ETRAX CRIS

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The ETRAX CRIS is a RISC ISA and series of CPUs designed and manufactured by Axis Communications for use in embedded systems since 1993.[1] The name is an acronym of the chip's features: Ethernet, Token Ring, AXis - Code Reduced Instruction Set. Token Ring support has been taken out from the latest chips as it has become obsolete.

Types of chips[edit]

The CGA-1 (Coax Gate Array) was the first microprocessor developed by Axis Communications. It contains IBM 3270 (coax) and IBM 5250 (Twinax) communications. The chip has a microcontroller and various I/O's such as serial and parallel. The CGA-1 chip was designed by Martin Gren and Staffan Göransson.[2]

An Elphel Reconfigurable Network Camera based on ETRAX FS CPU and Xilinx Spartan 3e FPGA.
A FOX board LX 4+16 (4 MB flash and 16 MB SDRAM).

ETRAX[edit]

  • In 1993, Axis developed the ETRAX-1 Ethernet Controller, which has 10 Mbit/s Ethernet and Token Ring controllers.
  • In 1995, Axis introduced the ETRAX-4 SoC which contains a Ethernet Controller, CPU, Memory Interface, SCSI controller, and parallel and serial I/O. [3]
  • In 1997, Axis introduced the ETRAX 100 SoC which features a 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet Controller, ATA controller, and Wide SCSI controller. The chip introduced on-chip unified instruction and data cache along with direct memory access.[4]

ETRAX 100LX[edit]

In 2000, Axis Introduced the ETRAX 100LX SoC which features a MMU, USB controller, and SDRAM interface. The CPU is capable of 100 MIPS. The chip is able to run the Linux kernel without modifications except for low-level support.[5] The chip's maximum TDP is 0.35 Watts. As of Linux kernel 4.17, the architecture has been dropped due to being obsolete.[6]

Specifications:

  • 32-bit RISC CPU core
  • 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet controller
  • 4 asynchronous serial ports
  • 2 synchronous serial ports
  • 2 USB ports
  • 2 Parallel ports
  • 4 ATA (IDE) ports
  • 2 Narrow SCSI ports (or 1 Wide)
  • Support for SDRAM, Flash, EEPROM, SRAM

ETRAX 100LX MCM[edit]

The ETRAX 100LX MCM is based on the ETRAX 100 LX. The chip has internal flash memory, SDRAM, and an Ethernet PHYceiver. The Chip can come with 2 MB flash and 8 MB SDRAM or 4 MB flash and 16 MB SDRAM.

ETRAX FS[edit]

Introduced in 2005 with full Linux 2.6 support, the chip features:

  • A 200 MIPS 32-bit RISC CRIS CPU core with 16 kB instruction and data cache
  • 128 kB on-chip RAM
  • Two 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet controllers
  • Crypto accelerator supporting AES, DES, Triple DES, SHA-1, and MD5
  • I/O processor supporting PC-Card, PCI, USB, SCSI and ATA

References[edit]

  1. ^ axis.com - Axis Chip Development History Archived May 30, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ "30 years of milestones" (PDF). Axis Communications.
  3. ^ Zander, Per. "Axis Communications - A World Of Intelligent Networks" (PDF).
  4. ^ "ETRAX 100: technical specifications". 1999-01-01. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. ^ The linux kernel source-code under /arch/cris contained the low-level CPU-specific additions required to make the Linux kernel able to run on the ETRAX/Cris CPUs. (See for example https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch/cris?h=v4.13-rc4)
  6. ^ "Linux-Kernel Archive: [PATCH 00/16] remove eight obsolete architectures".

External links[edit]