DSC Brings NanoEdge PWM To Motor And Power Control

Oct. 19, 2010

Freescale's MC56F82xx targets motor and power control applications with a 60MHz 56800E DSC core and NanoEdge PWMs.

1 of Enlarge image

Freescale MC56F82xx block diagram

Freescale TWR-56R8267 Tower module

Freescale has always been known for supplying high performance digital signal controllers (DSC) and digital signal processors (DSP) for motor control and power management systems. The Freescale MC56F82xx continues this tradition with a 60 MHz 56800E DSC core and NanoEdge PWMs the provide precise timing for these applications.

The The MC56F82xx architecture (Fig. 1) is pretty conventional. It has on-chip flash and RAM plugs a selection of communication peripherals including a CAN controller, an SPI port, two SCI ports and a pair of SMBus/I²C ports. The dual 12-bit, 8-channel ADCs have programmable gain amplifiers and a 500ns conversion rate. The 3 analog comparators, 12-bit DAC and three 5-bit DACs round out the analog peripherals. The 54 GPIOs are 5V tolerant.

There are eight 16-bit enhanced timers but the key is the NanoEdge PWMs with a 520ps duty cycle resolution. The NanoEdge technology essentially allows a designer to precisely position the edge of the PWM pulse with a higher accuracy than the counters used to determine the length and position of the pulse. The additional precision essentially provides a higher resolution timer needed for motor control and power applications. The eFlexPWM controller can handle center, edge-aligned and asymmetrical timing chores. It has double buffered registers with integral reload rates and half-cycle reload capabilities.

Developers can take advantage of Freescale's CodeWarrior IDE. The software package includes motor and power control examples. Applications can be developed using Freescale's Tower system and the TWR-56R8267 Tower module (Fig. 2). This module can plug into a Tower system stack where developers can include their own modules.

The pricing for the MC56F82xx family starts at $2.70. The TWR-56R8267 Tower module is priced at $79.

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

You can send press releases for new products for possible coverage on the website. I am also interested in receiving contributed articles for publishing on our website. Use our template and send to me along with a signed release form.

Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.