordance with IPMI and PICMG® specifications and optional Customer specified functionality including backend power supply management, temperature monitoring, console I/O, AMC LEDs and on-board LEDs control, FMC control and management, and many other mandatory and optional components for safe and reliable functionality of AMC-module. The TAMMC SDK and TAMMC EVM board are included with this service. Call MicroLAB Systems Sales or your local distributor for more details.
Optional Custom Design service is available to generate MMC firmware with minimal TAMMC-based MMC functionality upon Customer AMC-module hardware specifications with further MMC chip serialization and programming for each product batch. This provides fastest possible time-to-market for Customer designed AMC-module(s) without the need to have full-featured MMC firmware. Although NRE charges apply, this low-cost service is perfect for most AMC-modules, which only require correct activation and management inside MicroTCA chassis or at AdvancedTCA carrier board. Neither TAMMC SDK nor TAMMC EVM board are included with this service. Call MicroLAB Systems Sales or your local distributor for more details.
Ordering Info
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TAMMC-SDK |
Multi-platform TAMMC Gen2 SDK with FreeRTOS® RTOS environment. Includes source code, programming manual, TAMMC Multi-platform EVM rev.2A board with manual, demo projects. | |
| TAMMC-CDS | Custom Design service for development of complete AMC on-board MMC hardware and firmware on Customer specifications. Includes TAMMC-SDK item. | |
| TAMMC-M0-CDS | Low-cost custom design service for porting of minimal TAMMC MMC functionality to user AMC-module hardware with further MMC chips serialization and programming. TAMMC-SDK item is not included. |
(*) - Contact MicroLAB Systems Sales or your local distributor for available configurations and prices for TAMMC/ThreadX SDK toolkit with pre-certified ThreadX® RTOS from ExpressLogic Inc for development of high-performance industrial-grade demanding applications.
Datasheets and Application Materials
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TAMMC® SDK Datasheet | |
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Presentation "PICMG® MicroTCA Standard and its Specifics for DSP Applications" (Rus) | |
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Presentation "TORNADO-MTCA DSP Systems in MicroTCA Standard" (Rus) | |
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Presentation "TASDK® Software Development Tools for TORNADO-MTCA DSP Systems" (Rus) |
last update: 12 Aug 2024 19:08