@Tim Edwards Hello Tim I have watched your presentation on Caravan. You mentioned the we only have 11 Pads dedicated for analog, right? So how about if I need more than 11 pads for analog, is it possible? Thanks

It is possible to use any of the GPIOs 8 to 38 as an analog signal pad by setting up the program on the SPI flash to turn off both the GPIO input and output buffers, leaving the pad in a high-impedance state. The restriction is that the bandwidth is limited to about 50MHz and the voltage is limited to ~3.3V maximum. The 11 dedicated pads do not have restrictions (also they do not have ESD, so the designer must be careful about that).

@Tim Edwards Thanks. So setting up the program on the SPI flash, is it during the design integration into Caravan or after I receive the evaluation board. Also, the GPIO 8 to 38, if I used any as an analog pads, do I need ESD for that or they are protected already? Thanks!

You would want to create a C program to run on the SPI flash and test that as part of your top-level simulations. Assuming that all the program needs to do is to configure the GPIO and go into an infinite loop, you should be able to use the same hex file generated from compiling that C code on your evaluation board as well as in the simulations. All the GPIO pads are very well protected for ESD.

@Tim Edwards Thanks Tim! So just to double check, all the 8-38 pads are ESD protected. Only the 8 of the 11 dedicated analog pads that need to be ESD protcetion which is a designer responsibility, right? Thanks again!

That's right.