Application notes on external bus usage for the MPC5674F

[gabrielmarques]

The MPC5674F is a bit poor in details about the External Bus Interface, and I was unable to find trough Freescale forums or the associated literature of that microcontroller an application note or better explanation on the usage of that feature.

Most the ANs and reference designs are targeting the usage of the embedded peripherals of the powertrain family of MCUs, not the EBI.

Can one point me out to some literature like the AN2708 but targeted to the MPC5674F?

Even if it is an external project (not from NXP).

Does the "EBI... for calibration and application development" note on the datasheet means it should not be used for interfacing to peripherals on final products?

[davidtosenovjan · Accepted solution]

Basically there are two different things:

1) External Bus Interface

2) Calibration Bus

First to point number 2:

Calibration bus is being used in relation to VertiCal solution what is such mechanical set composed by PCB and connectors as you can see on Figure 1 of following document:

http://www.nxp.com/files/32bit/doc/ref_manual/VertiCalRM.pdf

Calibration bus has always the biggest package which is not offered to mass market. Vertical system uses this package and splits up its pads into two sets of pins - one is directed downwards (and is supposed to replace smaller production packages) and the second one is directed upwards (and is supposed to SRAM daughter board connection).

The whole system is used by automotive customers to extend available memory size during development phase meanwhile their PCB design stays unchanged and prepared for production package.

Now some notes to point no.1:

What MPC5674F offers is External Bus Interface what’s common parallel bus being used for connection of external NOR flashes, SRAMs and other memory mapped peripherals like external Ethernet controllers, FPGAs and so on…

For instance if you see here (schematic of our evaluation board), page 3, you will see external SRAM connected to MPC5674F’s EBI module.

http://www.axman.com/sites/default/files/MPC567XADAT516_SCH_D.pdf

So yes, it can be used for interfacing to peripherals on final products.

EBI module is more or less the same over all 55xx, 56xx and 57xx devices, although certain differences exist. I could recommend following documents -

Using the External Bus Interface (EBI) on the MPC5510:

http://www.nxp.com/files/32bit/doc/app_note/AN3773.pdf

Interfacing GSI Sync SRAMs to a Freescale Multiplexed MPC567xF Microcontroller:

http://gsitechnology.com/AppNotes/AN1020.pdf

Also I have written External Bus Interface FAQs that can be founded here on community:

External Bus Interface FAQs