Hardware Design Guide for F2800x C2000™ Real-Time MCU Series

1 Hardware Design Guide for F2800x Devices

The third-generation family of C2000™ devices are powerful microcontrollers designed for complex systems where real-time control is essential, especially crucial in many automotive and industrial applications. These devices feature high-speed, low-latency integrated analog and control peripherals, allowing users to consolidate their controls and communication designs. This application report serves as guidance for developing hardware with these entry and mid-performance devices. In particular, information is provided for system level hardware design, part selection, schematic design, and layout recommendations. It is an essential guide for hardware developers using C2000 devices and helps streamline the design process while mitigating the potential for faulty designs. Key topics discussed include: power requirements, general-purpose input/output (GPIO) connections, analog inputs and ADC, clocking generation and requirements, and JTAG debugging, among many others. A useful checklist is provided in Section 6 which can be used to review schematic and layout designs.

Important: Of the third-generation of C2000 devices, this document only applies to the F280013x, F28002x, F28003x, and F28004x families. It does not apply to F2807x, F2837xS, F2837xD, F2838xS, and F2838xD.

Trademarks

C2000™ and Code Composer Studio™ are trademarks of Texas Instruments.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

1 Introduction

The C2000 family of real-time microcontrollers come in a range of performance packages with varying pin packages, flash size, performance, and feature sets. This large portfolio allows for a wide variety of applications in processing, sensing and actuation. All of the TMS320F2800x devices (F280013x, F28002x, F28003x, and F28004x) feature the industry-leading TMS320C28x 32-bit digital signal processor (DSP) core and run at frequencies of 100 MHz or higher. This, along with an arithmetically-tuned instruction set, allow the C2000 MCU to run floating or fixed-point code in ultra-low latency control systems. Performance-wise, the entry and mid-performance F2800x devices range in flash sizes up to 384KB and have RAM sizes up to 100KB.

The increase in processing power and advancements in power-reduction have allowed for extremely capable devices, but have also greatly increased the complexity of designing with the C2000 MCUs. While the C2000 family of microcontrollers still remains a very scalable device, these advancements come with additional analog challenges. What is the optimal device for my system? What additional components should be added to increase stability? What layout considerations should be taken to maximize device performance? All of this information, as well as other key criteria, are outlined in this application report.

Note: The current revisions on all device-specific data manuals take precedence over the information/data in this report. This document offers guidance on best practices when designing systems with F2800x microcontrollers. For detailed device information, see the device-specific data sheet and technical reference manuals.

2 Typical F2800x System Block Diagram

A diagram of a typical C2000-based control system is pictured in Figure 2-1. The microcontroller is powered through a power supply system that accommodates the primary voltage rails, which include a 3.3 V analog voltage (VDDA), 3.3 V digital voltage (VDDIO), and a 1.2 V core power rail (VDD). The C2000 device offers rich peripheral support, and C2000-based systems typically consist of the following circuitry connected to the MCU: power management, signal conditioning of analog inputs, crystal or external oscillator, reset circuitry, communication transceivers, external interface to digital IO pins, digital sensing, pulse width modulation (PWM) interface/drivers, and any other required supporting circuitry.

Figure 2-1 Typical TMS320F2800x System

These TMS320F2800x MCUs are complex devices, which make creating a custom well-designed board that utilizes many of the integrated peripherals a great challenge. Though not all of the included peripherals are necessary relevant in all cases, it remains imperative to become familiar with the C2000 device prior to attempting a design. Great care must be taken throughout the entire process to ensure the best and most optimized device performance. The areas which remain especially challenging include being careful about all of the different internal blocks running at different frequencies, maintaining signal integrity amongst all onboard analog signals, and EMI/EMC considerations.