Hi. Our company is familiar with bare-metal programming of C2000 MCUs for motor-control applications without any RTOS. We have our CANopen stack with DS402 profile. Now we need to implement EtherCAT for new compact servo-drive. Also to make fast current control loop we want to use MCU with higher frequency (maybe 200MHz of F28377 in not enough). So the question about MCU (or SoC) - which one to use?
We discovered that some Sitara processors have PRU-ICSS block with EtherCAT stack, but it required external DDR memory and flash memory. Our current C2000 motor-control solution required only 200KB for code and 10KB of RAM, so installing external chips may be overkill for this task, also big PCB is unwanted.
We have noticed DDR-less EtherCAT possibilities using AMIC110 or AM437x but this option looks like some hack (patching bootloader and etc.). And it is not clear which amount of internal RAM is used for EtherCAT PRU-ICSS and which amount is free for our motor-control application. Also, there is no one TI example of DDR-less EtherCAT + motorcontrol application on one Sitara chip - we have decided that it is somehow impossible.
So, for our current perspective, we see only these solutions:
1. To use C2000 + external Beckhoff ASIC. But it is not so fast (because of 200MHz MCU) and there are 2 chips.
2. To use AM437x + DDR + FLASH. It is relatively big, expensive and complex PCB which must be located near power transistors (external buses might be interfered by PWM). And it is definitely overkill for our needs.
Is there any SoC with onboard EtherCAT, RAM, FLASH suitable for motor-control application?