TI launches Stellaris FPGA expansion board for DK-LM3S9B96 development kit

DALLAS, USA: Speeding the development of low-cost security access control systems and other applications that require a high-speed interface to external processing units, Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) has launched the new Stellaris FPGA Expansion Board for the DK-LM3S9B96 development kit.

The new board enables developers to easily evaluate the high bandwidth machine-to-machine (M2M) parallel interface capability of Stellaris microcontroller's (MCU) flexible External Peripheral Interface (EPI).

With data widths of up to 32 bits and data rates of up to 150 MB per second, the M2M mode of EPI was specifically developed to enable developers of low-cost security access control applications to interface cameras or low-resolution video with a Stellaris MCU that can provide cost-effective Ethernet communication of processed, encoded imagery.

In such systems, dedicated video processing is handled by an FPGA or DSP, and the encoded images are communicated via the on-chip Ethernet MAC+PHY of a Stellaris MCU. Right out of the box, the quickstart application on the expansion board allows developers to show the FPGA's camera-captured and FPGA-processed video on the large, 3.5-inch touchscreen display of the DK-LM3S9B96.