A development kit, created by Rutronik, is intended to ensure security and performance when developing  proof-of-concept systems for AI-based applications. The RUTDevKit-STM32L5, can be used by hardware and firmware developers to implement Edge AI or Edge Intelligence to evaluate data generated by node devices. Evaluation is either in MCU platforms or close to the MCU-based embedded system. The distributor says that the kit contains all the necessary components for evaluation, drawn from its own portfolio.

It is based on the  low power STM32L562ZET6Q microcontroller. Itoperates at 110MHz and has a 32bit RISC-Core Arm Cortex-M33 with Arm TrustZone for hardware-based security. TrustZone provides a protected processing environment  for cyber protection and sensitive code, and an unprotected environment for the execution of untrusted code, to secure data during the inference phase of development. It also supports Secure Boot, for secure read and write protection for the integrated memory (64Mbit PSRAM and 128Mbit NOR flash) and cryptography acceleration. The technology can also include  I/O ports, a peripheral function and flash or SRAM regions. To support short latency periods, there is an Octo SPI which interfaces to PSRAM and a Quad SPI which interfaces to the NOR flash memory and there is also a fast ADC.

To expand the microcontroller memory, the kit enables an SD card to be used and there is a protected area to securely store both raw data and inference data of the AI model.

The kit also has CAN-FD and RS485 interface to quickly transmit large amounts of data, says the company. A USB-C power supply features protection IC, and low power functions which can be tested with a battery. There is also an on-board ST-LINK V2 debugger / programmer and Arduino interfaces for supplementary boards, such as an Anybus communication module that enables products to communicate via all common field buses and on industrial Ethernet networks, such as EtherCat.

The kit also includes software and sample firmware, including a TrustZone demo, a test mode demo for CAN-FD, an RS485 Modbus demo, a USB power supply and tamper detection demo, and a dual bank flash bootloader demo.