TI TMS320C6713 Getting Started

Session F1B1

Getting A Jump Start With the TI TMS320C6713

Digital Signal Processor

James E. Cross

Electrical Engineering Department

Southern University, Baton Rouge, LA. 70813

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Southern University is upgrading its Digital Signal Processing Laboratory with Texas Instruments
TMS320C6713 (C6713) Digital Signal Processor Starter Kits (DSKs). The TMS320C6000 Digital
Signal Processor (DSP) series is Texas Instrument’s most powerful DSP processor. The C6713 is the
latest in this series. A number of wide bandwidth analog expansion daughter boards are also being
installed as part of this laboratory upgrade. During the 1980’s, with the continuous increasing
speed of digital computers, it became apparent that digital signal processing would become a
viable alternative to analog signal processing. In recognizing this trend, digital signal processing
lecture and laboratory courses were introduced into the Electrical Engineering curriculum at
Southern University during the early 1990’s. Both Motorola and Texas Instruments digital signal
processors have been used in the laboratory. The DSP boards have included an analog to digital
converter to digitize the signal and a digital to analog converter to change the signal back to the
analog form after processing. Digital signal processors are special purpose microprocessors with
architecture and instruction set especially designed for real-time signal processing. The TI
C6713 DSK is a stand alone development system having all necessary parts to perform
experiments. The kit includes a floating-point digital signal processor and a 32-bit stereo codec
TLV320AIC23 (AIC23) with variable sampling rates from 8 kHz to 96 kHz for A/D and D/A
conversion. The architecture of the C6713 includes 264KB of internal memory, eight functional
or execution units composed of six ALUs and two multiplier units, a 32-bit address bus to
address 4GB (gigabytes) of memory, and two sets of 32-bit general-purpose registers. Various
types of filters being studied in the lecture are designed and tested with this equipment. The TI
Code Composer is included for software development using the C language. However, additional
support software can be very helpful in getting started with laboratory work. The information
presented in this paper will provide a jump start for those who purchase this equipment.

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ABSTRACT

Proceedings of the 2005 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

Introduction

A course in Digital Signal Processing has become standard in many Electrical and Computer
Engineering curricula. As with other topics, the learning process is greatly enhanced when
laboratory experiments accompany material being presented in the lecture. Many universities
are therefore adding a real-time DSP lab to accompany the DSP lecture. The DSP lab at Southern
University has been in the curriculum for over ten years. The laboratory has been taught using
Texas Instruments TMS320C25, C31, and C6211 DSPs, and with the Motorola DSP56000 DSP.
The TI C6713 is the latest and most advanced TI DSP. We have upgraded our laboratory with
twenty of the C6713 DSKs. TI has a very viable University Relations Program and is
aggressively promoting the C6713 DSK. As a result, a number of universities are beginning to
design their DSP laboratory around this kit. The objective of this paper is to assist other faculty
members in placing this kit into operation with the least amount of difficulty.

A number of TI third party vendors market the C6713 DSK. A Technical Reference Manual and
a CD with software is supplied with the kit. The Technical Manual provides a description of the
C6713 DSK, describing the operation of the major board components, the physical layout and
the connectors. The software CD is the TMS320C6000

TH

Code Composer Studio. There is a file
on the CD in the documents (docs) folder with the title “TMS320C6000 Code Composer Studio
Manuals”. It contains many (but not all) TI C6000 DSPs manuals. These manuals, and others,
can also be found on the TI Internet website. One document listed under “Application Reports”
is report number SPRA474 with the title

How to Begin Development Today With the
TMS3206211 DSP. Several other documents give information on C6000 DSPs in general.
However, none of the documents on the CD has C6713 as part of their title. This is undoubtedly
because the C6713 has been available for less than two years. A document, SPRA809, is found
on the TI website with the title

How to Begin Development Today With the TMS320C6713
Floating-Point DSP. However, this document does not present actual experiments. Instead, it
gives general information such as a comparison between the various C6000 DSPs, sources of
support, etc. TI recently announced the availability of a free Teaching ROM for the
TMS320C6000 DSPs. However, shortly thereafter (early January 2005) TI states that due to its
popularity, there is a back-order and it will be delivered as soon as the stock is replenished. As
an alternate source for finding teaching material, other persons who have experience using this
kit should be sought. A few faculty members have posted their preliminary laboratories on the
Internet. A limited number of persons have published books with practical teaching material.
One such person is Dr. Rulph Chassaing. Over the last ten years, he has taught DSP workshops
for other faculty members, such workshops being sponsored by the National Science Foundation
and Texas Instruments. He has published books on the TI TMS320C25, C30, C31 and C6x. His
latest book with the title

Digital Signal Processing and Applications with the C6713 and C6416
became available during December 2004. This is an excellent resource for getting started with
the C6713 DSK. The material presented below is mainly based on the first two chapters of this
text.

Proceedings of the 2005 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

Equipment and Parts Needed to Get Started

A rather modern computer is needed so as to meet the minimum hardware requirements. These
minimum requirements for configuration are given in a Quick Start Installation Guide. The DSK
is a desktop board with dimensions of approximately 5 inches by 8 inches. A USB (serial) cable
is supplied to connect the host computer to the DSK. The board also ships with a 5 volt external
power supply. On board is a 32-bit stereo codec TLV320AIC23 (AIC23) with variable sampling
rates from 8 kHz to 96 kHz for A/D and D/A conversion. The codec has two input connections
and two output connections for interfacing to the analog world. These are the microphone input,
the line input, the line output and the headphone output. The minimum requirements to get
started will be a pair of headphones or a set of speakers. This will be sufficient for the first set of
experiments as will be discussed in the next section. A signal generator and an oscilloscope will
be needed to perform most of the experiments. However, to get started, the output from a CD
player (or similar device such as a small keyboard) can be used as the input and a set of speakers
can be used for the output. As mentioned above, a CD with the Code Composer Studio (CCS) is
shipped with the DSK. The CCS provides an integrated development environment (IDE) for
developing, debugging and executing programs. The beginner should write programs using the C
language (rather than assembly language), compile, link and execute the programs. This and
more can be done using CCS. It also has graphical capabilities for plotting results. An initial set
of experiments are provided to make certain that the DSP board is operating properly.

Initial Experiments with the DSK: Checking it Out

Use the CD provided to install the Code Composer Software (CCS) on your PC using the Quick
Start Installation Guide. Use the director c:\C6713 when installing the software rather than the
default director c:\ti if you wish to be able to use the exact instructions given later for locating
and loading files. An icon for Code Composer should be created on the desktop. You can either
connect headphones to the headphone output jack or speakers to the line output jack or both
headphones and speakers can be connected. It will be assumed that speakers will be used. (If you
have speakers connected to your computer, you can simply disconnect them and connect them to
the DSK instead). The DSK has 4 addressable LEDs and 4 addressable DIP switches which
provide a simple way to communicate with the board. The LEDs are given labels from 0 to 3 and
the switches are given labels from 0 to 3. Connect the power supply to the DSK and use the USB
cable to connect the DSK to the host computer. As a self-test, when the power is connected, the
4 LEDs will blink 3 times and then stay on. In addition, a 1 kHz signal will sound through the
speakers for about a second. The DSK is functioning OK if it passes this test.

Launch Code Composer Studio by double clicking on the CCS icon. Note that the power should
be on to the DSK and the USB cable connected when CCS is launched. If it is not connected, a
message will appear stating that it was not possible to initialize the DSK. The 4 LEDs will turn

Proceedings of the 2005 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education