The TS-4300 is a TS-SOCKET macrocontroller board based on the Cavium CNS3410 ARM11 System on Chip CPU. The TS-4300 features 10/100 Ethernet, high speed USB host and device (OTG), and dual microSD card slots.

As a migration path we recommend evaluating the TS-4710 or TS-4740, which offers the same Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA

Hardware

The TS-4300 is a low profile, credit card sized TS-SOCKET macrocontroller module which features a 500MHz Cavium CSN3410 ARM11 SoC. The TS-4300 boots Linux from NOR flash in about half a second. It has 256MB of RAM and includes 2 microSD sockets to support our DoubleStore technology for an ultra reliable storage and boot medium. External devices can connect to the TS-4300 via PCIe, 10/100 Ethernet, USB host, USB OTG, I2C, SPI, UARTs, 16 or 8 bit address/data bus, GPIO, or any custom interface that can be added to the FPGA.

The TS-4300 targets high-bandwidth applications with the user programmable Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA with 25K LUT4 equivalent capacity (15K LUT6). This is connected to the ARM11 processor using a PCIe lane and the proprietary TS-PCIe core which allows for up to 8 bidirectional DMA channels and a maximum net bandwidth of up to 241MB/s. If the default FPGA does not meet your needs you can contact us with information on your requirements to use our FPGA services. We provide an opencore project which can be used as a base for customization. The reprogramming happens during startup of the TS-4300 through software so no custom cables or JTAG hardware is required.

Hardware features include:

• Ethernet MAC and PHY
• 1 USB host and 1 USB OTG
• Up to 6 UARTs (All auto-485 capable)
• 2 microSD card connectors featuring DoubleStore
• SPI
• PCIe
• CAN
• I2C
• I2S audio
• RTC*
• Up to 108 DIO/GPIO**
• Temperature Sensor
• Watchdog timer

TS-SOCKET Description

TS-SOCKET is an embedded computer standard designed and controlled by embeddedTS, Inc. It defines both a form factor and a connection pin-out and is based on two 100-pin low-profile connectors, allowing secure connection between a TS macrocontroller (CPU board) and a baseboard. Please refer to the TS-SOCKET Standard and Embedded Macrocontrollers resource for more information.

*External coin cell battery required.

** Depends on features used (I2C, I2S, SPI, UARTs, etc).

software

The TS-4300 SBC boots to Linux 3.4.0 from SD or the onboard SPI flash. A bootable microSD card may contain a Linux kernel image, an initial ramdisk image and a valid Linux root filesystem. The fast Linux bootup solution was optimized for speed and includes kernel, initrd, and filesystem (Busybox) tweaks. Since this board boots to an initrd (initial ramdisk) with a read-only mounted filesystem, it is possible to have something other than a shell prompt running after bootup by editing the /linuxrc shell script on the initrd. Additional TS-4300 software features include:

• Boots Linux 3.4.0 out-of-the-box in about half a second (to a shell prompt).
• MicroSD card pre-installed with Debian "Squeeze" Linux distribution.
• Un-brickable design ensures 100% recoverability from microSD card in case of on-board flash erasure.
• Startup Linux mini-root scripts allow flexible root and backup filesystem selection (microSD, NFS, USB flash), as well as software field upgrade support.
• PCIe API allows for simple integration of DMA into any application.

Linux OS and Debian Support

embeddedTS' TS-4300 ARM Systems on Modules (SoM) are compatible with a wide range of Operating Systems (OS's). The Linux choice is highly recommended and our products are totally integrated with the open-source vision. The board ships with Linux 3.4.0 kernel running out-of-the-box. There is no proprietary source code in the kernel since all the hardware specific functionalities are handled by user-space utilities (such as sdctl, spiflashctl, tsctl, xuartctl, etc.). The Linux kernel includes driver support for on-board hardware, enabling quick time to market of end-users applications. Examples and source codes are also available for downloading.

The compact initial ramdisk filesystem is based on Busybox and uClibc and is improved for performance and flexibility. Specific Linux scripts and utilities that handle the TS-4300 functions are included. In addition, the full Debian binaries and services are available from the initial ramdisk after mounting the microSD card.

Please contact embeddedTS for further information regarding Operating System and software support for this product.