In industrial motor drive system, multiple devices or chips are often required to communicate with each other in a quick speed, low-latency and synchronized manner. One typical application example is closed-loop control with two different Micro-programmed Control Unit (MCU). To receive and transmit data in every control cycle, the communication timing needs to be deterministic and synchronous.

The Industrial Ethernet Peripheral (IEP) Module which is part of the Programmable Real-time Unit and Industrial Communication Subsystem (PRU_ICSS) features an industrial Ethernet timer to perform hardware work for real-time control.

This application note describes how to use IEP timer and PRU cores to perform time synchronization between chips and transmitting data with configurable timing under control cycle via Fast Serial Interface (FSI) for closed-loop motor control.