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DRA821U-Q1
  • DRA821U-Q1
  • DRA821U-Q1

DRA821U-Q1

ACTIVE

SoC with Dual Arm® Cortex®-A72, 4 port Ethernet, and 4 lane PCIe for networking and compute

Texas Instruments DRA821U-Q1 Product Info

1 April 2026 0

Parameters

CPU

2 Arm Cortex-A72

Frequency (MHz)

2000

Coprocessors

4 Arm Cortex-R5F

Protocols

Ethernet, TSN

PCIe

1 PCIe Gen 3

Features

Networking

Operating system

FreeRTOS, INTEGRITY, Linux, QNX, SafeRTOS, VxWorks, u-velOSity

Security

Cryptographic acceleration, Device attestation & anti-counterfeit, Hardware-enforced isolation, Secure boot, Secure debug, Secure storage, Software IP protection

TI functional safety category

Functional Safety-Compliant

Rating

Automotive

Power supply solution

LP8764-Q1, TPS6594-Q1

Operating temperature range (°C)

-40 to 125

Edge AI enabled

No

Package

FCBGA (ALM)-433-295.84 mm² 17.2 x 17.2

Features

Processor cores:

  • Dual 64-bit Arm Cortex-A72 microprocessor subsystem at up to 2.0 GHz, 24K DMIPS
    • 1MB L2 shared cache per dual-core Cortex-A72 cluster
    • 32KB L1 DCache and 48KB L1 ICache per A72 core
  • 4× Arm Cortex-R5F MCUs at up to 1.0 GHz with optional lockstep operation, 8K DMIPS
    • 32K I-Cache, 32K D-Cache, 64K L2 TCM
    • 2× Arm Cortex-R5F MCUs in isolated MCU subsystem
    • 2× Arm Cortex-R5F MCUs in general compute partition

    Memory subsystem:

  • 1MB of On-Chip L3 RAM with ECC and coherency
    • ECC error protection
    • Shared coherent cache
    • Supports internal DMA engine
  • External Memory Interface (EMIF) module with ECC
    • Supports LPDDR4 memory types that comply with the JESD209-4B specification. (No support for byte mode LPDDR4 memories, or memories with more than 17 row address bits)
    • Supports speeds up to 3200 MT/s
    • 32-bit and 16-bit data bus with inline ECC bus up to 12.8GB/s
  • General-Purpose Memory Controller (GPMC)
  • 512KB on-chip SRAM in MAIN domain, protected by ECC

    Virtualization:

  • Hypervisor support in Arm Cortex-A72
  • Independent processing subsystems with Arm Cortex-A72, Arm Cortex-R5F with isolated safety MCU island
  • IO virtualization support
    • Peripheral Virtualization Unit (PVU) for low latency high bandwidth peripheral traffic
  • Multi-region firewall support for memory and peripheral isolation
  • Virtualization support with Ethernet, PCIe, and DMA
  • Device security (on select part numbers):

  • Secure boot with secure runtime support
  • Customer programmable root key, up to RSA-4K or ECC-512
  • Embedded hardware security module
  • Crypto hardware accelerators – PKA with ECC, AES, SHA, RNG, DES and 3DES

    Functional Safety:

  • Functional Safety-Compliant targeted (on select part numbers)
    • Developed for functional safety applications
    • Documentation will be available to aid ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 functional safety system design up to ASIL-D/SIL-3 targeted
    • Systematic capability up to ASIL-D/SIL-3 targeted
    • Hardware integrity up to ASIL-D/SIL-3 targeted for MCU Domain
    • Hardware integrity up to ASIL-D/SIL-3 targeted for Extended MCU (EMCU) portion of the Main Domain
    • Hardware integrity up to ASIL-B/SIL-2 targeted for remainder of the Main Domain
    • FFI isolation provided between EMCU and the remainder of the Main Domain
    • Safety-related certification
      • ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 planned
  • AEC-Q100 qualified on part number variants ending in Q1
  • High-speed interfaces:

    • Integrated Ethernet TSN/AVB switch supporting up to 4 (DRA821U4) or 2 (DRA821U2) external ports:
      • One port supports 5Gb, 10Gb USXGMII/XFI
      • All ports support 2.5Gb SGMII
      • All ports support 1Gb SGMII/RGMII
      • DRA821U4: Any single port can support QSGMII (using all 4 internal ports)
      • Non-blocking wire-rate store and forward switch
      • InterVLAN (Layer3) routing support
      • Time synchronization support with IEEE 1588(annex D,E,F)
      • TSN/AVB support for traffic scheduling, shaping
      • Port mirroring feature for debug and diagnostics
      • Policing and rate limiting support
    • One RGMII/RMII port in safety MCU island
  • One PCI-Express Gen3 controller
    • Gen1, Gen2, and Gen3 operation with auto-negotiation
    • 4× lanes
  • One USB 3.1 Gen1 dual-role device subsystem
    • Supports type-C switching
    • Independently configurable as USB host, USB peripheral, or USB dual-role device

    Automotive interfaces:

  • Twenty CAN-FD ports
  • 12× Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART)
  • 11× Serial Peripheral Interfaces (SPI)
  • One 8-channel ADC
  • 10× Inter-Integrated Circuit ( I2C™)
  • 2× Improved Inter-Integrated Circuit ( I3C)

    Audio interfaces:

  • 3× Multichannel Audio Serial Port (McASP) modules

    Flash memory interfaces:

  • Embedded Multi Media Card ( eMMC™ 5.1) interface
    • Support speeds of up to HS400
  • One Secure Digital 3.0/Secure Digital Input Output 3.0 (SD3.0/SDIO3.0) interfaces
  • One Octal SPI / Xccela™ / HyperBus™ Memory Controller (HBMC) interface
  • 16-nm FinFET technology
  • 17.2 mm x 17.2 mm, 0.8 mm pitch, IPC Class 3 PCB

Processor cores:

  • Dual 64-bit Arm Cortex-A72 microprocessor subsystem at up to 2.0 GHz, 24K DMIPS
    • 1MB L2 shared cache per dual-core Cortex-A72 cluster
    • 32KB L1 DCache and 48KB L1 ICache per A72 core
  • 4× Arm Cortex-R5F MCUs at up to 1.0 GHz with optional lockstep operation, 8K DMIPS
    • 32K I-Cache, 32K D-Cache, 64K L2 TCM
    • 2× Arm Cortex-R5F MCUs in isolated MCU subsystem
    • 2× Arm Cortex-R5F MCUs in general compute partition

    Memory subsystem:

  • 1MB of On-Chip L3 RAM with ECC and coherency
    • ECC error protection
    • Shared coherent cache
    • Supports internal DMA engine
  • External Memory Interface (EMIF) module with ECC
    • Supports LPDDR4 memory types that comply with the JESD209-4B specification. (No support for byte mode LPDDR4 memories, or memories with more than 17 row address bits)
    • Supports speeds up to 3200 MT/s
    • 32-bit and 16-bit data bus with inline ECC bus up to 12.8GB/s
  • General-Purpose Memory Controller (GPMC)
  • 512KB on-chip SRAM in MAIN domain, protected by ECC

    Virtualization:

  • Hypervisor support in Arm Cortex-A72
  • Independent processing subsystems with Arm Cortex-A72, Arm Cortex-R5F with isolated safety MCU island
  • IO virtualization support
    • Peripheral Virtualization Unit (PVU) for low latency high bandwidth peripheral traffic
  • Multi-region firewall support for memory and peripheral isolation
  • Virtualization support with Ethernet, PCIe, and DMA
  • Device security (on select part numbers):

  • Secure boot with secure runtime support
  • Customer programmable root key, up to RSA-4K or ECC-512
  • Embedded hardware security module
  • Crypto hardware accelerators – PKA with ECC, AES, SHA, RNG, DES and 3DES

    Functional Safety:

  • Functional Safety-Compliant targeted (on select part numbers)
    • Developed for functional safety applications
    • Documentation will be available to aid ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 functional safety system design up to ASIL-D/SIL-3 targeted
    • Systematic capability up to ASIL-D/SIL-3 targeted
    • Hardware integrity up to ASIL-D/SIL-3 targeted for MCU Domain
    • Hardware integrity up to ASIL-D/SIL-3 targeted for Extended MCU (EMCU) portion of the Main Domain
    • Hardware integrity up to ASIL-B/SIL-2 targeted for remainder of the Main Domain
    • FFI isolation provided between EMCU and the remainder of the Main Domain
    • Safety-related certification
      • ISO 26262 and IEC 61508 planned
  • AEC-Q100 qualified on part number variants ending in Q1
  • High-speed interfaces:

    • Integrated Ethernet TSN/AVB switch supporting up to 4 (DRA821U4) or 2 (DRA821U2) external ports:
      • One port supports 5Gb, 10Gb USXGMII/XFI
      • All ports support 2.5Gb SGMII
      • All ports support 1Gb SGMII/RGMII
      • DRA821U4: Any single port can support QSGMII (using all 4 internal ports)
      • Non-blocking wire-rate store and forward switch
      • InterVLAN (Layer3) routing support
      • Time synchronization support with IEEE 1588(annex D,E,F)
      • TSN/AVB support for traffic scheduling, shaping
      • Port mirroring feature for debug and diagnostics
      • Policing and rate limiting support
    • One RGMII/RMII port in safety MCU island
  • One PCI-Express Gen3 controller
    • Gen1, Gen2, and Gen3 operation with auto-negotiation
    • 4× lanes
  • One USB 3.1 Gen1 dual-role device subsystem
    • Supports type-C switching
    • Independently configurable as USB host, USB peripheral, or USB dual-role device

    Automotive interfaces:

  • Twenty CAN-FD ports
  • 12× Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART)
  • 11× Serial Peripheral Interfaces (SPI)
  • One 8-channel ADC
  • 10× Inter-Integrated Circuit ( I2C™)
  • 2× Improved Inter-Integrated Circuit ( I3C)

    Audio interfaces:

  • 3× Multichannel Audio Serial Port (McASP) modules

    Flash memory interfaces:

  • Embedded Multi Media Card ( eMMC™ 5.1) interface
    • Support speeds of up to HS400
  • One Secure Digital 3.0/Secure Digital Input Output 3.0 (SD3.0/SDIO3.0) interfaces
  • One Octal SPI / Xccela™ / HyperBus™ Memory Controller (HBMC) interface
  • 16-nm FinFET technology
  • 17.2 mm x 17.2 mm, 0.8 mm pitch, IPC Class 3 PCB

Description

Jacinto™ DRA821x processors, based on the Armv8 64-bit architecture, are optimized for gateway systems with cloud connectivity. The System-on-Chip (SoC) design reduces system-level costs and complexity through integration—notably, a system MCU, functional safety and security features, and an Ethernet switch for high-speed communication. Integrated diagnostics and functional safety features are targeted to ASIL-D and SIL 3 certification requirements. Real-time control and low-latency communication are enabled by a PCIe controller and a TSN capable Gigabit Ethernet switch.

Up to four general-purpose Arm® Cortex®-R5F subsystems can handle low-level, timing-critical processing tasks and leave the Arm® Cortex®-A72 core unencumbered for advanced and cloud-based applications.

Jacinto DRA821x processors also include the concept of the Extended MCU (eMCU) domain. This domain is a subset of the processors and peripherals on the main domain targeted at higher functional safety enablement, such as ASIL-D/SIL-3. The functional block diagram highlights which IP are included in the eMCU. For more details about eMCU and functional safety, see the DRA821 Safety Manual Processors Texas Instruments Jacinto™ 7 Family of Products (SPRUIX4).

Jacinto™ DRA821x processors, based on the Armv8 64-bit architecture, are optimized for gateway systems with cloud connectivity. The System-on-Chip (SoC) design reduces system-level costs and complexity through integration—notably, a system MCU, functional safety and security features, and an Ethernet switch for high-speed communication. Integrated diagnostics and functional safety features are targeted to ASIL-D and SIL 3 certification requirements. Real-time control and low-latency communication are enabled by a PCIe controller and a TSN capable Gigabit Ethernet switch.

Up to four general-purpose Arm® Cortex®-R5F subsystems can handle low-level, timing-critical processing tasks and leave the Arm® Cortex®-A72 core unencumbered for advanced and cloud-based applications.

Jacinto DRA821x processors also include the concept of the Extended MCU (eMCU) domain. This domain is a subset of the processors and peripherals on the main domain targeted at higher functional safety enablement, such as ASIL-D/SIL-3. The functional block diagram highlights which IP are included in the eMCU. For more details about eMCU and functional safety, see the DRA821 Safety Manual Processors Texas Instruments Jacinto™ 7 Family of Products (SPRUIX4).

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