SCIENCE

With global demand on the rise for greener appliances and industrial equipment, manufacturers are seeking ways to enhance energy efficiency while reducing system costs. To address these needs, Freescale has expanded its family of digital signal controllers (DSCs) that offers increased performance, a flexible set of peripherals with reduced system costs for industrial applications. The MC56F82xx family is especially useful for digital power conversion applications such as board-mounted digital power supplies for servers, industrial and telecom power supplies and advanced motor control.

The advanced MC56F82xx family is a member of the 56800E core based family of DSCs. It combines the functionality of a microcontroller (MCU) and the processing power of a digital signal processor (DSP) with a wide set of peripherals including a high speed pulse width modulator with NanoEdge placement as well as two ultra-fast analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) to create an extremely cost-effective, powerful and versatile embedded control solution. The MC56F82xx devices are among the fastest DSCs with embedded Flash in Freescale’s portfolio and one of the most cost-effective DSC offerings on the market.  

“Developers are seeking technologies to enhance the cost effectiveness and energy efficiency of power conversion and motor control applications such as solar inverters, white goods appliances, hybrid automotive batteries and LED lighting,” said Aiden Mitchell, director of Industrial and Multi-market MCUs for Freescale. “The MC56F82xx family’s combination of price/performance, peripherals and energy efficiency allows designers to convert to digital control in order to set the pace for application innovation.”

The MC56F82xx includes up to nine enhanced flex pulse width modulation (PWM) channels, including six with NanoEdge placement, helping to enhance power conversion, functionality and accuracy. The on-chip ADCs can achieve up to 3.33 million samples per second, helping to reduce signal ripple to precisely modulate energy. The devices include an inter-modular crossbar switch that allows programmable, internal module connections between and among the peripherals and package pins.

Up to four times more energy-efficient than other available DSC offerings, the MC56F82xx devices are designed to operate at 60 MHz and up to 3.6V. The DSCs provide an array of cost-saving features that help eliminate the need for external components, reducing overall bill of material costs.

Easy to use, fast time to market
To ease the development process, Freescale offers a comprehensive ecosystem of software tools, demonstration boards, reference designs, application notes and webinars. CodeWarrior Development Studio 8.3 for DSCs enables designers to build and deploy sophisticated DSC systems quickly and easily. Freescale also provides the Processor Expert rapid application design tool to enable quick generation of peripheral drivers and software libraries.  The Freescale Tower rapid prototyping system completes the offering by providing nearly unlimited, quick prototyping capabilities, potentially eliminating months of development time. This one-stop-shop solution delivers outstanding flexibility and value for designers of industrial and consumer end products while drastically reducing development costs and time-to-market. The 56F82xx is also supported by FreeMASTER software, a sophisticated tool with intuitive navigation that allows control of an application remotely from a user-friendly graphical environment running on a PC and provides the ability to view real-time application variables in both textual and graphical form.

MC56F824x/5x family features:

• 60 MHz operation frequency
• 56800E digital signal processor engine with dual Harvard architecture allows as many as six operations per instruction cycle
• Up to 64KB of embedded on-chip Flash memory with EEPROM emulation capability simplifying system complexity and cost
• eFlexPWM with up to nine channels, including six channels with high resolution NanoEdge placement to achieve precise switching frequency generation
• Two 8-channel, 12-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) with dynamic x2 and x4 programmable amplifier to precisely measure power supply and motor control currents
• Three analog comparators with integrated 5-bit DAC references
• Cyclic redundancy check generator
• Two 16-bit quad timers (2 x 4 16-bit timers)
• Inter-module crossbar switch allowing programmable internal module connections between and among eFlexPMW, ADC, QuadTimers, DACs, HSCMPs and package pins

Pricing and availability
MC56F824x/5x product samples are available now. Suggested resale pricing for the MC56F824x/5x family starts at $2.70 (USD) in 10,000-unit quantities.

The TWR-56R8257 module is available for a suggested resale price of $79 (USD).