MCU packs hardware vector engine

Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (TAEC) has released the TMPM370 32bit microcontroller is suited for AC motor applications such as washing machines, refrigerators and air conditioners. The MCU combines an 80MHz ARM Cortex-M3 processing core with a hardware vector engine, providing enough computation capability to drive two independent motors.

The TMPM370 is the first ARM Cortex-M3 processor-based MCU to include hardware vector engine. The TMPM370 MCU is also the first of Toshiba's 5V family of ARM Cortex-M3 processor-based MCUs for industrial and home appliance control, offering good noise immunity and simple interfacing to 5V logic.

Motor control is a demanding real-time application. The algorithms that determine motor movements are computationally intensive, and a motor's real-time control and computation requirements can conflict with each other. The TMPM370 MCU cuts the CPU load in half by offloading most of the heavy calculation to the vector engine, which also handles many of the timing tasks, such as collecting samples from ADCs and directing inputs to the PWM circuits. The end result is that TMPM370 has enough compute power and real-time control capacity to handle two motors simultaneously.

TMPM370 also includes on-chip 256Kbyte flash, 10Kbyte SRAM, dual 12bit ADCs, 4 serial interface controllers, eight 16bit timers, 76GPIOs, voltage regulator, power-on reset, low voltage detection and oscillator frequency detection, making it a complete one-chip solution for motor control.

TMPM370 complies with IEC60730 Class B requirements for appliance safety. Power-on tests and continuously-operating fault condition checks are handled by a combination of on-chip hardware blocks and a software library.

"The reduction of power consumption in appliances is a key concern for design engineers as many utility companies are incentivizing consumers to purchase more power efficient appliances," said Andrew Burt, VP of the imaging and communications marketing group in the ASSP business unit at TAEC. "Toshiba's new TMPM370 MCU provides the right combination of processing power and hardware peripherals to help our customers design the low-power appliances that are in demand among today's green-minded consumers."

"Toshiba's innovative implementation of vector space math acceleration in a 5V Cortex-M3 processor-based MCU will help motion control engineers achieve the higher levels of efficiency and functionality required in the next generation of appliances and HVAC systems," said Eric Schorn, VP marketing, processor division, ARM. "Toshiba's adoption of the ARM Cortex architecture is a clear demonstration of the growing support for the ARM Cortex-M3 processor's low power, high computation abilities."

Keywords: microcontroller   MCU   processor