MCUs target motor control for the IoT era
25 February 2015
DSP, Micros & Memory
Freescale Semiconductor’s new Kinetis KV5x microcontroller (MCU) family is harnessing the full performance potential of the ARM Cortex-M7 core to enable far-reaching design enhancements in the expansive and rapidly evolving digital motor control market.
Electric motors remain the number one source of electricity consumption globally. With the vast majority of deployed motors commonly based on outdated, inefficient technologies, the migration toward digital-based control systems with secure networking capabilities presents a significant opportunity for both energy conservation and end-product feature innovation.
The Kinetis KV5x MCU addresses this by combining leading-edge processing power, sophisticated analog and timing peripherals, and new connectivity, security and safety features. It brings increased motor efficiency, remote system management and end-node interoperability via the Internet of Things (IoT) to a vast range of applications, from home appliances to complex industrial drives.
The MCU incorporates an IEEE 1588 Ethernet controller, a cryptographic acceleration unit with random number generator and a memory protection unit. With motors often employed in safety-critical environments such as manufacturing process control, these features allow developers to implement new services via the IoT infrastructure while protecting against erroneous inputs that could lead to an undesired operating condition.
The KV5x features a 240 MHz ARM Cortex-M7 core with single precision floating-point unit. This executes program code from up to 1 MB of on-chip Flash memory via a 256-bit wide interface that minimises CPU wait states. 128 KB of data tightly coupled memory (DTCM) and 64 KB of instruction TCM (ITCM) maximise high-performance deterministic processing, ensuring optimum response for real-time motor speed and position detection.
With four high-speed 12-bit ADCs, each capable of sampling at 5 MSps, this MCU family can support fully asynchronous, dual three-phase motor control with two dedicated ADCs and 8-channel PWMs per motor. Dual 12-channel eFlexPWMs also support 312 picosecond resolution for driving up to eight half-bridge power stages in power conversion applications.
KV5x MCU samples are planned for availability in Q2 2015, with production-qualified products planned for late Q3 2015.
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