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Colibri T20 Timers

 
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Article updated at 28 Oct 2017
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The table below shows the hardware timers of the Colibri T20 and how they are mapped to operating system functions:

TimerWindows CE usageNotes
TMR1WatchdogRequired only if Windows CE watchdog is enabled
TMR2AVPRequired for multimedia playback
TMRUSInterrupts are not possible
TMR3ProfilingRequired for special debug scenarios only
TMR4System TickAlways occupied by Windows CE

The timer interrupts were reserved in Windows CE6/7 V1.0 and earlier, so it was not possible to register an interrupt on any of these timer events.

Later versions allow the use of TMR1 and TMR3, if the customer does not enable the related default functionality. Toradex recommends to use TMR3 for customer specific timer interrupts.

ARM Timers

In addition, each of the two CPU cores have a built-in private and global timer, which are not used by the system. Here's a link to ARM's documentation. See section Global timer, private timers, and watchdog registers.

TimerCPU coreNotes
Private TimerCore 1Independent countdown timer
Global TimerCore 1Common free-running counter between cores, separate control registers for each CPU core
Private TimerCore 2Independent countdown timer
Global TimerCore 2Common free-running counter between cores, separate control registers for each CPU core

There are several limitations if you want to use these timers:

  • The timers are clocked at 1/4 of the current CPU speed. So if dynamic frequency switching is enabled, the counter frequency changes accordingly.

  • Windows CE only allows interrupts on CPU core 1. So only the timers on core 1 can be used in interrupt mode. Information about the interrupt numbers can be found here.

  • Timers on core 1 use the same register address map as timers on core 2. If the code is executed on core 1, the timer on core 1 is accessed, and if the code is executed on core 2, the timer on core 2 is accessed.