[HH] BeagleBone Black Has Arrived

[Tom Metro]

Nuno Sucena Almeida wrote:
> One very important detail you are forgetting, or better 2, are the PRU
> microcontroller cores that run at 200MHz, independently of the arm core...

I did notice the "2x 32-bit PRU microcontrollers" listed in the feature
list, but the only info I could dig up quickly was the Wikipedia
definition for PRU: "Programmable Real-Time Unit, a subsystem of certain
ARM microprocessors." And there is no further mention of it on their ARM
page.

So while I could infer from the name how that functionality might be
useful, I didn't know how it was actually being used, or how unique that
functionality is.


> ...which makes things like bit-banging in realtime, ethernetcat,
> etc very easy, without using any main core cpu cycles.

OK, makes sense.

How are these micros wired to the main CPU? Via some serial interface,
like I2C? What connectivity do they have to the outside world? Are they
driving the GPIO pins on the board? How do you load code into them?

I guess you could use one of them as an on-board watchdog.

 -Tom