Microcontroller Addresses Advanced EV Motor Management

Nov. 18, 2022

NXP's S32K39 serves next-gen EV traction-inverter control needs while supporting remote smart actuation applications using time-sensitive networking Ethernet for new zonal vehicle architectures.

William G. Wong,

Alix Paultre

Brian Carlson

Related To: Electronic Design

Check out more of coverage of Electronica 2022.

At the recent electronica trade event in Munich, NXP Semiconductors unveiled its S32K39 series of automotive MCUs, which are optimized for advanced electric-vehicle (EV) system control applications. Integrating networking, security, and functional-safety capabilities, the MCUs leverage NXP’s battery-management system (BMS) and EV power inverter solutions, and are optimized to intelligently and precisely control traction inverters. The MCUs support both silicon IGBTs as well as silicon-carbide (SiC) and gallium-nitride (GaN) technologies.

Offering dual 200-kHz control loops, the MCUs also can control six-phase motors. A safe ASIL D software resolver and integrated sine-wave generation plus sigma delta converters eliminate external components. Furthermore, the MCUs support hardware isolation, time-sensitive networking (TSN), and advanced cryptography for next-generation software-defined EVs and zonal vehicle architectures.

Features include:

• Four Arm Cortex-M7 cores at 320 MHz configured as a lockstep pair and two split-lock cores
• Up to 6 MB of flash memory with 800 kB of SRAM
• Two motor-control co-processors
• Safe ASIL D software resolver
• Integrated DSP
• Multichannel analog support
• Six CAN FD interfaces, TSN Ethernet, and programmable I/O
• Hardware security engine (HSE)
• Available in two packages: 176LPQFP-EP and 289MAPBGA

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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.

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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.

About the Author

Alix Paultre | Editor-at-Large, Electronic Design

An Army veteran, Alix Paultre was a signals intelligence soldier on the East/West German border in the early ‘80s, and eventually wound up helping launch and run a publication on consumer electronics for the US military stationed in Europe. Alix first began in this industry in 1998 at Electronic Products magazine, and since then has worked for a variety of publications in the embedded electronic engineering space. Alix currently lives in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Also check out his YouTube watch-collecting channel, Talking Timepieces.