High-Performance Peripherals

1.7 High-Performance Peripherals

High-performance peripherals are included on-chip, which offload CPU proc- essing and control functions from the core to further improve the overall device efficiency and throughput. On-chip peripherals include additional SRAM, a 32-bit accumulator, an SPI-compatible serial port with a FIFO buffer, dual USARTs, on-chip power-on reset, brownout reset, low-voltage detect, multiple digital ports with configurable I/O, a 16-bit pulse width modulator (PWM), a watchdog timer, and three timer/counters.

For instance, the SPI interface uses a FIFO buffer, which allows for the serial transmission and reception of data with virtually no CPU overhead. The FIFO buffer function allows for the transfer of large amounts of data at faster transfer rates than more conventional methods.

Additionally, the 32-bit accumulator significantly reduces the processing over- head for the multiple byte data from the ADC or other sources. This allows for 24-bit addition, subtraction, and shifting to be accomplished without using CPU resources. This can reduce both the code size and code execution time.

1-14

Page 26
Image 26
Texas Instruments MSC1210 manual High-Performance Peripherals