Texas Instruments Introduces Starter Kit Speeds Development for Greener Industrial Applications

Texas Instruments has made it easy for engineers to evaluate and develop software on its recently introduced floating-point TMS320F2833x digital signal controllers (DSCs) by introducing the F28335 eZdsp starter kit. Now sampling, the F28335 controller is the industry's first floating-point DSC, supplying developers of industrial systems with the inherent floating-point advantages of performance and simplified software development over fixed-point devices. In addition to these digital processing solutions, TI offers engineers a broad portfolio of complementary analog solutions for development of greener variable speed motor control, digital power supplies and intelligent sensing applications.

The F28335 eZdsp starter kit, produced by Spectrum Digital, Inc., a member of the TI DSP Third Party Network, is a stand-alone tool that provides developers a platform to easily develop software for the F2833x controllers. Only $495, this low-cost development platform provides all the hardware and software necessary for evaluation and software development, ultimately cutting design cycle time and associated costs.

The F28335 eZdsp comes complete with an F28335 target board, TI's Code Composer Studio(TM) Integrated Development Environment (version 3.3), universal AC power adapter and USB cable. The target board features the 150MHz/300 MFLOPS F28335 DSC with 512KB flash and 68KB RAM, 128Kx16 off-chip SRAM.

The simplified software development and performance boost common to floating-point processors offer better power efficiency for greener industrial applications. For example, the F2833x devices enable variable speed alternating current (AC) drives, which use one-eighth the energy compared to constant speed counterparts. The floating-point devices also enable clean energy through solar power inverters that more efficiently convert energy from photovoltaic (PV) panels.