Freescale Unveils Low-Power Digital Signal Controllers for Motor Controls

Freescale has unveiled a family of low power digital signal controllers (DSCs), MC56F8006, which are designed to address the need for greener appliances and increase energy efficiency as well as reduce system cost in industrial equipments.

 

Combining the functionality of a microcontroller (MCU) and digital signal processor (DSP) along with a flexible set of peripherals, the MC56F8006 family of DSCs improves the performance, energy efficiency and reliability of appliances, and also helps in reducing development expenses and power consumption, thereby enabling cost-effective, and flexible embedded control solutions.

 

Freescale says that the new DSCs are designed to operate at 50 mA at 32 MHz and 3.3 V. The controllers include advanced power management capabilities, which feature 9 different power modes like power-saving features such as two power-saving STOP modes with the ability to shut down peripherals independently and that have fast wake-up time from STOP (less than six microseconds).

 

The advanced power management capabilities help in extending the battery life for battery-backed applications. In addition, the DSCs also feature low-power crystal oscillator and ADC (News - Alert) modules with ultra-low run current and conversion speed.  

 

The MC56F8006 family’s key on-chip peripherals include three high-speed comparators, dual 12-bit analog-to-digital controllers (ADCs), two programmable gain amplifiers (PGAs) and PWM (featuring programmable fault capability) with six outputs. The on-chip PGAs operate in concert with the ADCs, in order to amplify small signals, thereby increasing the ADC input dynamic range. These peripherals improve the performance of motor control and power conversion applications as well as reduces external component count, thereby decreasing the overall cost.

 

In order to ease the development process, Freescale said that it will provide a complete ecosystem of software tools, demonstration boards, reference designs, application notes, software examples and more, so that developers can quickly and easily deploy MC56F8006 applications. 

 

Freescale also said that it will be offering CodeWarrior Development Studio with a complimentary CodeWarrior license for up to 32KB application code, which can be availed via Web-based registration. The Processor (News - Alert) Expert rapid application design tool facilitates quick generation of peripheral drivers and software libraries and features an extensive library of DSP/DSC algorithms, a library of low-level macro commands for peripherals, and comprehensive motor control, power conversion and soft modem code examples to help streamline the development process.

 

Packed in 48-pin LQFP, 32-pin LQFP and 28-pin SOIC package, the MC56F8006 family of DSCs incorporates 2 KB SRAM, three analog comparators, two 16-bit timers, one 16-bit periodic interval timer, programmable delay timer and factory-trimmed relaxation oscillator.