Freescale has introduced a family of DSCs (digital signal controllers) that are designed to provide energy-efficient motor control at an economic price. The MC56F8006 family helps to reduce development expenses and power consumption for a wide range of motor control and motor drive applications, including appliances. The advanced motor control and power conversion capabilities offered by these DSCs can significantly improve the efficiency, reliability and energy savings of appliances. The DSC family's combination of price, performance, peripherals and energy efficiency makes it suitable for power- and cost-sensitive motor control applications, such as three-phase BLDC motors, variable frequency drives, permanent magnet synchronous motors and handheld tool motors. For example, a washing machine motor, digitally controlled by a DSC, can enable efficient agitation cycles that use less water and short spin cycles to reduce drying time and energy consumption.
The DSCs combine the functionality of an MCU (microcontroller) and the processing power of a DSP (digital signal processor) with a flexible set of peripherals to create a cost-effective, powerful and versatile embedded control solution. The DSC family offers optimal performance, peripheral integration and low-power operation to enable sophisticated motor control that can have a positive impact on energy consumption. In addition to motor control, the DSCs can be used to reduce the cost and complexity of digital power conversion applications, such as board-mounted digital power supplies for servers, industrial and telecomm power supplies and smart power metering. The devices' signal processing capabilities can be applied to advanced lighting control in commercial buildings and factories.
The devices are designed to operate at 50mA at 32MHz and 3.3V. The DSCs provide an array of power-saving features, such as two power-saving STOP modes, the ability to shut down the peripherals independently and fast wake-up time from STOP (less than 6μs). The devices feature a low-power crystal oscillator and ADC modules with low run current and conversion speed. The devices' advanced power management capabilities enable continued application sampling in a reduced power state, which helps extend battery life for battery-backed applications. A partial power-down mode keeps the I/O, RAM, PWM (pulse width modulator) and COP (computer operating properly) modules powered while the remainder of the device peripherals shut down. In this state, the DSCs are engineered to consume 1μA in low power mode while preserving key state information in RAM.
The DSC family's on-chip peripherals are specifically designed to enhance the performance of motor control and power conversion applications and to reduce external component count and overall cost. Key peripherals include three high-speed comparators, dual 12bit ADCs (analogue-to-digital controllers), two PGAs (programmable gain amplifiers) and a PWM with up to six outputs. The on-chip ADCs allow flexible configuration to meet high-performance and low-power requirements. The PGAs operate in concert with the ADCs to amplify small signals, increasing the ADC input dynamic range. The PGAs perform differential-to-single-ended conversion of analogue signals and enable precise conversion of analogue values. The PWMs enhance power conversion functionality and accuracy for digital power supply and motor control applications. Multiple system faults are detected and processed by on-board hardware to immediately shut down the PWMs in the event of a threatening or dangerous situation. This capability helps ensure system protection with little or no software intervention required.
The company's development tools, combined with the DSC family, enable developers to speed new products to market. To ease the development process, the company offers a comprehensive ecosystem of software tools, demonstration boards, reference designs, application notes, software examples and webinars. CodeWarrior Development Studio for MC56800/E DSCs enables designers to build and deploy sophisticated DSC systems quickly and easily. A complimentary CodeWarrior license for up to 32Kbyte application code is available through Web-based registration.
The company provides the Processor Expert rapid application design tool to enable quick generation of peripheral drivers and software libraries. The Processor Expert tool features an extensive library of DSP/DSC algorithms, a library of low-level macro commands for peripherals, comprehensive motor control, power conversion and soft modem code examples to streamline the development process.
The product family features efficient 16bit 56800E family DSC engine with dual Harvard architecture, up to 32MIPS at 32MHz core frequency, single cycle 16×16bit parallel MAC (multiplier-accumulator), four 36bit accumulators including extension bits and 32bit arithmetic and logic multi-bit shifter. The family possesses nine different power modes and separate digital (regulated) and analogue (referenced to digital) supply outputs. It integrates up to16Kbyte of flash and 2Kbyte of SRAM. The family features two 16bit timers, one 16bit periodic interval timer, one programmable delay timer, integrated voltage regulator and power supervisor IIC (Inter-IC) bus interface. The family has an SPI (serial peripheral interface), high-speed SCI (serial communications interface) and factory-trimmed relaxation oscillator. The product is available in 48pin LQFP, 32pin LQFP and 28pin SOIC package options.
