Embedded Forum at Electronica, a Theatre-Style Presentation Area Located in Hall A6, the Dedicated “Embedded Hall”

VIEWPOINT

Dear Reader,

The electronica 2008, 23rd world´s leading trade fair for electronic components, systems, and applications is just a few weeks ahead and will take place from November 11th to 14th in the New Munich Fair Centre. To in- form you about this important event we created an electronica preview starting at page 12 where you will find all the information you need to plan your visit for example how to save money with your online registration. Please note that there are new opening times due to suggestions of exhibitors and visitors, too. Of special interest for you might be the Embedded Forum at electronica, a theatre-style presentation area located in Hall A6, the dedicated “Embedded Hall”. At the Embedded Forum ICC Media will stage a 4-day forum programme with half-hour presentations about technical and market trends, products, solutions, and applications. The attendance of the Embedded Forum is free for all electronica visitors. You´ll find the programme starting at page 14 and can select the most interesting presentations for you. Saving energy – what also implies protecting the environment – is a big 32-bit MCU Solutions with issue today. Especially the manufacturers of appliances are looking for new ways saving as much energy as possible. In our cover story the Flexis integrated TFT / LCD Controller MCU are described. This is a family of compatible 8- and 32-bit from Atmel with ARM926EJ and AVR32 AP7 Core technology. microcontrollers which allows the designers to evaluate both options ® before deciding the best choice for a given application. The 8-bit parts Whether you use Embedded Linux, Windows Embedded or offer the best in cost and code efficiency, while the 32-bit devices delivers a Realtime OS with GUI, we offer you the best ﬁ t 32-bit platform for your next application. higher performance and integration, plus a migration path to other DMA supported integrated display controller with resolution up Freescale microcontrollers. The cover story highlights the benefits the to 2048 x 2048 pixel and 24-bit colour depth, graphic accelerator Flexis AC family brings to appliance designs. and virtual screen buffer helps you realise highly integrated and inexpensive graphical solutions. One of the main applications in appliances is motor control–aperfect example is a washing machine. Our FPGA & ASIC section shows that ARM926EJ solutions with display controller more and more low-cost FPGAs are used to control motors in indus- MCU DMIPS SRAM USB Ether- Misc. Bus- Linux WinCE RTOS trial applications due to cost reduction and flexibility. To reduce costs net interface AT91SAM9261 210 160K 2 Host, - Low Power 32-bit QQQ Industrial Ethernet becomes used in industrial equipment that is high- 1Dev. ly interoperable, allowing it to be easily modified for new applications AT91SAM9261S 210 16K 2 Host, - Low Cost 32-bit QQQ 1Dev. or systems. The problem is – there are many Industrial Ethernet stan- AT91SAM9263 240 96K 2 Host, 1 CAN, AC97, 2 x 32-bit QQQ dards. Boards that carry a low-cost FPGA device and Ethernet PHY 1Dev. Camera transceivers can support any IE standard with appropriate hardware and AT91SAM9RL64 210 64K 1 High - Touch ADC, 32-bit Q Speed AC97 software IP.As the FPGA is programmable, it can be easily re-configured Dev. to support any new protocol, this can be done at any time, even if the device is in a machine already on the factory floor. But as the second ar- AVR32 solutions with display controller ticle in this section shows there is already more integration with mixed- MCU DMIPS SRAM USB Ether- Misc. Bus- Linux RTOS by Atmel signal FPGAs. With mixed-signal FPGAs you can create an alternative net interface AT32AP7000 210 32K 1 High Speed 2 AC97, Camera 32-bit QQ solution for industrial motor control. In combination with an integrated Dev. soft processor these devices offer the ability to easily implement motor AT32AP7002 210 32K 1 High Speed - AC97, Camera 32-bit QQ Dev. designs for a wide range of motor types, at a cost attractive for most AT32AP7200 280 64K 2 High Speed 1 Touch ADC, 32-bit QQ applications. Host + OTG AC97, Media PostProcessor

For every MCU, MSC offers a reference board with on-board TFT module and JTAG debug interface, as well as powerful BSPs. Yours sincerely Wolfgang Patelay (Editor) +49 4106 7764-15 . [email protected]

MSC Vertriebs GmbH Industriestraße 16 · 76297 Stutensee 3 October 2008 Tel.: +49 7249 910 - 0 · Fax +49 7249 7993 N www.msc-ge.com V-9_2008-DJAN-4199 CONTENTS

Viewpoint 3 Tools & Software Cover Story Fine-grained memory protection guarantees safe function integration 40 8- and 32-bit compatible MCUs enable energy-efficient appliances 6 Software bugs: prevention with CSE tools is better than cure 42 Exhibition Preview: Automotive Embedded Systems at electronica 2008 12 Flexible system solutions for in-car FPGAs & ASICs display instruments 44 Is motion control technology moving Test & Measurement from controllers to FPGAs? 24 Automated station saves time in FPGAs enable large power savings DPI measurements on ICs 42 for industrial motor control 28 Product News 49 Microcontrollers & DSPs Low-cost direct display control with embedded microcontrollers 30 Motor Control 8- and 32-bit compatible MCUs enable 8-bit MCUs with PFC and FOC enable efficient motor control 36 energy-efficient appliances PAGE 6 Are you ready for the low-power Flexis MCUs enable the designer to evaluate both 8-bit and 32-bit market trend? 38 options before deciding on the best choice for a given application. The 8-bit part offers the ultimate in cost and code efficiency, while the 32-bit delivers higher performance and integration, plus a migration path to other Freescale 32-bit microcontrollers.

Embedded validation using an FPGA-based emulation board PAGE 12 Worldwide trends and innovations in the electronics industry will be presented during electronica 2008 at the New Munich Trade Fair Center from November 11 to 14, 2008. Around 3,000 exhibitors and 78,000 visitors are expected to attend.

Is motion control technology moving from controllers to FPGAs? PAGE 24 Low-cost FPGAs offer not just better performance but also reduction in system costs and implementation times for motion control applications.

Are you ready for the low-power market trend? PAGE 38 New MCU families from NEC Electronics offer better power performance with 8-, 16- and 32-bit cores. These families are specifically designed for battery-operated devices, and cater for the Cover Photo majority of industrial applications requiring low-power capabilities. Freescale

October 2008 4 IfIf it’sit’s notnot INTEGRITY,INTEGRITY,® itit’s’s notnot securesecure

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Copyright © 2008 Green Hills Software, Inc. Green Hills, the Green Hills logo and INTEGRITY are trademarks of Green Hills Software, Inc. in the U.S.and/or internationally. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. COVER STORY

8- and 32-bit compatible MCUs enable energy-efficient appliances

By Fraser McHenry, Freescale

Flexis MCUs enable the designer to evaluate both 8-bit and 32-bit options before deciding on the best choice for a given application. The 8-bit part offers the ultimate in cost and code efficiency, while the 32-bit delivers higher performance and integration, plus a migration path to other Freescale 32-bit microcontrollers.

I The Flexis AC family features a range of crocontroller food chain. For experienced 8-bit tool chain. On the other hand, while remaining communications interfaces, on-chip analog users, suppliers are expanding at the high-end in the 8-bit world is altogether more comfort- circuitry and a wide range of timers and gives of the 8-bit portfolio with more powerful pe- able, some doubts may remain about the abil- designers the freedom to migrate easily between ripherals, faster CPUs, and extended memory ity of 8-bit architecture to meet the application’s 8-bit and 32-bit solutions through software and options. Some of what would traditionally be demands. In the modern home, large appli- hardware compatibility. The family is suitable considered as 8-bit MCU applications are mi- ances, such as the washing machine, dish- for a wide range of applications across the grating up the performance path, and com- washer and refrigerator can all benefit from the industrial space, and this article highlights the bined with reduced costs are fueling the growth energy-saving characteristics of advanced exceptional benefits the Flexis AC family brings in 32-bit microcontrollers. motor control technology. Consumers are not to appliance designs. only interested in saving energy costs but also in The choice for the embedded system designer reducing the environmental impact of elec- With the current global emphasis on environ- in this instance is not an easy one. Do you look tricity generating facilities. mental protection, energy efficiency and to gain additional performance and function- sustainable resource management, the design- ality from your existing 8-bit architecture, a Since the refrigerator is always on, it can con- ers of embedded systems are being influenced product that the designer is familiar with and sume up to 50 percent of the home energy by a classic push-pull combination of market has developed with in the past, but may not budget, with virtually all of that used to run the forces. Consumers are becoming much more fully meet the needs of the application? Or do compressor motor. Most refrigerators still use environmentally aware and thereby creating a you move to a 32-bit architecture, which is just a constant-speed on/off compressor. However, market pull for more energy-efficient products. as cost-effective and can guarantee the per- variable speed compressors are gaining traction In addition, governments are creating a market formance and functionality required in the ap- in the market. They enable more efficient push by introducing new legislation aimed at plication but is a completely new, more com- coolingwithprecisetemperaturecontrol,thus conserving resources and reducing energy con- plicated, architecture that pushes up the pro- reducing overall energy use. In addition, man- sumption. An example of such a market is ap- gram memory requirements and code size? ufacturers are increasingly employing more pliances, where for more than 10 years Freescale efficient brushless motors, which again reduce has been working with the world leaders in the The choice is not as easy as some 32-bit mi- the amount of energy consumed. appliance market to develop more energy-effi- crocontroller suppliers would have you believe, cient and environmentally friendly products. especially when moving to a completely new In washing machines, replacing low-end solu- Today, microcontrollers provide the intelli- 32-bit architecture. Designers that make the tions, such as universal triac-driven motors gence to every electronic solution. Across the leap are typically faced with a completely new with newer 3-phase AC or permanent magnet industrial market, improved energy efficiency is instruction set, different design methodology, motors, greatly increases performance and driving increased demand for performance new peripherals with no backwards compati- drive efficiency. The advanced control tech- and functionality, pushing designs up the mi- bility, new tools licenses or a completely new niques enable shorter washing cycles, not only

October 2008 6 MSP430

MSP430F5xx Ultra-Low-Power MCUs

Highest performance and lowest active power in one speedy very little package Another MSP430 breakthrough in ultra-low-power MCU performance

Introducing the new MSP430F5xx generation of MCUs

The fi rst devices in the new 5xx generation of ultra- Key benefits Memory low-power MCUs extend the MSP430 benefi tsof s ,EADING PERFORMANCE Part Number (Flash/RAM) Package high-performance analog integration and ease of s Increased design options design to a new level. The MSP430F54xx devices MSP430F5438IPZ 256/16KB 100-pin QFP s Complete ecosystem MSP430F5438IZQW 113 ball BGA offer industry-leading active power (as low as 160 µA/MHz) and 1.5-µA standby current (with full Key applications MSP430F5437IPN 256/16KB 80-pin QFP RAM and status retention and a 32-bit RTC), all with s -ETERING MSP430F5436IPZ 192/16KB 100-pin QFP 25 MHz of peak performance. Intelligent peripherals s Security MSP430F5436IZQW 113 ball BGA like the 12-bit ADC draw power only when in s Portable Medical MSP430F5435IPN 192/16KB 80-pin QFP operation and an advance power-management s Industrial module and unifi ed clock system allow the standby MSP430F5419IPZ 128/16KB 100-pin QFP s General Purpose and active currents to be dynamically adjusted. MSP430F5419ZQW 113 ball BGA MSP430F5418IPN 128/16KB 80-pin QFP

Get more information and order samples today at www.ti.com/5xx-e

32-bit option before deciding on the best part for the application. The 8-bit part offers the ultimate in cost and code efficiency, whereby the 32-bit solution delivers higher performance and integration,aswellasacontinuedmigration path in the other 32-bit microcontrollers from Freescale. In addition, the scalability and ease of migration that the Flexis series delivers means it is the perfect choice when designers are tasked to develop a series of end applications with differ- ing cost, functionality and performance levels.

The 8-bit Flexis family is based on the S08 core from Freescale that runs up to 50 MHz core/25 MHz bus. The 32-bit Flexis family is based on the ColdFire Version 1 (V1) core that runs up to 50 MHz core/25 MHz bus, although the 32- bit V1ColdFire core is designed to achieve 10 times the throughput of the S08 core. On top of Figure 1. Block diagram of the Flexis AC128 and AC256 MCUs the devices’ pin and peripheral compatibility, developers also do not need to worry about changing tools suites. CodeWarrior IDE provides a single easy-to-use IDE for both the 8-bit part and the 32-bit part. It provides a single integrated tool suite designed to get you on the design fast track with RS08, HC(S)08 and V1 ColdFire members of the Freescale Controller Continuum. The CodeWarrior IDE goes well beyond basic code generation and debugging - it provides built-in features and utilities so you can deliver better quality products to market faster.

The Flexis AC family boasts an intelligent combination of on-chip peripherals suited to designing energy efficient appliances. The product family is also scalable and flexible enough to meet the needs of the different application areas within an appliance such as motor control and human-machine interface (HMI). The 8-bit MC9S08AC family ranges from 8 Kbytes through 128 Kbytes of flash memory, with up to 8 Kbytes of RAM. It is supported in 32LQFP, 44LQFP, 48QFN, 64 QFP, 64LQFP,and 80LQFP package options. The 32- bit ColdFire MCF51AC family starts at 128 Figure 2. The DEMOACKIT simplifies MCU development. Kbytes and goes up to 256 Kbytes of flash memory, with up to 32 Kbytes of RAM and is sup- saving electric energy but also reducing water it is as easy as swapping controllers on the same ported in 64QFP,64LQFP,and 80LQFP package consumption as well. The Freescale Controller board and recompiling code. This connection options. The integrated flash memory is pro- Continuum provides stepwise compatibility up point between 8- and 32-bit at the center of the grammable across the whole operating range of and down the performance spectrum. Design- Controller Continuum is our Flexis series of the device, allowing the user to take full ad- ers can choose to enter the Controller Contin- MCUs. This series of MCUs is where the S08 vantage of the in-application, reprogramma- uum at the ultra-low-end RS08 family of and Coldfire V1 microcontroller duos share a bility benefits in virtually any environment, and MCUs, the more sophisticated 8-bit S08 devices common set of peripherals and development can be used for EEPROM emulation. or the top-of-the-line 32-bit Coldfire embedded tools to deliver the ultimate in migration flex- controllers - each step has family members that ibility. You can quickly move from an 8-bit de- The flash memory is specified to 10,000 share packaging, peripherals or pin-outs with sign to a 32-bit design in just a handful of clicks, write/erase cycles over temperatures from -40 to the Controller Continuum. Add common soft- perfect for developing a portfolio of products +125°C, and 100,000 write/erase cycles typical ware and hardware tools, and you have true that span the performance spectrum. at 25°C. It is also guaranteed for 15 years data stepwise compatibility, even across the 8- to 32- retention at 125°C, and 100 years typical at bit boundary. When optimizing for perform- A key benefit is that with Flexis MCUs, the de- 25°C. The MCU family supports a broad range ance, if price and functionality change your re- signer has the ability to fully evaluate both the of communication protocols typically used in quirements from 8-bit to 32-bit, or vice-versa, typical 8-bit option and the higher performance large appliance system designs, offering on-chip

October 2008 8 COVER STORY

SPI, IIC and two SCI modules. The SCI mod- and peripherals to handle more sophisticated such as complementary signal generation, dead ules are designed to simplify development of motor control algorithms, while simultaneously time generation, mask, polarity and fault LIN systems by enabling LIN break detection driving touch-screen user interfaces based on control, which are features usually found on and synchronization without the use of an proximity sensing software. As a result devel- dedicated PWM modules for motor control. external timer channel. In addition the ColdFire opers need only one 32-bit Flexis MCU to drive The FlexTimer simplifies calculation of PWM MCUs also feature a controller area network the entire appliance application, which helps re- signals (automatic complementary signal gen- (CAN) bus for network connectivity. To en- duce component count, system cost and time to eration and dead time insertion) and signifi- hance system integrity, security and reliability, market. cantly enhances safety of PWM generation and the Flexis AC MCUs integrate a wide range of of the whole application (automatic comple- hardware and software system protection fea- The 32-bit MCF51AC devices have introduced mentary signal generation, dead time insertion tures. A watchdog timer (COP module) with an a new timer module into the portfolio. The and fault control). The devices provide the ca- independent clock provides a safety mechanism FlexTimer module (FTM) is an evolution of the pability to synchronize the analog-to-digital to monitor the flow of software, interrupt existing TPM module and is designed to sim- controller (ADC) and the FlexTimer module handling and execution, and the CPU clock. plify the control of advanced motors. From a for best-in-class motor control enabling short- The CRC engine is designed to provide a fast motorcontrolperspectiveitbringsnewfeatures er washing cycle times, not only improving mechanism for testing flash memory and checking serial communication protocols, such as serial communications interface (SCI), inter- integrated circuit (I2C) and serial peripheral interface (SPI).

The devices can be enabled with system integrity software which includes periodic test routines for CPU register, program counter, hardware and software cyclic redundancy check Low on Power High on Features (CRC) engines, RAM March X and C, and independent watchdog timeout. These software Controller Solutions for today's low power demands routines have been certified by the VDE Insti- In response to today's relentless demands for reduced power consumption products, tute and are designed to enable manufacturers Holtek has released its all new TinyPower A/D with LCD series of 8-bit microcontrollers. In the application of its TinyPower technology, Holtek offers a range of devices with to accelerate their development time by achiev- extremely low power requirements to meet the demands for more environmentally ing compliance the with Class B IEC 60730 reg- friendly products. This combination of low power characteristics and versatile range of internal functions give these devices a broad application area some of which could ulation for safe, reliable operation of electron- include utility metering, electrical appliances and instrumentation, to name but a few. ic controls in household appliances. Addition- al features, such as active power-on reset, low voltage detection and low voltage warning, help protect against system failure caused by brownouts. These on-chip features make the MCU family one of the most robust MCU offerings in its class. The Flexis AC devices have key peripherals such as analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and advanced timer modules that span the performance requirements needed in appliances from basic through to advanced TM Power TinyPower MCU motor control. The 10-bit ADC used on both 10 - pin MCU USB MCU Dual Slope MCU EEPROM Management Flash MCU UART MCU Audio MCU Phone MCU the 8-bit and 32-bit Flexis AC devices has up to Operating Voltage Range: 2.2V ~ 5.5V Ultra Low Power Consumption Multiple Power Down Modes and Clock Sources 16 channels available and has a 10-bit single Industrial Specifi cations:- 40℃ ~+85℃ Fast Wake-up Time High Speed A/D converter conversion time of 2.5µs. Segment shared Part No. Program Data I/O LCD Timer RTC ADC PWM SPI/I2C Package Output HT56R62 2K x14 128x8 20 19x4/20x3 16 8-bitx2 V 12-bitx6 12-bitx3 V 52QFP/64LQFP 52QFP/64LQFP The BLDC motor is very popular in appliance HT56R64 4K x15 192x8 24 32x4/33x3 24 8-bitx1,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V 100QFP because it is very reliable and achieves a high 52QFP/64LQFP HT56R65 8K x16 576x8 24 40x4/41x3 24 8-bitx2,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V level of efficiency by generating the rotor mag- 100QFP 52QFP/64LQFP HT56R66 16K x16 1152x8 32 48x4/49x3 24 8-bitx3,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V netic flux with rotor magnets. The 8-bit S08AC 100QFP 52QFP/64LQFP devices feature three independent 16-bit HT56R67 32K x16 2304x8 32 48x4/49x3 24 8-bitx3,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V 100QFP timer/pulse-width modulator modules (TPM), HT56R642 4K x15 384x8 24 16x16/24x8 16 8-bitx1,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V 64LQFP one of which has up to 6 channels. This makes HT56R644 4K x15 576x8 24 32x16/40x8 24 8-bitx1,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V 100QFP HT56R654 8K x16 1152x8 24 32x16/40x8 24 8-bitx2,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V 100QFP it suited to controlling a 3-phase brushless DC HT56R656 8K x16 1152x8 24 48x16/56x8 24 8-bitx2,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V 100QFP (BLDC) motor as the 6-channel TPM module HT56R666 16K x16 1152x8 24 48x16/56x8 24 8-bitx3,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V 100QFP HT56R668 16K x16 2304x8 24 64x16/72x8 24 8-bitx3,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V 100QFP/128QFP allows the generation of any pulse width mod- HT56R678 32K x16 2304x8 24 64x16/72x8 24 8-bitx3,16-bitx1 V 12-bitx8 12-bitx4 V 100QFP/128QFP ulation (PWM) pattern for any 3-phase motor Holtek Semiconductor Inc. control. The ADC evaluates back-EMF, zero- 4F-2, No.3-2 BLD H, St.Yuan-Qu, NanKang Software Park, Taipei, 115, Taiwan R.O.C. crossing detection without any external com- Tel:+886-2-26557070 Fax:+886-2-26557383 parators and senses other analog quantities www.holtek.com.tw/english/contact/contact.htm necessary for BLDC motor control. The Cold- Fire V1 AC devices offer enhanced performance

9 October 2008 COVER STORY

feature is critical for debugging MCU-based systems without interfering with software execution. To help developers get their boards up and running quickly and easily, the DE- MOACKIT is offered, a flexible and cost-effective evaluation system for the Flexis AC family. It contains the 8- and 32-bit Flexis AC daughter cards and includes a built-in USB BDM, LEDs, a serial port, an acceleration sensor and an I/O header.

The DEMOACEX expansion board is also offered, which plugs into the DEMOACKIT and allows developers to take advantage of the additional performance and integration features, Interchangable Daughter Cards for the 8-bit and 32-bit solutions allow designers to easily such as CAN, offered by the 32-bit solution. evaluate both devices. The Flexis AC MCUs are supported by a com- energy efficiency but also reducing water con- Flexis AC devices offer an on-chip background plimentary version of CodeWarrior Develop- sumption. It is therefore well suited to con- debug mode (BDM) system and in-circuit ment Studio for Microcontrollers v6.1, an trolling advanced motors such as ACIM/PMSM emulation (ICE) with real-time bus capture ca- integrated tool suite that supports software de- which are gaining in popularity within the pability providing a single wire debugging and velopment for Freescale 8-bit or 32-bit MCUs. appliance segment. Freescale offers a compre- emulation interface that eliminates the need for Designers can further accelerate applications hensive support and training ecosystem of de- expensive emulation tools. This capability en- development with the help of the Processor velopment tools, reference designs, application ables developers to perform non-intrusive de- Expert tool, a rapid application development notes, software examples and webcasts. The bugging and emulation on the fly. The BDM tool in the CodeWarrior tool suite. I

Product News

I AMCC: 10Gb physical layer device midity meters, temperature and humidity con- through a single cable. It also has a function selected by comms companies trollers as well as other small scale household for handling a remote control signal. Signals AMCC announces that several communica- electrical appliances. such as CEC signals and remote control tions companies, including MergeOptics, Mitel- News ID 1663 signals that support various formats have Teleoptix, and NetXen, have selected its QT2025 conventionally been processed in software. 10-Gigabit per second physical layer device to Now these signals can be processed by hard- enable higher-speed communications systems. I Gleichmann: low power 16-bit ware under conditions where the host CPU These applications are being showcased at all flash MCUs is stopped, thereby reducing the standby AMCC’s booth at ECOC 2008. MergeOptics The 22 16-bit all flash microcontrollers of the power consumption. has chosen the company’s 10-Gigabit Ethernet 78K0R/Kx3-L series from NEC Electronics News ID 512 Physical Layer integrated circuit technology for distributed by Gleichmann Electronics feature use in high-speed optical X2 module connec- low power and high performance. Recent tivity solutions for data transfer applications. measurements resulted in a current consump- I IPSO Alliance: use of IP in networks News ID 474 tion of just 0.52 mA/MIPS at 20 MHz clock fre- of smart objects quency. The dedicated real-time clock function A group of technology vendors and users have requires only 1.0 µA in standby operation formed the IP for Smart Objects Alliance, I Holtek: 8-bit RISC architecture MCU with a performance of 0.65 DMIPS/MHz. whosegoalispromotingtheInternetProtocol for high speed applications News ID 463 as the networking technology best suited for Holtek announces a new R-F type 8-bit micro- connecting sensor- and actuator-equipped or controller, the HT47C06L. The device has a "smart" objects and delivering information working voltage of 1.2V~2.2V, a Program I Toshiba: ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller gathered by those objects. Smart objects are Memory capacity of 1K*16, Data Memory ca- for digital AV applications objects in the physical world that ‘ typically pacity of 32 Bytes, up to 8 I/O lines, a 39-pixel Toshiba has announced a general-purpose with the help of embedded devices ‘ transmit LCD driver, a 16-bit timer and a single channel ARM Cortex-M3 core-based microcontroller information about their condition or envi- R-F converter function. The R-F function with- suitable for digital AV applications. The ronment to locations where the information in the HT47C06L converts a resistance value to device is the first in a full line-up of Cortex- can be analyzed, correlated with other data a frequency, a function which can be used to M3 devices that will become available during and acted upon. Applications range from au- measure resistance values and then in turn used 2009. The new TMPM330FDFG general- tomated and energy-efficient homes and office to control motion or to display information purpose microcontroller with ARM 32-bit buildings, factory equipment maintenance making it especially suitable for use in applica- CPU for embedded applications has an and asset tracking to hospital patient moni- tions which require measurement and display HDMI-CEC channel enabling interdepend- toring and safety and compliance assurance. functions such as scales, temperature and hu- ent control of digital AV applications News ID 438

October 2008 10 Hammer Down Your Power Consumption with picoPower™!

THE Performance Choice for Lowest-Power Microcontrollers

Performance and power consumption have always been key elements in the development of AVR® microcontrollers. Today’s increasing use of battery and signal line powered applications makes power consumption criteria more important than ever. To meet the tough requirements of modern microcontrollers, Atmel® has combined more than ten years of low power research and development into picoPower technology. picoPower enables tinyAVR®,megaAVR® and XMEGA™ microcontrollers to achieve the industry’s lowest power consumption. Why be satisﬁ ed with microamps when you can have nanoamps? With Atmel MCUs today’s embedded designers get systems using a mere 650 nA running a real-time clock (RTC) and only 100 nA in sleep mode. Combined with several other innovative techniques, picoPower microcontrollers help you reduce your applications power consumption without compromising system performance!

Visit our website to learn how picoPower can help you hammer down the power consumption of your next designs. PLUS, get a chance to apply for a free AVR design kit! http://www.atmel.com/picopower/

© 2008 Atmel Corporation. All rights reserved. Atmel®, logo and Everywhere You Are® are registered trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others. Exhibition Preview: Embedded Systems at electronica 2008

Worldwide trends and innovations in the electronics industry will be presented during electronica 2008 at the New Munich Trade Fair Center from November 11 to 14, 2008. Around 3,000 exhibitors and 78,000 visitors are expected to attend.

I The motto of the trade fair is “Get the whole Forum“ which is located in the exhibition hall might even threaten the competitiveness of picture“. In 14 exhibition halls the world’s A6 (Embedded Hall). Access to the presentation European industries, where innovation is deeply leading trade fair for components, systems in the Embedded Forum is free of charge to all influenced by Embedded Systems. This is the and applications will present the complete electronica visitors. most outstanding result of this study. Embedded spectrum of electronics ranging from semi- Systemshavebecomeakeyfactorindomains conductors, embedded systems, displays, sensor Accordingtothe“StudyofWorldwideTrends like automotive, industrial automation and technology, measuring and test equipment, and R&D Programmes in Embedded Systems” medical devices. In these domains – at the same and electromechanics/system peripherals by the European Community, the importance of time – the European industry is currently (previously classified under interconnection ES for Europe is creasing. Europe is today a leading the market. Therefore, Embedded systems/components, switches, relays, key- major player in the field of Embedded Systems. Systems are already a massive economic factor boards and casing technology) through to While the US is the worldwide leader in the area that can help to maintain European compet- electronic design. The Focus Areas - automo- of traditional computing and data processing, itiveness in these and other high-technology tive, wireless, embedded systems und micro- Europe has driven the revolution in ES. areas. The value added by embedded elec- nano systems – will be presented by means of Embedded Systems play a growing role in tronics of a car will increase from 20% now to separate exhibition sections and a series of talks. research and development (R&D) and in the 35-40% by 2015. Two 2-day conferences will also be held on the economy of modern states as well. Its share in subjects of automotive and wireless. the overall R&D activities in Europe was 9% in The enormous potential of Embedded Systems 2003 and will reach 14% in 2009. But Europe, al- for Europe’s economic development is docu- During electronica, Messe München and ICC though being a major ES player, may lose its mented by the comparison of the world Media will be staging a 4-day program with leading position to the US due to the imbalance market’s estimated growth-rate in ES of 14% technical presentations in the “Embedded of money invested during the last decades. This p.a. between 2004 and 2009 and the average annual growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP) of 4% between 1999 and 2002. The New electronica opening times importance of Embedded Systems is evidenced even more by comparison of the electronics and In line with the suggestions of exhibitors and visitors, the organising company "Messe the ES market. The number of microprocessors, München" has changed the opening times of the exhibition this year. Consequently, the trade for example, is estimated to double between fair pavilions are open between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. on the first two days and exhibitors will be 2000 and 2010, which would result in nearly 3 available to the international public between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. on "Long Thursday". On the embedded devices per person on earth. Today last day, the fair closes its gates earlier, at 5 p.m. 98% of all processors produced are used in Embedded Systems. I

October 2008 12 Hall A6 - Stand 107 Hall A1 - Stand 429 I Freescale: PowerQUICC III processor for embedded media I MathWorks: latest version of MATLAB and Simulink processing The MathWorks will be launching the latest version of MATLAB and Simulink Freescale has introduced the MPC8536E PowerQUICC III processor. The at this year’s electronica 2008. On its stand The MathWorks will present a advanced power and energy management features of the MPC8536E number of product demos on Model-Based Design and its use within sim- tackle next-generation embedded media processing while enabling de- ulation, test and measurement and HDL code generation. In addition, The signers to address environmental and energy specifications. For instance, MathWorks will be conducting a series of short lectures and presentations on printers and other office automation equipment must demonstrate cer- the use of Model-based design. The Model-Based Design tools of The Math- tain environmental benefits and energy usage efficiencies in order to qual- Works support new and advanced methods for the development of complex ify for the ENERGY STAR program. The advanced power management embedded systems. In the embedded space, Model-Based Design tool support features of the MPC8536E address this challenge by pacing energy usage more and more domains for a fast generation of system models, formalisa- according to the required workload, thus enabling OEMs to significant- tion of verification and validation on the model level or the automatic code ly decrease energy usage for their end products. generation out of the prototype model and the final implementation. News ID 412 News ID 489

Online ticket registration for visitors saves money and time

If you register for electronica 2008 early at www.electronica.de, you can save 20 78K0R/Kx3-L Ultra Low Power Microcontrollers: percent by comparison with the regular entrance prices. This is because a day Nothing lasts forever? ticket costs 26 euros if ordered on the Internet instead of 32.50 euros. A four- day ticket valid for all days of the event costs 60 euros instead of 75 euros. You pay conveniently and safely by credit card. Holders of guest tickets or e-guest tickets can also use such tickets on the same Internet link even before the fair starts. After ordering the entrance ticket to electronica online, the user automatically receives an e-mail containing a link to his or her personal ticket voucher. This voucher must be printed out and taken with you to electronica. Very practical: even en route to the New Munich Trade Fair Centre, this printout can be used as It‘s not just battery lifetimes that benefit from the 16-bit a ticket for all means of public transport 78K0R/Kx3-L microcontroller. Alongside industry-leading (MVV). At the entrance to electronica, power-performance at 1.5 mW/MIPS, consuming just 0.52 mA/ the voucher can be exchanged quickly MIPS at 20 MHz, plus similarly impressive lower speed and and easily for a full entrance ticket. low power modes, designers also benefit from innovations Visitors already registered have a separate in on-chip integration and flexibility of supply voltage: entrance area. You thus avoid any queues m 1 MHz/8 MHz/20 MHz high accuracy oscillator circuits and can go straight away to what interests m High speed, high accuracy A/D’s you without any delay. m x1 to x12 programmable gain amplifier and multiple comparator channels on-chip Order your ticket by 30 October and win m Real-time clock requiring just 1 µA stand-by current a self-fly helicopter flight. Every visitor m Flash programming across 1.8 to 5.5 V supply range who registers on the Internet for elec- Kx3-L – One of more than 60 microcontrollers from our tronica 2008 by 30 October is entered in 78K0R family: from 16 kB up to 512 kB Flash. From 44- up a competition: the organising company, to 144-pins. From low power to high performance. "Messe München", is raffling a self-fly www.eu.necel.com/78K helicopter flight by Jochen Schweizer Events – of course accompanied by an experienced flight instructor – or an Amazon.com voucher to a value of 359 euros.

13 October 2008 Hall A4 - Stand 375 family provides 32-bit performance and a rich validate and test semiconductors, circuit boards I Actel to demonstrate miniature motor peripheral feature set and, with its newly added orentiresystemsduringeveryphaseofa control with Icicle Kit enhanced safety features, is further optimized product's life, including design, manufactur- At Electronica 2008, Actel will highlight its for use in airbag systems and power-steering ing/repair and field maintenance. focus on power. For power-sensitive portable applications. The members of the XC2300A se- News ID 493 applications, Actel will demonstrate minia- ries provide an application-proven and rich set ture motor control and human machine inter- of peripherals as well as specific features de- face functionality using its cell-phone-sized signed to support failure-free operation of the Hall A4 - Stand 542 Actel Icicle Kit, which leverages the company's electronic control unit by detecting and in some I ALPS: focus on extensive sensor range award-winning, ultra-low power IGLOO cases avoiding unplanned and undesired system ALPS ELECTRIC EUROPE will again partici- FPGAs. Visitors to the booth will also see the behavior. pate in this year's electronica showcasing its lat- company's mixed-signal Fusion FPGAs oper- News ID 507 est portfolio addressing demanding, reliable and ating in a MicroTCA chassis. Also demonstrat- cost effective applications with particular focus ed will be the FPGA-optimized ARM Cortex- on its latest extensive range of Sensors. Other M1 processor running on Fusion to show cur- Hall A1 - Stand 658 displayed items will include automotive, com- rent, temperature and voltage monitoring and I ASSET to exhibit open tools for embedded munications and electromechanical compo- other intelligent system and power manage- instrumentation nents, magnetic devices, thermal and photo ment functionalities in a single chip. At Electronica 2008 ASSET InterTech will be ex- printers as well as numerous other products News ID 497 hibiting its open tools for embedded instru- which emphasize the company's huge commit- mentation, including the ScanWorks platform ment for interaction between user and product. which offers solutions for boundary scan Besides the presentation of standard products, Hall A5 - Stand 506 (JTAG), emulation, signal integrity on high- ALPS will show by means of several customer I Infineon: XC2300 MCUs with enhanced speed serial I/O buses, and chip/board/system applications and live demonstrations both cur- safety features validation, test and debug. ASSET InterTech is rent state-of-the-art technology and near future Infineon introduces a new series of microcon- a supplier of open tools for embedded instru- advanced concepts ranging from Pb Free Micro trollers for use in automotive safety applications mentation to engineers doing design validation, Lenses for Optical Communication to E-Field that incorporate innovative features to comply test and debug. The ScanWorks platform pro- Communication Modules. with state-of-the-art automotive safety stan- vides automation, access and analysis tools in News ID 490 dards. The new XC2300A series of the XC2300 one environment. Users can quickly and easily Hall A3 - Stand 507 leakage technology and embedded flash. Fast previously separate design disciplines are in- I Memphis develops Intel certified processing and low power consumption make trinsically linked. Changes can be made to the server modules the devices suitable for use in white goods such design without the documentation and format- Memphis Electronic will develop special cer- as washing machines, refrigerators, ovens and air ting issues that often inhibit innovation. tificated modules in the area of server and high- conditioning units as well as for small household News ID 492 tech. At electronica 2008 Memphis will present appliances and consumer products such as the first Fully Buffered Dual Inline Memory shavers, cordless phones and remote controls. Module (FBDIMM) with Intelcertification. News ID 402 Hall A4 - Stand 420 The FBDIMM technology has been specially I TI: DAC with 18-bit monotonic performance developed for the server market and offers the TI has introduced the highest accuracy digital- advantage that despite increasing memory Hall A1 - Stand 506 to-analog converter, which features 18-bit mo- clock frequency, the maximum storage exten- I Altium: live product demonstrations notonic performance, 2 LSBintegral nonlin- sion of a system can be raised. The storage at electronica 2008 earity, 1 LSB differential nonlinearity. Delivered modules are linked over a serial bus and have a Altium will reveal the secrets to next-generation in a small QFN-24 package, the DAC9881 en- buffer on each module. The Intel-certification electronics design at electronica 2008. The live ables customers to increase system performance attests that the server modules are compatible demonstrations will show how engineers, re- and simplify designs in precision industrial ap- with Intel-servers, work under full load and gardless of experience or background, can deliver plications such as automatic test equipment, in- have no design or mechanical defects. sustainable differentiation through innovation in strumentation, process control, data acquisition News ID 508 electronics design. Altium will be previewing the and communications systems. Developed on latest features in its unified solution, and how it TI’s HPA07 high-performance analog CMOS can exploit today’s low-cost, high-performance process technology, the DAC9881 enables cus- Hall C3 - Stand 317 FPGA devices. Demonstrations will focus on the tomers to achieve higher levels of system per- I Fujitsu: low pin-count 8-bit Innovation Station, Altium’s complete off-the- formance in industrial applications, such as the microcontroller shelf solution that places intelligent devices at the 18-bit monotonic performance guarantees sta- Fujitsu has announced the MB95200 low pin- centre of the design process. By using the Altium bility in closed-loop applications, such as in- count series, an extension of its 8-bit micro- Innovation Station, engineers are no longer dustrial process control, low linearity error, low controller family, F²MC-8FX. The series of sin- constrained to a hardware configuration or a noise and 4x more granularity than 16-bit. gle-chip standard microcontrollers with 8 24 pre-determined programmable device. Because News ID 428 pins is powered by an optimised core, with low- Altium’s solution works on a single data model, Hall A2 - Stand M07 Hall A4 - Stand 560 tures that reduce board space as well as assembly I NEC: 8’bit microcontrollers with I Microchip: demo board for touch-sensing and device costs. Applications suitable for the built’in Flash memory applications new V-Family F-RAM devices include medical, NEC Electronics has announced that it starts Microchip has announced the PICDEM Touch automotive, industrial control, robotics, utility sample shipments of 18 new models of its 8’bit Sense 2 Demo Board (Part DM164128) for ca- metering, RAID controllers, and industrial PCs. microcontroller with built’in Flash memory. pacitive touch-sensing applications. The easy- News ID 494 These products are ideally suited to ancillary to-use board comes with the royalty-free functions as sub’microcontrollers, such as con- mTouch Sensing Solution Software Develop- trolling small battery’powered systems, managing ment Kit and is populated with a 16-bit Hall B4 - Stand 425 power to reduce the standby power of home ap- PIC24FJ256GB110 microcontroller, which fea- I Yamaichi: Bluetooth USB dongle for pliances and the like, and controlling key input. tures an integrated Charge Time Measure- industrial Y-Con series News ID 414 ment Unit peripheral for fast capacitive touch Yamaichi announces the Y-ConBluetooth- sensing. This is also the world’s first 16-bit Dongle-1, a IP67/68/69K device for wireless MCU family with USB On-The-Go. data transmission according to the Bluetooth Hall A5 - Stand 207 News ID 407 SIG 2.0 standard. Y-ConBluetooth-Dongle-1 is I ST: advanced motor-control algorithms a Class 2 device working on 2.4 GHz, with a for STM32 MCU maximum data rate of 3 Mbit/s. The built in STMicroelectronics, has extended its library of Hall A6 - Stand S02 antenna allows a range of ca. 10 m. The oper- functions supporting vector control of electric I pls presents enhanced version of ating temperature range is -10 C to +80 C, and motors using the 32-bit STM32 microcon- Universal Debug Engine the USB interface connector has a durability of troller, with turnkey algorithms supporting sin- pls Programmierbare Logik & Systeme presents ca. 1,500 mating cycles. gle-shunt sensorless control, control of IPM version of its Universal Debug Engine 2.4 at News ID 485 motors, and field-weakening controls for electronica 2008 in Area A6, Both S02. The PMSM motors. ST’s Cortex-M3 based STM32 UDE 2.4 also immediately supports NXP Semi- MCU has already been designed into approxi- conductor’s LPC32x0 microcontroller family, Hall A6 - Stand 642 mately 40 customer motor-control applications. which is designed for demanding industrial, I Vector: enhanced version of calibration News ID 405 consumer, medical and network applications. and diagnostic tool The devices are designed for up to 208 MHz Vector has extended its CANape measure- system clock and are based on an ARM9EJ-S ment, calibration and diagnostic tool for opti- Hall A4 - Stand 420 core with Embedded Trace Module and inte- mal parameterization of ECUs. Version 7.0 has I TI: video development platform grated Vector Floating Point coprocessor. extended measurement data acquisition options with TNETV3020 News ID 413 and comprehensive diagnostic capabilities. De- Texas Instruments has announced a video developers of FlexRay ECUs will benefit from the velopment platform that enables media gateway FIBEX Explorer and dynamic allocation of XCP equipment manufacturers as well as the broad- Hall A4 - Stand 159 bandwidth. The multi-recorder concept enables cast community to build customized multi- I ADI unveils new high-speed parallel configuration of different measure- channel video solutions for next-generation converter family at electronica ments, and measurements can be started or video applications. Combining TI’s Analog Devices will unveil a new family of stopped independently of one another. TNETV3020 multicore digital signal processor high-speed converters and discuss additions to News ID 450 (DSP), open-framework video software and a its Blackfin and SHARC families of processors reference board, this video development plat- at electronica 2008. ADI will also introduce its form reduces development time for multimedia latest iSensor and iMEMS intelligent sensor Hall A3 - Stand 431 processing equipment manufacturers. products. The company will have a range of I Anders extends intelligent colour News ID 415 demonstrations that represent industry-leading display platform offering innovations driving emerging applications in Anders Electronics will be announcing an exten- automotive, industrial, medical and consumer sion to its UMR family of intelligent colour dis- Hall A5 - Stand 576 markets. The demonstrations will also highlight play platforms at electronica. The latest platform I Digi-Key and HI-TECH announce worldwide ADI’s converter and embedded/convergent will significantly extend the range of functional- distribution agreement processing and DSP technology. ity and price points for designers and integrators Digi-Key and HI-TECH Software have an- News ID 495 looking to incorporate colour TFT-LCD and nounced a global agreement for the distribution enhanced features into embedded applications. of HI-TECH Software’s development tools. The UMR family of intelligent colour display plat- HI-TECH is a provider of development tools for Hall A5 - Stand 321 forms has been developed to help designers and embedded systems, offering compilers, RTOS, I Ramtron: European debut for F-RAM system integrators deliver the ultimate user and an Eclipse-based IDE for 8-, 16-, and 32-bit memory devices experience in a wide variety of display-based microcontroller and DSP chip architectures. At Electronica 2008, Ramtron will debut the new applications. The range currently includes the HI-TECH products stocked by Digi-Key are V-Family of high-speed and power flexible F- UMR-X10-70 and UMR-X10-35, both of which available for purchase directly from Digi-Key. RAM memory devices, which offer a lower op- will also be on display at electronica 2008. News ID 447 erating voltage (2.0V to 3.6V) and integrated fea- News ID 496

ore information about each news story is available on Mwww.embedded-control-europe.com/ece_magazine You just have to type in the “News ID”. —

October 2008 16 Hall A2 - Stand M07 Hall A5 - Stand 506 the world’s largest LCD monitor with a screen I NEC: enhanced lineup of TFT LCD modules I Infineon: multiband UHF transmitter diagonalof108inchesusedhereasascreenfor NEC announces five new amorphous-silicon with 8051 MCU interactive games but also generally suited as a thin-film-transistor liquid crystal display mod- Infineon announces mass production avail- display for commercial e-signage applications ules incorporating a newly designed LED unit ability of the SmartLEWIS MCU PMA7110, plus an approach for dynamic digital moving that achieves both long operating life of 70,000 a single-chip transmitter IC with integrated walkways and escalator advertising whereas hours and low power consumption in the microcontroller that provides virtually all the screen content jumps with the movement of backlight system. These new products enhance functions needed in a wireless remote control the viewer from display-to-display. LEDs are also NEC LCD Technologies’ core product lineup of device. The new, highest-integration member one of the important innovation topics of the TFT LCD modules featuring white LED back- of the SmartLEWIS MCU family of low- electronica. With energy-saving LED lamps, new light systems. power ASK/FSK multi-band transmitter ICs approaches for solar-powered applications and News ID 487 for the sub 1GHz ISM frequency bands, cov- sustainable production technologies, Sharp is ers the four frequency bands 315 MHz, 434 showing how progress and environmental MHz, 868 MHz and 915 MHz on a single protection go hand-in-hand. Hall A4 - Stand 375 chip. The advanced power control system News ID 498 I Actel: radiation-tolerant, flash-based makes the PMA7110 ideal for use in battery FPGAs operated remote controls and wireless Actel has introduced radiation-tolerant, flash- sensing applications. Hall A4 - Stand 420 based FPGAs for space-flight applications. The News ID 476 I TI: 24-bit, 625kSPS ADC features wide reprogrammability of the low-power RT ProA- bandwidth SIC3 devices simplifies prototyping and eases Texas Instruments has introduced a 24-bit, hardware timing validation while offering crit- Hall A3 - Stand 207 high-speed (625kSPS) delta-sigma analog-to- ical immunity to radiation-induced configura- I Sharp: ‘Green’ electronics for the digital converter, the ADS1672, featuring wide tion upsets. This announcement, combined networked society bandwidth and a dual-path digital filter to give with the launch of the RTAX-DSP solutions an- At electronica, Sharp is presenting key tech- greater flexibi lity to designersof automated test nounced, broadens Actel´s industry-leading nologies for digital networking: displays of 2.2 equipment, test and measurement, medical space-flight offering and gives designers the re- to 108 inches in different technical designs, cam- instrumentation, vibration analysis and liable, flexible solutions needed to design next- eras, RF components and Zigbee-compatible sonar/military equipment. generation space-flight systems. sensors. The highlights in digital signage include News ID 516 News ID 429

Hall A4 - Stand 560 I Microchip: LIN Bus 2.0/2.1 and SAE J2602 conform transceivers Microchip has announced the MCP2021 and MCP2022 LIN/SAE J2602 transceivers. The devices are 3rd party-LIN/J2602 approved, OEM approved, and AEC-Q100 certified to meet the stringent requirements of global automotive manufacturers worldwide. The transceivers include built-in voltage regulators and are compliant with the LIN Bus 2.0/2.1 and SAE J2602 D EE HP standards, as well as the previous-generation HSIG LIN 1.X standards. ST ROBU E News ID 437 IBL FLEX

Hall A2 - Stand M07 I NEC: GUI for configuration of MCUs NEC announces the availability of Applilet2 device configuration software. The free to download Applilet2 software provides a graphical user interface to configure all of the features and peripherals available on all of NEC's MCUs and significantly reduces the development cycle for new products and applications. Applilet2 fully supports all of the development tools available for all of NEC's microcontrollers including IAR Systems’ and Green Hills’ development environments. Users can also add their own code to the project and this will not be altered during the code generation process. News ID 440 Please visit us at: electronica 2008, Hall.Stand A6.S02

17 October 2008 Hall A4 - Stand 159 Hall A4 - Stand 420 Hall A5 - Stand 506 I ADI: op amp with over-voltage protection I TI: new DSPs and floating-point-DSP-plus- I Infineon: XC2200M MCU series for Analog Devices has introduced the ADA4091- ARM applications processor automotive body applications 2, a highly integrated precision operational am- TI has announced three new devices that tran- Infineon introduces a new series of highly-in- plifier with on-chip over-voltage protection cir- scend traditional floating-point processors, tegrated microcontrollers designed for use in cuitry which is an alternative to discrete analog enabling engineers to easily design more automotive body applications, featuring very input solutions. The ADA4091-2 op amp’s portable, connected, cost-efficient and high- low power consumption in stand-by and op- performance is fully specified, including the de- precision end products. The devices, based on eration mode, higher performance and AU- vice’s on-chip over-voltage circuitry. This sim- TI’s new C674x DSP core, merge the advantages TOSAR compliance. The new XC2200M series plifies equipment design and error analysis and of floating point with a combination of con- of the XC2200 family fulfils the demanding re- results in more consistent output readings in in- nectivity peripherals, low power and low cost quirements of BCM applications such as inter- dustrial process controls, battery-powered in- that, until now, has only been available with nal and external lighting systems, car access and strumentation, power supply control and pro- fixed-point devices. TI’s new processors include door modules; Central Gateway applications tection systems and remote sensors. the industry’s lowest power floating-point that manage all internal interfaces and the com- News ID 442 DSPs ‘ the TMS320C6745 DSP and munication with external interfaces for after- TMS320C6747 DSP ‘ as well as the OMAP- sales software updates; and HVAC applications. L137 floating-point-DSP-plus-ARM applica- News ID 510 Hall A6 - Stand 414 tions processor. I Digi: development of networked News ID 504 devices with .NET Micro Framework Hall A5 - Stand 207 Digi International has introduced Microsoft I STM expands STM32 options with 16Kbyte .NET Micro Framework v2.5 support for the Hall A2 - Stand M07 Flash devices ConnectCore 9P 9215 ARM9-based Ethernet I NEC: 9.0-inch WVGA LCD module for STMicroelectronic has extended options for networking core module. The .NET Micro industrial users of its STM32 MCUs, by introducing new Framework extends the reach of Microsoft’s NEC has introduced a 9.0-inch amorphous-sil- devices with 16 Kbyte Flash density as well as a embedded solutions to integrated device icon TFT liquid crystal display module complete new 48MHz series of microcontrollers platforms with smaller memory footprints. (NL8048BC24-04 ), with WVGA resolution for optimized for USB applications. There are now The ConnectCore 9P 9215 features a rich set industrial equipment, including factory au- 60 STM32 MCUs available, combining the ad- of interfaces expanding the .NET Micro tomation and measurement equipment. A vanced ARM Cortex-M3 core with pin and soft- Framework’s capabilities into new applica- viewing angle of 176 degrees, high luminance of ware compatibility across all variants for efficient tions such as 350 candelas per square meter and high con- product development and shorter design cycles. News ID 511 trast ratio of 800:1 are realized through NEC’s News ID 520 UA-SFT technology, which boasts high trans- missivity and wide viewing-angle properties. Hall A4 - Stand 420 UA-SFT technology also reduces the color Hall A4 - Stand 420 I TI: multi-purpose chip for closed-loop shift that occurs due to a change in viewing I TI: RF range extender for 2.4-GHz contactless applications angle, allowing information to be viewed easi- low-power wireless networks TI has announced the availability of a new ly and accurately from any angle in either por- Texas Instruments has introduced a highly in- secure multi-purpose contactless chip designed trait or landscape orientation. tegrated radio frequency range extender for 2.4- for the growing closed-loop contactless micro- News ID 445 GHz wireless applications, such as ZigBee net- payment, loyalty, ID and access application works, wireless sensor networks and industri- markets. TI’s ISO/IEC 14443 Type B chip al, consumer and audio equipment. The called the RF-HCT-WRC5-KP221, combines Hall A5 - Stand 159 CC2590 extends range up to eight times the processing speed, advanced radio frequency I Rutronik: solutions provider shows line-of-sight by integrating a power amplifier performance and industry-standard security examples of applications for improved typical output power of +12 dBm with a flexible and configurable memory that At this year’s electronica Rutronik will set the and a low-noise amplifier for improved receiv- supports up to five applications on one focus on its presentation as solutions provider er sensitivity of +6 dB. contactless card or token. for vertical markets. This new concept will not News ID 523 News ID 411 set the primary focus on the display of technical devices, but rather present examples of trend-setting applications embedding the com- Hall A6 - Stand 143 Hall A4 - Stand 420 ponents as well as the people using the tech- I Renesas: low pin count 2 and 4Kbyte I TI: 16-bit analog-to-digital converter nology. Special attention is spent on compre- flash MCU at 200 MSPS hensive total solutions for the markets e-Me- Renesas announces the availability of the Texas Instruments introduces a 16-bit, single- tering, renewable energies, automotive, R8C/2J microcontroller, which is based on the channel, 200 mega samples per second ADC to power&lighting, wireless and automation. At existing R8C/Tiny series and has an innovative provide faster speeds previously only available the fair a consulting team consisting of product 16-bit CPU core and 8-bit bus. This new with lower resolution ADCs. The new data con- manager, FAE and sales will answer any ques- R8C/2J device features a reduced set of pe- verters enable new levels of performance in tions on site. As an important module in the of- ripheral functions and offers the flash memo- communications, test and measurement, and fering of the distributor Webgate, logistics as ry options of 2 or 4Kbyte making it suitable for defense applications. Evaluation modules sim- well as quality & services also play a major role cost sensitive functions, such as intelligent plify design and enable rapid evaluations of and are presented on a separate area at the watch-dog timer, power-on reset, low voltage these complex systems. booth. detect or as a secondary fail-safe MCU. News ID 457 News ID 528 News ID 468

October 2008 18 Embedded Forum at electronica

The Embedded Forum is a theater-style presentation area with free access for all electronica visitors. The Embedded Forum is located in Hall A6, the dedicated “Embedded Hall”, close to the Main Entrance East. At the Embedded Forum ICC Media is staging a 4-day forum programme with half-hour presentations about technical and market trends, products, solutions and applications.

Programme Overview

Tuesday, Nov 11 Thursday, Nov 13 Session 1: Microcontrollers & Microprocessors, DSPs Session 1: Development Tools & RTOS Session 2: Development Tools / Small Form Factor Boards Session 2: Microcontrollers & Microprocessors, DSPs Session 3: Embedded Computing Boards & Modules Session 3: FPGA-based Embedded Systems Design

Wednesday, Nov 12 Friday, Nov 14 Session 1: Small Form Factor Boards Session 1: Microcontrollers Session 2: Development Tools & RTOS Session 2: Model-based Design / Embedded Packaging Session 3: Motor Control

Tuesday, Nov 11

Session 1: Microcontrollers & Microprocessors, DSPs 10h30 - 11h00 Designing with AMD presented by James Edwards and Oliver Götting, AMD

11h00 - 11h30 New low power processors for portability and performance presented by Sebastian Perez-Vasseur, Texas Instruments

11h30 - 12h00 OMAP™35x application processors presented by Jesus Ibanez, Texas Instruments

Session 2: Development Tools / Small Form Factor Boards 13h00 - 13h30 Code Free Test Creation – TestShell Reality presented by Eitan Lavie, Product Manager at QualiSystems

13h30 - 14h00 Automated Defect Prevention for Embedded System Software Development presented by Parasoft

14h00 - 14h30 Rethink Cool! Intel Atom processors for Embedded Computing Applications presented by Intel

14h30 - 15h00 Small Form Factor Boards: Trends, Integration and Application presented by Josef Behammer, Kontron

19 October 2008 Session 3 : Embedded Computing Boards & Modules 15h10 - 15h40 MicroTCA systems for real applications: key components and building blocks presented by Vollrath Dirksen, N.A.T.

15h40 - 16h10 High End Multiprocessing with MicroTCA/AMC Systems presented by Irene Hahner, Kontron

16h10 - 16h40 COM Express and UGM – an ideal combination presented by Hubert Hafner, Kontron

16h40 - 17h10 Technical Trends with CompactPCI Boards presented by Kontron

Wednesday, Nov 12

Session 1: Small Form Factor Boards 10h00 - 10h30 Efficient Design-In of Intel Atom processor presented by Felix Kunz and Walter Furter, Digital-Logic

10h30 - 11h00 Future of Small Form Factor Boards presented by Wolfgang Heinz-Fischer, Advantech

11h00 - 11h30 Battery Management with Intel Atom presented by Christian Eder, congatec

11h30 - 12h00 AMD Turion64X2 processor reference design kit for Mini-ITX boards presented by James Edwards and Oliver Götting, AMD

Session 2 : Development Tools & RTOS 12h30 - 13h00 A ‘new product introduction’ perspective on development systems presented by Colin Weaving, Future Electronics

13h00 - 13h30 SMP Linux Debugging - Experiences, Challenges, Solutions presented by Thomas Bauch, pls

13h30 - 14h00 Embedded System Virtualization: Trends and Opportunities presented by David Kleidermacher and Joe Fabbre, Green Hills Software

14h00 - 14h30 Software Development Challenges for Multicore-based Systems presented by David Kleidermacher and Joe Fabbre, Green Hills Software

Session 3 : Motor Control 15h00 - 15h30 Model-Based Design of Controls for an Electric Motor Application presented by Gernot Schraberger, The MathWorks

15h30 - 16h00 Driver Evolution for Flexible CAN-based Motion Controls presented by Eric Wallentine, ON Semiconductor

October 2008 20 16h00 - 16h30 Wireless Mesh Technologies presented by John Schwartz, Digi International

16h30 - 17h00 Improving the performance of Burshless DC motors using integrated Magnetic Rotary Encoders presented by Josef Janisch, austriamicrosystems

Thursday, Nov 13

Session 1 : Development Tools & RTOS 10h00 - 10h30 Accelerate “Smart” User Interface Innovation presented by Thomas Ulber, Mentor Graphics

10h30 - 11h00 (Details to follow soon) tbd

11h00 - 11h30 Principles of High Assurance Software Engineering (PHASE) presented by David Kleidermacher and Joe Fabbre, Green Hills Software

11h30 - 12h00 Platforms for Next Generation Mobile Devices presented by David Kleidermacher and Joe Fabbre, Green Hills Software Session 2 : Microcontrollers & Microprocessors, DSPs 12h30 - 13h00 Less Power, More Features... Microcontrollers For Next-Generation Designs presented by Steve Norman, NEC Electronics

13h00 - 13h30 The Embedded Systems market in Germany presented by Peter Burghardt, BITKOM

13h30 - 14h00 TMS320C2000™ 32-bit Microcontrollers – New platform and tools presented by Stefan Bruder, Texas Instruments

14h00 - 14h30 MSP430F5xx Ultra Low Power MCU – A new level of integration presented by David Smith, Texas Instruments

Session 3 : FPGA-based Embedded Systems Design 15h00 - 15h30 Design and Prototyping with FPGAs, but Targeting ASICs for Volume Production presented by Barry West, ON Semiconductor

15h40 - 16h10 Model-Based Design for Implementing Digital Hardware Systems presented by Prashant Rao, The MathWorks

Friday, Nov 14

Session 1 : Microcontrollers 10h00 - 10h30 Next Generation ARM9 Core-based Embedded Display Microcontrollers presented by Roland Gehrmann, Toshiba

10h30 - 11h00 Product Design with Industrial Grade Modules and Software presented by Axel Berghoff, PHYTEC

11h00 - 11h30 Measure, Control and Drive with 16-bit Real Time Signal Controller presented by Infineon

Session 2 : Model-based Design / Embedded Packaging 12h10 - 12h40 Model-Based Design of Controls for an Electric Motor Application presented by Gernot Schraberger, The MathWorks

12h40 - 13h10 (Details to follow soon) tbd

13h10 - 13h40 How to embed standard active and passive components into a PCB presented by Tuomas Waris, Microdul, HTC/Imbera

FREE Subscription to ECE magazine Ensure getting your personal copy of ECE magazine free of charge by completting the online form at: • www.embedded-control-europe.com/ece_magazine

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MSC Vertriebs GmbH · Zentrale · Industriestraße 16 · 76297 Stutensee Q www.msc-ge.com Tel. +49 7249 910 - 0 · Fax +49 7249 79 93 · [email protected] FPGAS & ASICS

Is motion control technology moving from controllers to FPGAs?

By Stefano Zammattio, Altera Europe

Low-cost FPGAs offer not just better performance but also reduction in system costs and implementation times for motion control applications.

Figure 1. Examples of industrial networks that can be supported by Altera FPGA devices

I Very early motion control systems used me- market is under pressure to reduce costs, in the Anobvioussolutionistodevelopcustom chanical gearboxes and levers to select speeds industrial space cost reduction means creating daughter cards (one per IE standard) or inte- and drive power, but these systems were quick- more efficient factories rather than faster or grate a multi-standard ASIC device in to the ly replaced by analog electronic controllers that more intelligent drive systems – this means controller. But, because there are so many stan- gave much more flexible speed control and the factory-wide information systems, low-cost dards (note that these are constantly evolving as ability to create systems with more complicat- control networks and manufacturing systems well!) and that ASIC devices quickly become ed movements. The next evolutionary step was that can be quickly and cheaply reconfigured to obsolete (due to newer versions being available to add even more flexibility, reproducibility and manufacture a different product. These cost-re- with support for new/updated IE standards) you performance through the use of digital control ducing measures can be enabled by the use of would need to support a new product develop- techniques implemented on microprocessors industrial Ethernet on the factory floor and ment for each change and each new protocol to and DSPs – the end result of this is the sophis- equipment that is highly interoperable, allow- be supported. This is an expensive solution ticated motion control devices in wide use ing it to be easily modified for new applications especially when calculated over the long term of today. With roadmaps for processor/DSP tech- or systems. So how can FPGA devices deliver industrial equipment lifetimes. nology offering steadily increasing performance these features and hence reduce costs for the you might wonder how could FPGAs, like industrial customer? However,aboardthatcarriesalow-costFPGA Altera Cyclone III series, possibly be the next deviceandEthernetPHYtransceiverscan stage in the evolution of motor control. Industrial Ethernet (IE) is a rapidly growing (with appropriate hardware and software IP) technology, both in terms of rate of adoption support any IE standard. As the FPGA is pro- Certainly microprocessors and DSPs are steadi- and evolution – there are many different IE grammable, it can be easily re-configured to ly decreasing in price, and motion control standards (>20), each providing a slightly dif- support any new protocol, this can be done at system manufacturers have leveraged this to ferent solution to the industrial networking any time - even if the device is in a machine al- create drives that are supremely effective and challenge. Setting up new systems using IE is ready on the factory floor. This allows system reasonably priced. For most manufacturers quick and easy due to features like low-cost developers to easily program in new IE proto- the evolutionary trend has been to arm the standard connectors, support for long cabling cols (or updated versions of the current proto- drive with more local processing power and distances (up to 100m) and hot plug capabili- col) and enables them to re-use the same flexibility - leveraging the increasing amount of ty. However, drive manufacturers are faced with equipment in any part of the factory. Legacy processing power available per dollar. Howev- the problem of which IE protocol(s) they support is easy - simply install the appropriate er the industrial market is changing and simply should support. Customers, of course, will de- FPGA configuration that supports the same making faster, more intelligent and well-con- mand the option that fits their application and version of the IE protocol used in the rest of the trolled drives is not enough to satisfy the new budget best - but how can the manufacturer equipment and your device is ready to connect demands of industrial customers. Today every cost effectively support multiple IE standards? to the system. An implementation of an IE pro-

October 2008 24 FPGAS & ASICS

effectively address this connectivity issue but data processing, generating graphics for LCD howelsecantheybeusedtoreducethecostof displays and even serving data over web pages drive systems? can now all be done from inside a single FPGA device. This enables the industrial developer to Today processing power is relatively cheap and integrate a large portion of the system into a other features consume a significant fraction of single FPGA device and reduce the size and cost the cost of the system – for example the cost of of the circuit board. Smaller size is usually a a proprietary fieldbus ASIC, connectors and ca- good thing for the product but an additional bles can be much greater than the cost of the side benefit is that this kind of integration can CPU or DSP.This is one of the reasons why IE deliver a much lower power system, enabling is becoming so popular. FPGA devices also offer designers to eliminate cooling fans and reduce the ability to absorb all the digital logic and in- the cost, physical size and form factor restric- terfaces in the drive system. Interfaces like tions even further. PWM, I2C and SPI are easy to implement in the FPGA, as are digital motor encoder and A/D Many industrial systems use analog signals be- converter interfaces; more complex interfaces tween the sensor/encoder devices and the con- like PCI, PCI express and serial rapid IO are troller, in busy industrial environments these also available as off-the-shelf IP. FPGAs can analog signals are subject to noise, especially if even be used to support other useful protocols the controller is a long way from the unit being like CAN, Profibus and other traditional field- monitored. As with many applications (eg. buses. If later on the designer decides they need Audio CDs, DVD, digital radio, etc), one way to add another I/O interface or block of pro- around this is to transmit the signal in a digital Figure 2. Reducing cost with FPGA-based cessing logic, it is easy to add these to the FPGA format, this means converting or even gener- system integration design. ating the data in a digital format at the remote location. The EnDAT and BiSS encoder inter- tocol based on a low-cost FPGA device can be Soft processors like the 32-bit Nios II processor faces and sigma delta A/D converters are ex- cheaper and lower power than one based on a from Altera also offer the ability to integrate amples of sensors that output the data direct- multi-standard ASIC device, and certainly is software functionality into the FPGA. This ly into a digital format. Not only is there no much more future-proof. Clearly FPGAs can means things like IE stack processing, sensor noise from the data transmission but these new FPGAS & ASICS

tralised control and ones with distributed control. A centralised system has many motors and sensors connected to a single controller – this brings the advantage of low cost and the ability to easily co-ordinate the control of the system as a whole. With the advent of relatively low- cost industrial PCs (IPC) this type of application is increasing in popularity but it is limited by the processing power and I/O capability of the single controller (or IPC). In a distributed system each motor has its own dedicated processor to locally control the motion – this approach is more expensive and contains a lot of wasted computational resource but it is possible to easily build large systems as long as there is a limited requirement for interaction between the control axes and a well-defined sys- Figure 3. Example of an FPGA-based motor controller system tem model and control methodology.

Frequently these last two requirements are quite complex and often the easiest way to implement them is to use an industrial PC combined with a clock-based control system like IEEE1588. This adds even more cost and wasted processing resource to the system. There is a clear benefit in somehow combining the low cost and easily co-ordinated control of the centralised system with the scalability and fast drive performance of the decentralised system.

Today this can be achieved through the use of high-performance real-time IE protocols (eg, Figure 4. Comparison of a traditional distributed drive control system with a centralised EtherCAT, SERCOS III, PROFINET IRT, etc). IPC/PLC-based system using real-time Ethernet With these protocols it is possible to make a high-speed, low-latency connection between technologies bring other benefits like trans- up the way drive systems are put together. The many drive controllers and a single industrial mission of motor temperature data on the same trend to put more intelligence in the drive is an PC. This alleviates the I/O bottleneck for the PC wire as the encoder positional data and lower obvious consequence of the falling cost of pro- and enables the designer to bring many drives quantisation noise in the sigma delta A/D cessing power but it also means that the drives and sensors under the control of a single converters. With a traditional DSP or micro- are increasingly complex, require detailed mod- processor. Drive specific calculations like cur- controller solution these novel digital sensors els of the motors and rely on proprietary soft- rent control and velocity observation can still require a resolver to convert the data back to the ware. The result of this is that the user has no done locally at the drive; in a FPGA these can analog domain so that they can be read by the real visibility of the drive technology – some easily be implemented in hardware allowing on-chip A/D converter. Thanks to the ability to drives may offer up to a thousand parameters in even complex algorithms to calculated in support digital logic, the FPGA is able to resolve an attempt to open up the drive control but this <100ns. This alleviates the IPC/PLC and the IE these signals directly in digital format, deliver- makes them awkward and time-consuming to connection of the burden of transmitting and ing the quality of the new technologies without customise. calculating the low-level data, and allows the the cost or clumsiness of having to use an ex- system to use its resources for the higher-level ternal resolver and analog interface. The flexi- Also, proprietary motor models make it im- requirements like velocity and position control. bility of the FPGA enables the designer to add practical to use motors from another vendor. Hence the combination of fast IE and the FPGA as many interfaces of whatever type required to This makes it difficult for users to cost-effec- give the IPC the ability to support a high per- their design, opening the door to customised tively design and put together their own custom formance centralised feedback control system single chip solutions that were simply not systems, especially where multiple axes of con- for many motors. This also gives the end user possible before. The flexibility and power de- trol need to interact closely to deliver the mo- easy access to the control algorithms being run livered by the combination of IE and FPGA de- tion required. Motion control systems can be in the IPC, hence ‘opening up’ the system and vices also brings about the opportunity to open simply divided into two types, ones with cen- giving the user full control. I

More information about each news is available on www.Embedded-Control-Europe.com/ece_magazine • You have to type in the “News ID”. —

October 2008 26 FPGAS & ASICS

Product News

I Lattice: PCI Express development kit I Picor: Cool-ORing family targets I Keithley: series 3700 switch/multimeter for LatticeECP2M FPGAs redundant power architectures line with new plug-in cards Lattice announces the availability of a new low Picor announces the Cool-ORing family of full- Keithley announces an expansion of its Series cost PCI Express development kit for its Lat- function Active ORing solutions and discrete Ac- 3700 System Switch/Multimeter and Plug-in ticeECP2M family of low cost 90nm FPGAs tive ORing controllers addressing the require- Card Family with the addition of two new plug- which is based on a new PCI Express x1/x4 ments of redundant power architectures imple- in cards, the Model 3724 Dual 1X30 Solid State evaluation board. The new kit includes four key mented in high-availability systems such as FET Relay Multiplexer Card and the Model capabilities for quick evaluation and rapid, low servers, high-end computing and telecom and 3750 Multifunction I/O Card. The new cards cost PCI Express system design. There are sev- communications infrastructure systems. The offer test engineers broader support for a eral demos available, including a control plane Cool-ORing PI2121 / PI2123 / PI2125 are com- wider variety of switching configurations in application, a throughput demo for high- plete full-function Active ORing solutions with in- order to keep up with the demands of increased bandwidth applications, and two demos sup- tegrated high-speed ORing MOSFET controllers testing complexity. porting scatter-gather DMA capabilities: a and very low on-state resistance MOSFETs. News ID 1767 color bar demo and an image transfer demo News ID 471 (which also makes use of the Lattice Scatter- Gather DMA IP core). I Actel expands military-qualified News ID 532 I Cypress combines PSoC and nvSRAM flash-based FPGA offerings in a single package Actel has added new ProASIC3 and ProA- Cypress introduces a device integrating a SIC3EL FPGAs to its military-qualified product I Holtek: microcontrollers in 10-pin package non-volatile static random access memory and offerings. Verified to operate across the full mil- Two new devices, the HT48R01A and a programmable system on chip. The new itary temperature range (-55 to +125 C) and HT46R01A, have been added to Holtek’s range PSoC NV family serves applications requiring ranging in density from 600,000 to 3-million of ultra small outline 10-pin package Holtek continuous data logging from sensors, analog, system gates, the new low-power devices are microcontrollers. Common features include 1K and digital inputs. The devices’ analog front- immune to neutron-induced configuration x 14 of Program Memory, 64 bytes of Data end can simultaneously sample up to 8 inputs upsets, saving board space and minimising Memory, up to 8 I/O pins, a 6-level stack and an from sensors and analog sources and store the complexity in the system. 8-bit Timer/Event counter. Additionally the de- data in the embedded nvSRAM. Regular op- News ID 1861 vices contain an RTC timer, an external inter- eration accesses are directed to an SRAM array rupt and a complimentary buzzer pair output and automatically secured into a non-volatile function. The internal Low Voltage Reset func- quantum trap cell in case of power failure. I Radiocrafts: wireless M-Bus and tion can also be selected to have three different News ID 462 ZigBee-gateway for smart metering voltage activation levels. Both devices are sup- Radiocrafts and Wavecom have announced the plied in ultra small 10-pin package types. The launch of a GSM/GPRS/EDGE gateway for HT46R01A also contains an 8-bit 4 channel I Lattice: FPGA-based support for smart metering which embeds wireless M-Bus A/D converter as well as a single channel 8-bit RLDRAM I/II devices and ZigBee, all in a compact form factor. The PWM output. Lattice Semiconductor has announced FPGA- wireless M-Bus standard specifies the News ID 398 based support for RLDRAM I/II devices. The communication between water, gas, heat and LatticeSC and LatticeSCM FPGA families now electricity meters and concentrators, whereas support RLDRAM I/II rates up to 800Mbps. ZigBee is a standard for monitoring and control IMSC: high power light engine on The high-speed RLDRAM I and RLDRAM II applications using low power radio networking. a COB basis memory controller IP is implemented in The solution is based on Wavecom’s Fastrack MSC is delivering a high power light engine on Lattice’s low power MACO structured ASIC Supreme, a programmable application processor a COB basis in the dimensions of 58,5mm x technology. with GSM/GPRS/EDGE modem capabilities. 29,7mm with 160 LED dies on board. Carrier News ID 425 News ID 448 material for the board, which is deliverable in cold white and warm white, is ceramic/metal. This product has a optimized heat distribution I Connect One: miniature IP controller I ITTIA: improved DB-SQL engine due to direct mounting onto aluminium base. for mobile M2M offers query optimizer This light engine has a very high reliability due Connect One releases iChip CO2144, a new ITTIA announces new advances in its light- to the matrix interconnection system. Because addition to its iChipSEC family of machine-to- weight DB-SQL database library, including a of the high packing density it generates a machine IP Controllers. CO2144 offers complete new query optimizer. Enhancements to the SQL homogeny high-performance Light output with IP connectivity and security in small form factor, engine improve index utilization and add sup- up to 800lm at a power consumption of 10Watt. 10x10mm LFBGA 144-ball package. This minia- port for parametric queries and statement The price of the light engine is very competitive ture package supports wireless LAN and all caching. ITTIA DB-SQL version 2.6 executes for use in low and high volume applications. Al- cellular standards, making it ideal for applica- SQL queries faster through enhanced caching ready available are also a 30Watt device with tions such as automotive, remote monitoring, and query plan optimization. The SQL engine 2400lm and a 100Watt device with >10.000lm. and medical devices where secure, robust con- now caches table descriptions and statement ex- 8000lm will follow. Even custom specific devices nectivity is essential. Multiple power-save modes ecution plans to significantly improve execution with various dimensions are possible. increase battery life for these mobile devices. time in a deployed application. News ID 477 News ID 1786 News ID 1862

27 October 2008 FPGAS & ASICS

FPGAs enable large power savings for industrial motor control

By Mike Thompson, Actel Corporation

Mixed-signal FPGAs are a new alternative for industrial motor control. In combination with an integrated soft processor, they offer the ability to easily implement motor designs for a range of motor types, at a cost attractive for Figure 1. For efficient control of single and most applications. three-phase motors, mixed-signal FPGAs, like the Actel Fusion device, offer a highly flexible, low-cost, single-chip solution, which can contribute to the reduction of power requirements and the maximization of energy cost savings.

I From elevators and home appliances to ro- matching or variable speed control can be gently and continuously sensed and exactly botics and automated industrial manufacturing achieved, increasing the power efficiency of matched with the proper input power, maxi- lines, electric motors are used nearly every- electric motors across the full range with a min- mizing the efficiency of the motor over the full where. Today, electrical power consumption imal increase in motor cost. In fact, coupled operating load range and minimizing power across the globe is reaching staggering figures. with best practices, the mixed-signal FPGA plus consumption and operating costs. Even small More than 50 percent of this power is con- soft FPGA-optimized microprocessor combi- variations in the loading can be detected and sumed by electric motors. Unfortunately, many nation can result in motor efficiencies ap- power precisely applied to match it without af- of these motors are inefficient and waste a sub- proaching 95 percent. Implemented broadly, fecting the speed of the motor. In effect, elec- stantial amount of the power they absorb. For electronic motor control could result in global tronic control constantly sizes an AC induction example, the efficiency of small AC motors can electric power savings between 15 and 20 motor to the job, so that it is always operating be as low as 50 percent. While an increase in percent in addition to significant annual under ideal load conditions. motor size can improve motor efficiency, there reductions in energy consumption and is still opportunity to improve efficiency and greenhouse gasses. The conversion of AC motors does not neces- reduce energy consumption. sarily require an expensive replacement of all of When an AC motor is operated near full load, the motors that are currently in use. The US Adding electronic control can dramatically it can reach efficiencies over 90 percent. How- Department of Energy estimates that the US in- improve efficiency, but the high cost of control ever, few motors are consistently operated at full dustrial sector alone uses 12.4 million motors and power electronics has been a barrier to its load due to natural load variations and over-siz- larger than 1hp. Motor replacement is on-going implementation. With technology improve- ing, reducing efficiency by as much as 75 per- with as many as 600,000 motor failures and re- ments in semiconductor processes and inte- cent and wasting power. It is not unusual to find placements annually. This means that, over the gration, mixed-signal field-programmable gate motors that are two to three times larger than next 20 years, most of the motors larger than arrays (FPGAs) are emerging as an important they need be for the load that they are driving, 1hp will need to be replaced, and the scenario alternative for motor control. These highly in- which is an expensive mode of operation. is much the same elsewhere around the world. tegrated, flexible platforms offer most of the re- Even when correctly sized to meet the maxi- Replacing all these motors with highly efficient sources needed for motor control on a single, mum load, the motor is typically run at a lower, electronically controlled motors can reduce on- low-cost device. Using FPGAs in lieu of fixed less efficient loading. For example, an escalator going industrial power requirements by as logic gives designers the flexibility to implement is sized to carry the maximum number of peo- much as 18 percent, resulting in significant en- the most efficient design for their application, ple. Most of the time, however, there are far ergy cost savings for the manufacturing sector. and the ability to use the same device across a fewer people on the escalator than the specified broad range of motor control applications. maximum capacity, causing it to run at a low For applications that can be operated at a con- With a mixed-signal FPGA and a soft FPGA- level of efficiency and waste power. With elec- stant speed, intelligent load matching via elec- optimized microprocessor, intelligent load tronic motor control, the load can be intelli- tronic control is a great solution. Unfortunate-

October 2008 28 FPGAS & ASICS

stantial number of calculations that have to occur in the short period of time available within each 120 degree phase, including trigonom- etry, proportional-integral-derivative (PID), real-time flux and torque interface functions. ForACmotorscontrolledwithavectorscheme, the requirement is for a small, but powerful processor that can support these calculations and the rest of the application for communication and the user interface.

In actual applications, AC motor control requires 8 to 20 MIPS per control axis, which is easily achieved with an ARM Cortex-M1 processor in a mixed-signal FPGA. This combination enables the full conversion, including the measurement of the currents, to be carried out in less than 6µs allowing more than 165,000 conversions per second, which is more than Figure 2. Mixed-signal FPGAs offer several advantages for industrial motor control designs, adequate for most AC motor control applica- including lowered cost due to fewer components, easier manufacturing, increased motor reliability tions. In addition to the processor, the right pe- and efficiency. ripheral set for the application is important. Programmable logic is often preferred for im- ly, not all applications that utilize AC motors 32-bit ARM Cortex-M1 microprocessor, allows plementing the various user interfaces and dig- can be operated at a constant speed. For low- motors to be built with sensorless sinusoidal ital control logic, including network and pe- cost drives that are suitable for applications current control, eliminating costly sensors and ripheral interfaces, pulse width modulation with known loading, variable-frequency drives further reducing the price of the electronic con- (PWM), quadrature-encoder interface and (VFD) can be used to vary the motor rotation- trols. Together, a Cortex-M1 processor in a sensor inputs, critical to today’s motor control al speed to match it to current conditions. The mixed-signal FPGA can also perform diagnos- systems. Because the processor, memory and ability to continuously vary the speed depend- tics in addition to monitoring the bus voltage, peripherals can be supported within a single de- ing on conditions and maintain a constant ratio motor currents and speed. The ability to run di- vice with a mixed-signal FPGA, the additional between frequency and voltage (V/f control) is agnostics and respond intelligently to problems components required are minimal, other than an easy way to get variable speed operation as they occur can significantly reduce damage the inverter block and the motor itself, signifi- from a three-phase motor. and increase the life of the motor, further re- cantly reducing the cost of the electronics and ducing the cost of ownership. making this solution attractive for a broad Compared with alternative solutions, the cost of range of motor designs. FPGAs and the lack of the required analog The concept of harnessing rotating magnetic peripherals for AC motor control has histori- fields is still evolving with new motor tech- The demand for energy savings is putting cally excluded them from consideration as a nologies and electronic motor control tech- pressure on industrial manufacturers to use solution for these applications. However, new niques. In many applications, both the load and more efficient motors. The largest potential sav- cost-effective mixed-signal FPGAs offer a high- the speed are variable, so vector control (field- ings will come from the use of electronically ly flexible single-chip solution providing much oriented) is widely used. Because it is not based controlled motors in industrial applications in of the resource needed for motor control on steady-state motor equations, it can deal with the range of 500W to 10kW. Motors larger than implementation for a broad range of motors the varying operating conditions that are seen in this generally have a much higher efficiency and - from single-pole permanent magnet motors many motor applications. Vector control allows the motors in this range are used in very large to large three-phase AC drives. responsive and accurate speed control with a number in the industrial environment. Many of changing load and offers optimum efficiency these motors run at constant speed with fre- At 600 ksamples per second, roughly two to even during motor transition. It also allows full quent starts and stops, resulting in as much as three times faster than is required for AC motor torque capabilities at low speed. An 50 percent of the energy they consume being motor control, the ADC in a mixed-signal advantage of using mixed-signal FPGAs for vec- wasted. A motor controller built with a mixed- FPGA allows the direct measurement of the sta- tor control is that the same device can be used signal FPGA and used with discrete trench in- tor and rotor currents to determine rotor to control a range of motor types, including per- sulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) can speed and position. Additionally, with up to 30 manent-magnet AC and brushless DC motors, achieve efficiencies approaching 95 percent ADC inputs, sampling the back-EMF of each with only slight changes, by using the appro- across the full operating range. This means that winding, the motor current, bus voltage, and priate model for the motor type (figure 2). a smaller, lower power motor can be imple- any other condition in a motor is as easy as con- mented and run continuously at lower speeds, necting the device and making the appropriate For a three-phase AC motor, the vector algo- eliminating the need to turn the motor on and measurement. The use of a mixed-signal FPGA rithm must be continuously calculated at a rate off, thereby reducing power consumption, with an integrated soft processor, such as the between 1 kHz and 10 kHz. There are a sub- heating and motor noise. I

www.embedded-control-europe-com

29 October 2008 MICROCONTROLLERS & DSPS

Low-cost direct display control with embedded microcontrollers

By Guenter Plechinger, Renesas

The market for visualization solutions and their corresponding functions in many devices is growing rapidly. In this article an LCD demo application is presented that uses the Renesas H8S/SX flash controller, a single-chip-MCU.

I This LCD demo application is a low-cost clock and is equipped with highly-integrated munication interfaces – either USB-, Ethernet-, solution, which offers advanced TFT display peripheral functions for real time tasks. The on- I²C bus or serial SCIs interfaces, with smart solutions for a broad range of applications in chip functions drive the TFT-panel in a fully card-Option. The ROMless devices with RAM cost-sensitive fields. One can add a TFT display deterministic way, meaning the CPU load is are pin-compatible to up to 1MByte for applications in fridges, ovens, metering, hardly noticeable. There is no need for any flash/56KByte RAM devices with 384KByte / thermostat units or medical equipment, offer- external LCD controller with frame buffer. 40KByte or 512Kbyte / 40KByte. For timer ing simplicity for the user, at the same time as The multi-bus architecture and the on-chip applications the 6-channel timer pulse unit an attractive appearance. Together with a exDMA controller enable data transmission (TPU) with 16 input-capture- /output-com- broad, seamless offer of middleware, it makes from the external frame buffer to the LCD pare is very useful. In addition to the timer the design start very simple. panel. The major CPU relief is achieved using blocks (16-bit timer TPU, 8-times 8-bit TMR, the transfer cycle exDMA module. Control watchdog timer) functions like 10-bit A/D- and The direct drive TFT control solution utilizes a signals are synchronized by the TPU timer unit 8-bit D/A converters complete the peripherals. H8S/2378 or a 32-bit H8SX/1668R MCU to- with the data transfer. 6 flexible current-saving modes allow a long gether with a graphic software package (GUI, battery lifetime: clock-division-, sleep-, module- Graphic User Interface) from Segger. This soft- One major advantage of the H8S/SX-family is stop-, all-module-clock-stop-, software-stand- ware package contains library routines allowing upward-compatibility to the H8/300-, by- and hardware-standby-mode. any kind of high quality pictures to be drawn H8/300H-, SLP- and Tiny-CPU families. This on the display. In other words, this programme ensures availability of the widest performance The latest TFT-LCD panels are truly dual-pur- allows drawing of user interfaces with soft tran- range. In addition, Renesas flash technology en- pose peripherals because they have both output sitions as well as custom-specific pictures. By sures the utmost reliability. H8SX-MCUs with and input capabilities. They generally use a par- using the Renesas software application pro- 50 MHz (in future up to 80 MHz) offer speed allel interface, require constant refreshing, and gramming interface (API), emWin- and advantages over the H8S-CPU as well as im- support touch-sensitive control functionality. embOS software packets from Segger can be proved architectural features. The memory As output devices, the panels give product de- tied into H8S/SX-LCD- applications. The line up in Renesas microcontrollers offers a velopers a very flexible and dynamic way to emWin software package enables the user to wide selection from ROMless devices, mask- show a large amount of information to users. As quickly develop 2D graphics and animation ROM-derivatives up to high integrated 50MHz input devices, the panels allow the user of a supportaswellastosupportuser-definedtext flash 32-bit CISC-Controllers with 1MByte producttotouchabuttonoricononthescreen fonts. The embOS supports the multi-bus flash. With their small packages (9x9mm² to activate a function and then slide the finger exDMA architecture (external bus direct mem- LGA, BGA or 120-, 144-pin QFP-package) to select options, rotate/resize an image, or per- ory access) of the H8S/SX MCU, minimizing these H8S/SX-derivatives meet the require- form other actions in an easy, natural way. costs by allowing different tasks to be run at one ments of systems with high packing density. Hardware issues include driving the LCD time. The H8S/SX comes with up to 50 MHz The H8S/SX family provides numerous com- interface at high data rates. Software issues

October 2008 30 MICROCONTROLLERS & DSPS

application programs can be ported easily. The main application will only be interrupted by a very short interrupt service routine of the exDMA controllers. The exDMA-controller of H8S/SX copies in a cyclic way all data for a full picturefromSRAMtotheTFTpanel.

An important architectural feature of the H8S and H8SX microcontrollers is a dual databus system. It allows the exDMA engine of the TFT- LCD interface to drive data efficiently from an external SRAM frame buffer to the LCD display. This data movement is done in parallel with the operation of the main system bus (CPU and DMA engines) and the LCD panel is driven without loading the system bus. Thus, the chips can directly operate a TFT-LCD panel with complex images while also performing Figure 1. Complex images and animation can be created because the H8S CPU performs updates other system connectivity and algorithm oper- to the external SRAM frame buffer during LCD panel operation ations. Updates to the external frame buffer are supported during LCD panel operation, allow- center on generating the code that produces the by eliminating the need for an external LCD con- ing the creation of complex GUI images or displayed images. To ease the development of troller chip, while providing sufficient through- animation. The microcontrollers have the on- low-end to mid-range systems that can display put to perform both system control tasks and chip hardware peripheral functions needed complex images on QVGA and VGA TFT-LCD execute the graphics software for generating for handling high-quality image displays. panels, Renesas now offers 16-bit H8S series animated display images. Moreover, these Control signals for the TFT-LCD panel (V-sync, and 32-bit H8SX series microcontrollers that microcontrollers are supported by a defined H-sync, data-enable and pixel clock) are have a TFT-LCD parallel-interface with direct- software application-programming interface generated from timers and GPIO accesses. drive capabilities. These devices simplify designs (API) to which third-party graphic routines and These signals synchronize the data movement

th ssnc of lctronics

componnts.systms.automotiv.mbddd.wirlss.micronano-systms. MICROCONTROLLERS & DSPS

(translucent objects) features because the CPU Derivative H8S/2378F Series H8SX/1668R Series core can perform the data computations nec- Cycle time 28,5ns @ 35MHz/ 3,3 Volt 20ns @ 50MHz/ 3,3 Volt essary for updating the image bit-map loaded Flash-/ RAM-size Up to 512 Kbyte/ 32 Kbyte 256KB… 1Mbyte/ 40…56 Kbyte into the frame buffer. All these features are supported in the software API Renesas has created Address range 16 Mbyte (linear) 4 Gbyte (linear) for these microcontrollers. DMA Controllers 4x DMA Controller, 4x DMA Controller, 2 x exDMA Controller, DTC 4x exDMA Controller, DTC An important benefit is derived from the way Timers TPU 6 x 16-bit TPU 12 x 16-bit the dual-bus architecture of the H8S and H8SX 2 x 8-bit Timer 6 x 8-bit Timer microcontrollers impacts the flow of image Watchdog-Timer Watchdog-Timer data, the control of the LCD panel, the control Programmable of the system, and the interleaving of accesses to pattern controllers 16-bit 2x 16-bit external SRAM and flash-specific high-perfor- Serial interfaces 5 channels async, sync, 6 channels async, sync, mance operation. All this can be implemented multi master, multi master, at low clock frequencies, reducing electromag- ISO7816-3 Smartcard ISO7816-3 Smartcard netic interference (EMI) and electromagnetic I2C and IrDA modes I2C and IrDA modes, USB function susceptibility (EMS) levels and also decreasing Analog/ Digital 10 bit / 16-channel converter 2 x 10 bit / 4-channel converter power consumption. For example, when a Digital/ Analog 8 bit / 6-channel converter 8 bit / 2-channel converter 50MHz H8SX chip directly drives a WVGA TFT-LCD panel, it can achieve a 35-frame-per- Internal/External Interrupts 86/17 122/ 13 second update rate while supporting full- I/O lines 113 101 screen animation. Moreover, this performance Others SDRAM Interface SDRAM Interface is available with the CPU core being 90 percent Package 144-pin QFP/ TQFP, LGA 120,144-pin QFP/ TQFP, LGA, idle leaving 45 MIPS of computing power BGA available for controlling other system operations in real time. Table 1. Technical features of H8S/2378F and H8SX/1668R derivatives Specialized software knowledge is needed to cre- between the external SRAM and the LCD ics features such as transparency or alpha ate animated images on the TFT-LCD panels panel. The data movement is actually across the blending. The on-chip timers can be configured that are driven by H8S or H8SX chips. Clearly, common external data bus (SRAM and LCD to drive the VCOM input signal if required. the hardware is only half of the design solution. data bus), so the H8S and H8SX devices use a The development of application code is a chal- minimal number of data pins for the LCD di- Besides the memory accesses needed to drive lenge in itself. Moreover, it is one in which the rect drive. This reduces device cost and de- the LCD panel, pre-allocated accesses are avail- definition of requirements introduces input creases current consumption. The external able to the external SRAM frame buffer. In fact, from another area of expertise, because typically, data buses for H8S and H8SX are 16 bits wide, 50 percent of the available bandwidth has a graphics design group or third-party compa- allowing support for up to 18-bit-per-pixel been allocated for LCD data. Thus, a large ny will define and create the images for the TFT LCD-panel interfaces. amount of bandwidth can be used for accessing panel driven by the microcontroller. Part of the external memory devices, including external solution is software that bridges the gap between The CPU core is used to reconfigure the timers flash chips if they are used for image storage. the images created by third-party companies to and exDMA engine, an approach that provides Note that because the SRAM frame buffer can the Renesas microcontrollers. The defined soft- flexibility in the way data is driven to the display, be accessed, animation is supported whereby ware API mentioned earlier is a platform-inde- as well as in the types of displays that can be either the CPU or system DMA is used to trans- pendent interface that uses LCD and image-cen- driven. Actually, there is no hardware limitation fer updated bit maps to the frame buffer in a tric commands. It supports the definition of bit on the display and type of panel. The higher- synchronized manner. This enables fast moving maps with transparency and translucent level software routines of the application use this and smooth action without any tearing. Fur- parameters that can be overlaid into the frame configuration to optimize the amount of system ther, the H8S and H8SX chips can implement buffer. The API also has system memory- memory used or to implement complex graph- advanced transparency and alpha blending management and optimization functions. I

Product News

I SST launches enhanced performance I Renesas: 600MHz SuperH processor I Freescale: scalable MCU family for FlashFlex MCU with LCD panel controller large appliance market SST announces a new addition to its FlashFlex Renesas announces availability of the SH7785, Freescale Semiconductor has introduced a scal- family of 8-bit MCUs, the SST89C58RC. The its latest high performance addition to the Su- able microcontroller family designed to help en- new device is a 8051-based MCU featuring two perH family of microprocessors, to the con- gineers cut through the noise in large appliance system management buses, each supporting up sumer and industrial markets. The SH7785 is and industrial applications. Freescale's Flexis AC to 400 Kbit per second data throughput, in a capable of up to 600 MHz operation which, to- family features 8-bit devices and 32-bit V1 Cold- tiny 6mm x 6mm QFN package. The gether with an integrated LCD panel con- Fire MCUs designed to provide robust 5-volt SST89C58RC supports operating voltages from troller and a PCI interface, makes it ideal for ad- EMC/EMI performance and an array of on-chip 2.7V to 5.5V for implementation in applications vanced industrial PCs and industrial equipment peripherals to help reduce component count, with a variety of power supply requirements. and digital home appliances. system complexity and overall system cost. News ID 1540 News ID 1833 News ID 1629

October 2008 32 MICROCONTROLLERS & DSPS

I Atmel: ARM Cortex-M3 licensed I Maxim: 32-bit MCU for financial terminal I Evatronix: tiny 8051 ISA-compliant for AT91SAM3 Flash MCU family market MCU core Atmel announces that it has licensed the ARM MaximIntegratedProductsintroducesthe Evatronix announce the T8051 IP core imple- Cortex-M3 32-bit RISC processor for the next MAXQ1103, a high-performance 32-bit RISC menting Intel 8051 instruction set architecture. generation of its AT91SAM ARM technology- microcontroller for the financial terminal mar- Thanks to considerable size reduction and efficient based microcontrollers. Atmel’s planned ket. The MAXQ1103 integrates security super- management of available resources the design has AT91SAM3 Flash MCU family will combine visory features, advanced encryption accelera- one of the best performance-to-size ratios on the the ARM Cortex-M3 processor with system im- tion, and 1kB internal NVSRAM around a 32- market. With the CPU’s 2700 gates, the T8051 is plementation features such as multi-layer in- bit MAXQ microcontroller core. With this addresses IC designers who want to make use of ternal buses, an enhancement to the DMA for high integration, the MAXQ1103 simplifies and complete 8-bit architecture functionality while system peripherals and distributed peripheral protects designs that require a high level of substantially reducing the size of their systems. data controllers that give the AT91SAM family physical and logical security, such as financial News ID 1825 its high internal data bandwidth, and enable in- terminals, government security applications, tensive data processing and high-speed data and digital rights management. transfers. News ID 461 I ADI: digital potentiometers for News ID 1688 open-loop applications Analog Devices introduces the digital poten- I QNX: WiFi drivers for Neutrino RTOS tiometer family AD529x digiPot with better re- I Sharp: LCDs with LED backlight for Global Edge Software announces its alliance sistor tolerance, allowing designers to improve industry applications with QNX Software Systems. Through this system control by setting more accurate am- Sharp presents an enhanced range of LED alliance, users of the QNX Neutrino realtime plifier gain ranges. Designed for open-loop ap- backlit liquid-crystal panels for industry appli- operating system will be able to benefit from plications and systems that demand precision cations. The portfolio now incorporates five GlobalEdge software and services. Along with calibration and tolerance matching, the displays in the screen diagonals of 3.5 to 15 the software services, GlobalEdge also brings to AD529x family consists of three single-channel, inches. The new LED backlit displays combine this alliance a whole range of IP offerings com- 10-bit programmable digiPots featuring less the high resilience required of industrial appli- plementing QNX Software Systems’ products than one percent end-to-end resistor tolerance cations with the benefits of a LED backlight. for the networking and telecom markets. error over a wide ±15-V supply range. News ID 1851 News ID 1829 News ID 1822

components.systems.automotive.embedded.wireless.micronano-systems.

get the whole picture electronica 2008 electronica: the world’s leading trade fair for electronic components, systems and applications. The latest components | systems | applications topics, trends and technologies, experts and decision-makers, the complete range of industry know-how 23rd world’s leading trade fair and the place to ﬁnd everything that moves markets now and in the future. www.electronica.de New Munich Trade Fair Centre Be sure to visit the concurrent trade fair www.hybridica.de November 11–14, 2008 MICROCONTROLLERS & DSPS

I ADI: RS-232 transceiver with dc-to-dc I Freescale and Green Hills: multicore I Esterel and AbsInt integrate converter networking development StackAnalyzer tools in SCADE suite Analog Devices is expanding its family of in- Freescale and Green Hills have announced a de- Esterel and AbsInt announce an OEM agree- terface products with a fully isolated single- velopment partnership to produce multicore de- ment between Esterel and AbsInt. As a result, Es- package surface mount RS-232 transceiver velopment tools for Freescale’s QorIQ commu- terel will recast AbsInt’s aiT and StackAnalyzer with integrated dc-to-dc converter to supply nications platforms. Green Hills demonstrated products as SCADE Suite Timing Verifier and isolated power. Featuring a very small form fac- the MULTI IDE simultaneously debugging 8 SCADE Suite Stack Verifier under the SCADE tor SMT package, the ADM3251E transceiver cores on the QorIQ P4080 processor running on family of products. SCADE Suite will be the first integrates a line driver, line receiver, oscillator, the Virtutech Simics system simulator at the re- model-based critical software development so- rectifier, regulator, voltage doubler, voltage cent Freescale Technology Forum in Florida. lution to offer intrinsic stack usage analysis and inverter and transformers into a single-chip News ID 1837 worst case execution time analysis. solution that isolates both the data and power News ID 466 lines on chip. News ID 1790 I Tundra: evaluation platform accelerates RapidIO adoption I TI: 14-bit, 800-MSPS digitizer solution Tundra Semiconductor has introduced an eval- Texas Instruments introduces an evaluation I Yamaichi: QFN test & burn-in socket uation platform centered on its Tsi620TM module that combines two of TI’s ADS5474 in open-top design multi-standard RapidIO Switch. In addition to ADCs in an interleaved fashion with a Xilinx Yamaichi Electronics introduces the new QFN the Tsi620, the multi-platform evaluation plat- Virtex-5 FPGA to create a 800-MSPS ADC socket series NP506 with ultra fine pitch 0.4 form uses Texas Instruments’ TMS320TCI6487 solution. The FPGA comes pre-installed with mm and 0.5 mm in open-top design for the test high performance multi-core DSP and an Al- SP Devices’ proprietary time-interleaving & burn-in of small IC packages. The NP506 tera Stratix III FPGA to enable prototyping and, technology and continuously monitors the socket series is especially distinguished by two ultimately, cost reduction in applications such system and removes ADC gain, clocking and characteristics: the active centering of the IC as high performance wireless and video pro- temperature mismatches to reduce the inter- module enables balancing of larger module tol- cessing, medical imaging and military signal- leaving spurs below the ADC harmonic spurs erances for sawed as well as punched QFNs and processing solutions. thus increasing spurious free dynamic range twin-beam contacts ensure extremely reliable News ID 1810 from 45.78 dBc to 86.44 dBc for a 70-MHz bonding and the best signal integrity. input signal. News ID 1795 News ID 370 I Atmel: AVR-based 125-kHz RFID evaluation kit I Digi: ruggedised M2M networking Atmel has announced a significant enhance- I Cypress: tool combines code-free design solutions ment to the ATA2270-EK1 125-kHz RFID with customization capabilities Digi introduces a line of wired and wireless de- demo kit. This kit, which enables the evalua- Cypress has introduced PSoC Designer 5.0, an vice networking solutions designed for reliable tion and prototyping of Atmel’s wide portfolio integrated design environment that includes operation in hazardous environments. The of LF IDIC, has been upgraded to include a both code-free and high-level language pro- product line includes the Digi Connect WAN PC-based GUI application to be connected gramming modes in one package. Cypress has IA cellular router, XTend radio frequency directly to the kit’s hardware. This user inter- combined the PSoC Express visual embedded modem, PortServer TS Haz serial server and face provides an optimized platform for the system design tool with the full-featured PSoC Digi OneIAP Haz serial server. The new prod- evaluation and customization of Atmel's RFID Designer software to create a new design para- ucts are Class 1, Division 2 rated, certifying solutions used in access control, industrial digm ‘ users can now start projects in a drag- them for use in environments where volatile automation, loyalty cards, anti-counterfeiting, and-drop visual design mode and then move to flammable liquids, vapors or gases may exist. and animal identification. code-based design in C language to refine and Industries exhibiting these characteristics in- News ID 400 customize their projects, all from within a single clude power distribution, oil and gas, tool. water/wastewater, pharmaceutical, food and News ID 1741 beverage and agribusiness to name a few. I PRQA: enhanced compliance package News ID 1858 for MISRA C++ PRQA announces the availability of a QA C++ I Actel: enhanced IDE offers power product upgrade, an enhanced compliance pack- reduction and simplified design I Holtek: low power A/D with LCD age for MISRA C++, and a Benchmarking Test Actel announces new power reduction and de- microcontroller Suite for rigorous assessment of analysis tool ad- sign creation enhancements to its Libero Inte- The HT56R64 from Holtek is the first member herence claims. The advanced code analysis tech- grated Development Environment. Giving de- of the new TinyPower microcontroller series, nology in QA C++ is purpose-fit to achieving signers additional power supply options and which provides devices with low power con- high-grade compliance to coding standards, in a enabling even lower power consumption, the sumption characteristics. In addition to the low package designed to fit inside software develop- new Libero IDE 8.4 offers an FPGA core oper- power benefits of this new technology and as ment and build environments. This latest version atingvoltagerangefrom1.14to1.575voltsfor the device also contains a fast wake-up feature, (2.5) now supplies industry-leading coverage its flash-based IGLOO, IGLOO PLUS and multiple clock sources and a choice of operat- and the most accurate diagnostic compliance fac- ProASIC3L FPGAs. Enhancements to the ing modes, this range of special features com- tors for the MISRA C++ guidelines. The MISRA SmartPower analysis tools within the Libero bine to ensure the device is able to operate at C++ compliance package links product diagnos- IDE also allow easy comparisons of multiple minimum power levels in line with the present tics to individual rules, with extensive help, ex- design scenarios and their resulting power day demands for green products. planation, and code examples throughout. consumption and battery life implications. News ID 397 News ID 517 News ID 1830

October 2008 34 ... MICROCONTROLLERS & DSPS :PV $"/ HFU JU )BSEXBSF TPGUXBSF GPS $"/ CVT BQQMJDBUJPOT

I Lynux Works: C-to-FPGA tools integrate I IAR: enhanced Cortex-M3 debug with BlueCat Linux OS support and speed optimization LynuxWorks and Impulse Accelerated Tech- IAR Systems has announced the launch of nologies have announced technical collabora- version 5.20 of IAR Embedded Workbench for tion, libraries and reference examples combin- ARM, its integrated development environ- ing the Impulse C-to-FPGA tools with Lynux- ment for building and debugging embedded Works BlueCat operating system. The Impulse applications which includes a significant num- development environment increases produc- ber of improvements focusing on the ARM tivity by providing C-language compilation, op- Cortex-M3 core. On the debug side, support CompactPCI timization and hardware generation for FPGAs. has been implemented to handle trace packets CAN interface The tools also handle the hardware intercon- sent over the SWO channel which is part of nections between embedded PowerPC and CoreSight, the on-chip debug and trace PCAN cPCI MicroBlaze processors and custom C-language solution used in the Cortex processor family. CAN interface for CompactPCI- hardware accelerators. News ID 509 slots. Available as 2-channel, News ID 443 4-channel and optoisolated I Vector supports development of version. I Logic and TI offer Zoom Medical OMAP35x Ethernet systems and CAN tunneling Development Kit CANoe.IP from Vector extends the development Logic and Texas Instruments have released a and test tool CANoe by adding specific functions new development kit specifically designed to for embedded Ethernet systems. As a multi-net- quickly bring new medical products to market. work tool, CANoe.IP is the natural choice for use The new Zoom Medical OMAP35x Develop- in systems with different networks such as CAN ment Kit and companion System on Modules and Ethernet. In addition, developers benefit use TI’s OMAP35x processor to provide devel- from wireless receiving and sending of CAN opers with a cost-effective, compact way to de- messages from mobile or difficult-to-access sign and produce medical, industrial and other CAN bus systems (CAN tunneling). embedded applications. News ID 1813 News ID 1561 !LSO AVAILABLE WITH #!.OPEN ÚRMWARE I Lauterbach: TRACE32 debugger I Lauterbach and Telelogic: seminar about controls Renesas dual-core processor MicroMod Motherboard integration of Rhapsody and Trace32 TheSH7786fromRenesasisintendedforhigh- Join a free seminar and learn how the Telelogic performance multimedia systems, especially I/O-Board with CAN interface. Rhapsody and Lauterbach Trace32 integration car information system such as car navigation streamlines and accelerates your application systems.Thedualcoreprocessorisequipped !VAILABLE IN ÚVE DIFFERENT VERSIONS INCL CONÚGURATION testing. By attending the presentation, you will with the user debug interface and the advanced software. get a clear understanding how this exciting in- user debug interface to provide comprehensive tegration will benefit your development projects. on-chip debugging. The TRACE32 debugger In most embedded development projects, testing controls both cores through the same H-UDI is the last step in the lifecycle ‘ a practice that interface using just one set of debug and trace greatly underestimates the danger inherent in hardware. For asymmetric multiprocessing relegating testing to the end of your development each core is handled by a separate instance of process. the TRACE32 debug environment. News ID 420 News ID 1859

I Catalyst: 12-bit digital temperature I iSYSTEM: 2008 version of IDE for Windows sensor for DDR3 applications and Eclipse Catalyst has unveiled its first device in a new line iSYSTEM has released its 2008 version of of temperature sensors. The new CAT6095 is a winIDEA, an integrated development environ- 12-bit digital output temperature sensor avail- ment for embedded systems development, able in an ultra-thin, 0.55mm height UDFN debugging and test. Beside high-end function- PCAN Explorer 4 package for DDR3 memory module applica- ality such as trace, profiling and statement as tions in high-speed PCs and laptops, environ- well as decision coverage iSYSTEM focuses on Universal CAN monitor, mental control systems and industrial process connectivity. The iSYSTEM API allows for symbolic representation, VBS control equipment. The CAT6095 can also be flexible integration and application of the INTERFACE INTEGRATED DATA LOGGER used for general temperature sensing applica- iSYSTEM solutions in the entire development CAPABILITY TO ADD PLUG INS tions in networking equipment, cellular base sta- process. Solutions to automate test, e.g. with the EG0LOTTER tions and medical equipment. The UDFN pack- test tool suite of LDRA or National Instruments age provides accurate temperature monitoring LabVIEW, prove the successful use and inte- in a 30 percent lower profile package compared gration of traditional debug tools in the field of tostandard2x3x0.8mmTDFNpackages. test automation. XXXQFBLTZTUFNDPN News ID 467 News ID 1603 Otto-Roehm-Str. 69 64293 Darmstadt / Germany Phone: +49 6151 8173-20 35 October 2008 Fax: +49 6151 8173-29 [email protected] MOTOR CONTROL

8-bit MCUs with PFC and FOC enable efficient motor control

By Anil Mathew, Infineon

Infineon’s XC800 family of 8-bit MCUs combines a dual-cycle 8051 core with embedded flash memory and powerful on-chip peripherals. The scalable MCUs are well suited for a wide range of applications, including various forms of motor control in industrial and consumer products.

Figure 1. XC800 block diagram

I In addition to low power consumption, high- made up of a timer T12 block with three cap- conversion time of <1.5µs (sample time of er performance and reduced costs are key ture/compare channels and a timer T13 block 0.25µs). The ADC uses a successive approxi- drivers of microcontrollers. Therefore an 8-bit- with one compare channel. The capture chan- mation technique to convert the analog voltage microntroller family which offers 16-bit per- nels are used for time measurements and the levels from up to eight different sources. It can formance at 8-bit costs addresses a variety of compare channels for PWM generation. 16-bit also operate in 8-bit conversion mode, where demanding applications. With the XC800 fam- resolution enables high-precision space vector the conversion time is further reduced. The fast ily Infineon has combined an 8051-core with PWM generation. The T12 channels can inde- ADC enables single shut current measure- embedded flash memory of 4 KBytes to 64 pendently generate up to six PWM signals or ments. Providing special modes (auto scan, in- KBytes and pin-count from 20 to 64 pins. To re- accept up to six capture triggers, or they can jection or comparator) and hardware syn- duce system costs features such as oscillator, jointly generate control signal patterns to drive chronization to the PWM unit, the ADC re- voltage regulator, EEROM and supervisory AC motors or inverters. Dead-time control reduces the CPU load. Due to the minimized circuits are integrated. Different flash sizes, scal- sults in minimum hardware effort (direct con- blind angle the torque ripple in motor control able peripherals and innovative features like trol of MOSFET/IGBT). With the CCU6, sinu- applications can be reduced. field oriented control (FOC) make it easy to se- soidal or space vector modulation can be easi- lect the right product for a dedicated applica- ly implemented. Special operating modes sup- More and more complex applications require tion. Advanced control schemes like FOC or port the control of brushless DC motors. Fur- communication over the CAN network. The power factor control (PFC) allow manufactur- thermore block commutation and control MultiCAN module of the devices supports ers to reduce the size of the motor required, mechanisms for multiphase machines are CAN 2.0 B active and two independent CAN yielding higher efficiency, better dynamic supported. nodes. Using the MultiCAN module, related response and lower torque ripple. functional blocks like CAN gateways or FIFOs In addition to the CCU6 unit, the microcon- can easily be implemented. The 8-bit MCUs of The XC800 family provides some powerful trollers integrate the T2CCU (timer 2 cap- the family offer scalable solutions for different peripherals which make these MCUs suited for ture/compare unit) as an additional block to the types of motor control methods, ranging from various motor control applications. These pe- standard timer 2 unit. The T2CCU can be used block commutation for brushless DC motors ripherals include a capture/compare unit for various digital signal generation and event (BLDC with Hall sensor or sensorless), to (CCU6) for flexible PWM generation, an en- capturing functions like pulse generation or FOC for PMSMs (permanent magnet syn- hanced fast AD converter for precise measure- pulse width modulation. Target applications in- chronous motors) and both FOC and PFC ment and hardware synchronization to PWM, clude various automotive control and industrial (power factor control) for complex motor an additional capture/compare unit (T2CCU) applications like frequency generation, digital- drives. On the low-end side the XC866 offers and a MultiCAN module. The CCU6 is a to-analog conversion and process control. The fast instruction cycle times of only 75ns and high-resolution capture/compare unit with MCU family includes a precision and fast flexible flash memory capacity of 4K, 8K or application-specific modes, mainly for AC ADC with 10-bit resolution (+/- 2LSB) with 16KBytes. In addition compatible ROM ver- drive control or inverters. The CCU6 unit is eight multiplexed analog input channels and a sions for further cost-saving potential in high

October 2008 36 MOTOR CONTROL

Figure 2. High-performance PWM unit (CCU6) Figure 3. FOC block diagram volume production are available. High per- vector computer coprocessor core, which 15kHz PWM frequency and 133µs current formance and cost-saving features include performs 16-bit arithmetic operations. The full control response time) requires only 58% of the 26.67MHz system frequency, on-chip oscillator programmable vector computer is built by two CPU performance, providing plenty of head- and PLL for clock generation and an embedded parallel operating units: the MDU (multiplica- room for application-specific functionality. voltage regulator supporting single voltage tion/division unit), a 16-bit multiply and divide This highly efficient programming of the sen- supply of 3.3V or 5.0V. The CCU6 enables flex- unit, and the CORDIC, a 16-bit coprocessor sorless FOC algorithm in 16-bit arithmetic can ible and easy-to-use PWM signal generation dedicated for vector rotation and angular calcu- only be realized by a nested utilization of the with special modes for motor control. This lations. The interrupt-based operation of the vec- vector computer and the 8051-compatible CPU makes the XC866 suited for control applications tor computer reduces the CPU load. Unlike core itself. The resulting sinusoidal waveform of using brushless DC motors. The peripherals also most competitive FOC implementations that are this implementation results in very low-noise include an 8-channel 10-bit ADC, three 16-bit hard-coded, the XC886/8 microcontroller-based operation of the motor. The system costs are re- timers, UART, SCC (synchronous serial channel) solution offers the added benefit of software duced drastically by using an 8-bit standard mi- and on-chip debugging support (JTAG). The reprogrammability to give the developers more crocontroller, using just one shunt in the DC XC866 also offers support for LIN (local inter- versatile application options. link for acquiring the three-phase currents, and connected network). The XC886/888 enhances by the use of a FOC algorithm that makes ex- the XC800 family of 8-bit MCUs with a member The high-end XC878 MCUs with up to 64 pensive Hall sensors obsolete. Another benefit of providing advanced motor drive capability by KBytes of flash memory also include a 16-bit the solution is the software reprogrammability, combining up to 32 KBytes of embedded flash vector computer for the FOC support. In ad- which enables an optimized startup phase of the and an integrated vector computer to support dition two independent PWM units with up to motor by programming a controlled ramp FOC. FOC is a technique for operating electric ten PWM outputs and four separate timebases using any signal of the algorithm. Many con- motors which results in smooth and energy make it possible to combine motor control and sumer appliances such as washing machines, air efficient operation at all speeds. The FOC capa- PFC algorithms on one chip. Two 3-phase mo- conditioners or fans with speed control require bility is implemented on the XC886/8 by com- tors can be controlled independently. The cost-effective and energy-saving approaches. A bining the high-performance 8051 core and the XC878 family is capable of supporting both widespread way to implement such appliances is PFC and FOC and enables excellent torque FOC since it does not require costly sensors. In turn dynamics, reduced noise and higher energy however, they require relatively complex signal pro- efficiency for motor drives in industrial and cessing. The 16-bit vector unit of the XC878 is automotive applications. FOC enables smooth hard-wired to do the most important calculations and efficient motor operation at all speeds, associated with FOC motor control, such as vector delivering motor efficiency of up to 95 percent. rotation or angle computations. This allows to im- PFC controls and reduces the amount of plement a budget solution, enabling motor effi- current drawn from the AC-voltage source. ciencies of up to 95 percent.

Figure 4. Sensorless FOC of a PMSM Line-powered motor control applications In addition, the devices support PFC to im- continue to require more power efficiency and prove the efficiency of the motor drive and re- the ability to obtain a regulated DC power duce noise and vibration. Using the same mi- source with reduced current harmonic distor- crocontroller to implement both FOC and the tion. Motor drive systems like air-conditioner PFC block results in significant cost savings, be- compressors benefit from the combination of cause other solutions need to use expensive PFC and FOC on 8-bit MCUs. The XC878 ASICs, and fixed-function or discrete-based so- MCUseriestodayincludesupto12product lutions. In contrast to existing solutions re- variants that differ in peripheral set, flash quiring external circuitry, in the XC878 family memory (52 or 64 KBytes) and temperature PFC is performed by software. Combining range. FOC implemented on the low-cost 8-bit both FOC and PFC capabilities, it is an ideal so- XC886/8 MCU redefines the economic models lution for the control of compressor motors in for developers of motor-controlled products air conditioners. While the XC878 handles the such as fans and HVAC (heating, ventilation compressor and PFC control for the outdoor Figure 5. XC878 controls the outdoor unit of and air conditioning) control. Sensorless FOC unit, an XC866 can be used for the fan control an air conditioner. execution on the MCUs (for instance with for the indoor unit. I

37 October 2008 MOTOR CONTROL

Are you ready for the low-power market trend?

By Alex Zaretsky, NEC Electronics Europe

New MCU families from NEC Electronics offer better power performance with 8-, 16- and 32-bit cores. These families are specifically designed for battery-operated devices, and cater for the majority of industrial applications requiring low-power capabilities.

I Almost everything we use is based on elec- sumption. Complying with the needs of the smaller size batteries, and thus reduce overall tronic devices and semiconductors these days, green environment, new technology will enable system size and cost. An interesting application which consume a lot of energy. Energy con- customers to offer products with reduced area to consider is the medical market. Low sumption and even energy waste has a signifi- standby as well as active power consumption. power consumption and hence extended bat- cant impact on the green environment, and the tery life is one of the most critical aspects when energy cost and battery longevity of portable Problems relating to power consumption are designing a blood glucose meter (BGM). In electronic devices. not only applicable to green environment con- many BGMs and similar medical devices, the sideration, but also to battery-powered devices. power consumption starts as soon as the de- It is no secret that energy usage affects climate System designers must consider many topolo- vices have been manufactured. During pro- change and global warming. Climate change is gies for power supply when designing portable duction, time and date information is loaded already happening and its impact could, in the devices, such as sensors, detectors and medical into the BGM device to reduce the possibility of longer term, be critical. Greenhouse gas emis- diagnostic devices, as they become more power- the user entering these incorrectly. sions have been increasing globally in the sec- hungry. Highly integrated power-manage- ond half of the twentieth century and they are ment solutions are required to achieve the over- This is important, as sometimes when clinics still growing. Industrial energy prices have in- all design goal of maximum battery life in the download the recorded test results, incorrectly creased dramatically in the last few years mak- smallest PCB area possible. dated information can corrupt the accuracy of ing even more impact on businesses. To ensure the prognosis. So from production and storage that electrical and electronic devices are safe The increased integration of portable applica- until the user opens the box, the BGM keeps and have minimal impact on the environment, tions puts greater demands on the battery running to ensure time and date information is it is essential that ecological considerations are lifetime of the product compared with previous not lost. Diabetics who use insulin usually test applied. One of the ways to reduce the impact generations, and requires microcontrollers that their blood sugar up to 10 times per day and of energy on the environment and society is to are economical in power consumption, produce every measurement means a drain on the bat- employ more ECO-friendly devices and to low noise and run on a low voltage at reason- tery. Imagine a diabetic user on holiday, need- conserve power as much as possible. able speed. ing regular tests during throughout the day, if the battery power runs out. In this scenario, it From the environmental impact reduction Many battery-operated devices challenge the is easy to see why using a low-power micro- point of view, NEC Electronics are constantly battery resources of an application. Batteries are controller that extends battery life even by one looking for the best solutions, and contribute to limited in the maximum amount of energy they or two days is a key advantage for improving the production of final products that consume can store with different capabilities of voltage the standard of care for diabetic people. less power and integrate multiple functions on regulation. Battery lifetime mostly depends on Recharging may also be not as practical as it a single chip, by utilizing advanced process size, the bigger the battery, the longer it will last. seems. Consider the digital thermometers or techniques and by designing for low power con- Low-power microcontrollers allow the use of other electronic medical devices frequently

October 2008 38 MOTOR CONTROL

can be saved by spend- current consumption of the family is as low as ing as long as possible 4.29µA when run at 1 MHz and waking up in this mode. As a gen- from sleep mode for 10ms every 1 second. In eral rule, power con- addition to the low-power features, which also sumption increases include current consumption of just 650uA at proportionally to clock 4 MHz from the internal oscillator, the chip in- speed, and the bus tegrates up to 1 Kbyte of RAM and up to 32 width may also double Kbytes of flash memories, as well as up to 11 power consumption. It ADC channels with 10-bit resolution, up to 2 is good practice to de- operational amplifier channels, RTC and a sign a system to run as number of different timers and serial interfaces. slowly as reasonably possible in all operat- The 16-bit 78K0R/Kx3-L microcontroller fam- ing modes of the mi- ily has been released with ultra-low power con- crocontroller. Sleep sumption combined with the market-leading mode and other low- operational power performance and increased Figure 1. Power consumption of the MCU µPD78F0533 power modes allow embedded functionality. It consumes less than powering down the 1µA when in the low-power mode with RTC used by hospitals today. The same device may be device and turning it back on when needed, thus on, yet is still capable of providing high per- used by the nurses on all shifts day by day. It may reducing the average power consumption. formance of 13 Dhrystone MIPS at 20 MHz be difficult to find time for it to be on a consuming 1.5mW per MIPS at 3V. There are recharging cradle. Standby power and active Not every task an MCU has to perform will 3 options for the internal selectable clocks con- power consumption must therefore be reduced benefit from the highest speed performance. So sisting of 1 MHz internal oscillator as well as 8 in order to increase battery life. Whether it is for if a processor can complete the instructions at MHz and 20 MHz with 1% accuracy. The rich an electric toothbrush, shaver, glucose meter or fastest possible speed before going back to sleep analog support includes 12 high speed and high a remote control for anything not within arm in lower power mode, this can save more power accuracy ADC channels with the conversion reach, battery-powered devices are an everyday than constantly running at slow speeds. While time of 3µsec, a choice of x1 to x12 program- part of life. As a result, power management is a looking at the microcontroller data sheet, you mable gain amplifiers and multiple analog significant concern for embedded developers need to ask several questions to make the opti- comparators on chip. today. Consequently, portable systems require mum choice. What is the current consumption low-power microcontrollers which are able to in sleep mode and other modes including active Flash programming at as low as 1.8V is one of operate on low voltages and consume very little mode? What components are still powered on in the key features of the family. It allows extend- current, as well as support multiple low-power each mode and how much static current do they ing battery life enough to program logging data modes. For an embedded designer looking to consume? What are the dynamic clock options in to flash at 1.8V before it runs out complete- choose a microcontroller, the almost limitless and how does current consumption change with ly. The other crucial peripherals include the range of available devices can make the task each of them? How much power does the device multiplier/divider, DMA channels, key-return complex. It is helpful to research current trends consume per MIPS? function, and timer array unit (TAU) allowing in the industry to narrow down the range of advanced manipulation with the 8 separate choice. What is the future of microcontrollers, With the goal of setting new records in low standalone 16-bit timers coming with a variety how are they changing and what impact is in- power consumption, while still keeping high of individual functions, as well as a serial array dustry having on these changes? The industrial performance, NEC Electronics have released unit (SAU) for featuring multiple serial inter- market suggests the trend is towards lower new MCU families, which provide a direct faces and others. The family is available in power and higher integration. upgrade path for corresponding devices in the memory options of up to 3 Kbytes of RAM, up well-established all-flash generation among a to 64K bytes of flash and a wide range of I/O Many microcontrollers offer low-power con- wide range of applications. The new family counts from 44 to 144 pin packages to meet sumption, but which one is right for your comprises the 78K0/Kx2-L, 78K0R/Kx3-L and most of the industrial applications and cost design? The availability of the right tools, cost, V850ES/Jx3-L, all offering industry-leading requirements. speed and integration is not the main concern power performance with 8-, 16- and 32-bit any longer. If a microcontroller has an efficient cores respectively. These cutting-edge low- With a standby current of just 1.5 A and power low-power mode, a significant amount of power power families are specifically designed for consumption of only 0.9mW per Dhrystone battery-operated devices, as well as for saving MIPS in active mode, the 32-bit V850ES/Jx3-L energy cost. The vast choice available allows series has been designed to provide 32-bit finding the right device within the families, thus performance with 8-bit power consumption. catering for the majority of industrial applica- The new family is capable of high-end math tions requiring low-power capabilities. operations, running at 5 to 20 MHz frequency, operating in the 2.2 to 3.6V range and still re- The standby current in the 8-bit 78K0/Kx2-L maining tolerant to 5V I/O, hence making an has been reduced by 80% from its existing cor- additional cost saving on external level shifters. responding 78K0/Kx2 family and is only 0.7µA It provides up to 256 Kbytes of flash memory when running from the 30 kHz internal low and up to 16 Kbytes of RAM. The mixture and speed oscillator and supplied from 3V. There resourcefulness of the peripherals that support are also two internal high speed oscillators, 4 the processor on chip make the V850ES/Jx3-L Figure 2. Batteries need low-power MCUs to and 8 MHz, with high accuracy and super low microcontroller line suited for industrial appli- increase lifetime. noise. The benchmark result of the average cations that require low-power consumption. I

39 October 2008 TOOLS &SOFTWARE

Fine-grained memory protection guarantees safe function integration

By Mario Cupelli, HighTec EDV-Systeme, and Heiko Riessland, pls Programmierbare Logik & Systeme

How do you combine different software modules in a single control unit without jeopardizing the safety of the overall system? The real-time operating system PXROS-HR uses the memory protection unit of the TriCore architecture to realize hardware- based memory protection, with each software module running in effect on its own controller.

I To meet the demand for more safety and level neither SFR accesses nor peripheral ac- sectors for constants, stack and data of a task. comfort in automotive and industrial applica- cesses are permissible. The software modules The two remaining registers can be used for ex- tions, a variety of different control and memo- external to the basic system, shown in figure 1 changing messages. The sending of a message ry units are required. But how do you combine as red-framed VCUs, should typically run in the from Task1 and the receipt of the message in different software modules without risk in a User-0 level. These so-called PXROS-HR tasks Task2 correspond to the handover of an en- single control unit? As a rule, pure software- can execute services of the basic system via an capsulated memory sector (object) including based approaches to a solution do not offer the application programming interface (API). As access right. necessary safety, and are also expensive. To rule with the help of the MPU the resources have out interaction and possible error propagation, been defined by memory limits, each of these The protected message object can thus have any strict encapsulation of all the software modules components is encapsulated. The communica- size. The memory use, in contrast to ap- to be deployed is absolutely necessary. The real- tion between software modules also takes place proaches that realize the protection by mapping time operating system PXROS-HR, which was solely by exchange of encapsulated messages. (MMU), is minimal. As is well known, the developed by HighTec EDV Systeme, uses the memory efficiency achieved, particularly in em- memory protection unit (MPU) of the TriCore The hardware-based memory protection is re- bedded applications, is a determining criterion, architecture in order to realize hardware-based alized by means of the four data protection reg- because typically here only a small amount of memory protection. It is as if each software isters and two code protection registers of the RAM is available. Therefore, the PXROS-HR in module and each capsule were running on a TriCore memory protection unit, and is indi- combination with the MPU of the TriCore ar- controller of its own. The operating system vidually adjustable for the different privilege lev- chitecture guarantees a fine-grained protection thereby takes over the management of the els. By means of an upper and lower bound as which is safe, and with only approximately 5% MPU, and during runtime monitors the mem- well as its access right (reading, writing, exe- performance loss, at the same time also highly ory integrity of the capsules. cuting), each protection register configures a efficient. In practice, this approach offers valid “view window” in the memory. Switchover significant advantages for all persons involved: In the case of the drive application depicted in of the protection registers for the respective soft- the system designer, the software developer and figure 1, the basic system is made up of the ware module is undertaken by the PXROS-HR. ultimately also the product manager. RTOS PXROS-HR, driver and protocols, debug Thereby any unauthorized access to a module monitor and a motor control unit. The TriCore external to the view window during the operat- For the system designer, the encapsulation of architecture differentiates for software modules ing system runtime is detected and handled. the software modules particularly means that the privilege levels Supervisor, User-0 and the complexity of the software system is con- User-1. In the User-1 level, accesses to some spe- The typical configuration of software modules siderably reduced. Each software module is free cial function register (SFR) and peripheral (PXROS-HR tasks) is shown in figure 2. Two of of interaction and is configured with its allo- units are still allowed; whereas, in the User-0 the four data protection registers configure the cated resources. At the same time, the absence

October 2008 40 TOOLS &SOFTWARE

bugger and PXROS-HR. The current implementation enables the setting of two code breakpoints in the debugger. The remaining memory protection unit is used for memory protection, which is realized by the operating system. The second operating mode enables the debugging of currently up to two reloadable PXROS-HR tasks. Because a complete stop of the hardware here is not wanted, the application debugging takes place via a debug monitor, which is integrated in the target operating system. The monitor encapsulates task-specific breakpoints, context handling and call stacks for the debugger which is to a large extent transparent and addressable via a gdb compatible command interface. Ethernet and serial interfaces serve as standard connection to the target monitor. However, JTAG as communication channel is also usable with the universal debug Figure 1. In the drive application depicted, the basic system is made up of the RTOS PXROS-HR, engine and an enhanced monitor. The latter is driver and protocols, debug monitor and a motor control unit. an advantage, because firstly Ethernet is not a typical interface for TriCore targets and sec- ondly both the kernel debugging and the application debugging can take place, if required, via a JTAG connection.

Ultimately, product managers also benefit from the fact that a fault in a software module can- not jeopardize the integrity of the entire system. If the cause of the fault can be definitely associated with a specific software module, the question of product liability can also be clearly and conclusively regulated.

Summing up: the encapsulation of software modules by means of hardware-based memory protection does not only lead to appreciable reduction of the test and certification efforts, but also enables simple and safe function integration, and protects, in the event of system crash or damage, against possible unjustified product liability claims. However, the development of such complex systems presumes, as described in the example of the operating system PXROS-HR from HighTec and the universal Figure 2. With typical PXROS-HR tasks, the four data protection registers configure the sectors for debug engine from pls, that all tools used sup- constants and stack of a task. The two remaining registers can be used for exchanging messages. port the encapsulation of software modules. I of interaction creates a risk-free combination of tegration is possible, because faults in software safety-critical and non-safety-critical software modules can be uncovered at an early stage of Product News modules. In total, this leads to a simplified and the development. A prerequisite is obviously cost-effective certification process of such ap- that the debug tools used, as in the case of the I MIPS: code, debug and analyze Linux plications. For software developers the encap- universal debug engine (UDE) from pls Pro- systems on MIPS architecture sulation moreover brings, among other things, grammierbare Logik & Systeme, also observe MIPS has introduced the MIPS navigator in- the advantage that, with the independence of the mechanisms used and support two essential tegrated component suite to enable embed- software modules, a simple module test is pos- operating modes. deddeveloperstomoreeasilycode,debug sible. The adherence to the memory resources, and analyze Linux systems on MIPS-Based predetermined by the system designer, for the The first operating mode uses a JTAG debugger SoCs and embedded systems. Navigator ICS software developer is forced by the MPU. A pro- for debugging of the PXROS-HR kernels. The brings together the industry’s leading tools tection violation, caused for example by an in- memory protection unit employed by the op- and technologies for MIPS development in a advertent pointer access or transient error, erating system is generally used for the realiza- cohesive, off-the-shelf product, with compo- does not lead to any interference whatsoever to tion of a maximum of four hardware code nents for Linux development. the remaining system. By means of the encap- breakpoints and further data breakpoints. The News ID 423 sulated structure, safe and simple function in- MPU resources must be shared between de-

41 October 2008 TOOLS &SOFTWARE

Software bugs: prevention with CSE tools is better than cure

By Fergus Bolger, PRQA

Industry has reached a turning-point in its approach to software quality. Debugging is increasingly being seen as a waste of time and effort, whilst coding standard enforcement with CSE tools is accepted as a significantly more efficient use of resources.

I Einstein once claimed that intellectuals solve the root cause of the problem was inconsistent softwaretoolstoidentifyandpreventproblems problems, but geniuses prevent them. Adopting memory allocation methods being used on the early in the development cycle is vital, and ex- this approach would turn current software de- same global object accessed by different system plains why companies developing critical soft- velopment practice on its head and place modules. The bug, and the hours of debugging, ware systems invest huge amounts of money to greater emphasis on eliminating the source of could have been prevented by following a set of safeguard their software development. coding problems at the developer/coding phase coding rules which would constrain, but not rather than aiming to catch bugs in the inte- ban, the use of dynamic memory allocation. In Awareness is growing that resources devoted gration phase. This approach will resonate anothertypicalscenario,arecentswitchto64- to late-cycle fix-and-retest approaches to with any organization that finds considerable bit hardware seemed to be the cause of erratic achieving software correctness could be more portions of their software engineering re- system behaviour, whereas PRQA analysis tools effectively allocated to prevention. CSE tools sources trapped in debug cycles, and is one revealed that the true cause of the problem was provide users with the ability to adopt an which is driving the development of Coding unwanted conversions between pointer and in- existing coding standard or develop their Standard Enforcement (CSE) tools. tegral types. This category of software fault own custom standard, and subsequently could have been prevented by establishing a set automate enforcement. CSE tools are designed to prevent and detect of coding rules to identify and focus on such software bugs. A typical example is a company conversion issues. There are, of course, already For some customers, CSE is necessary in order which had spent hundreds of engineering ISO standards in place which define C and C++ to comply with safety or quality standards, hours trying to locate the cause of a memory languages, however, only about 70% of C whilst others use it to avoid known problematic crash before asking Programming Research language is strictly defined, which means there areas of the chosen programming language, (PRQA) to carry out an on-site code CSE audit. are still elements of unreliability or uncertain handle the wide array of portability issues with- Within half an hour, the audit had found that behaviour within the code. Using the right in the C or C++ languages across compiler

Posthalterring 18 · D-85599 Parsdorf Tel. +49(0)89/991509-0 Fax +49 (0) 89/99 15 09-50 E-mail: [email protected]

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October 2008 42 TOOLS &SOFTWARE

dialects or hardware platforms, or simply to quality. Debugging is increasingly being seen as achieve best practice in software development. a waste of time and effort, whilst coding standard Product News Contractual requirements may also stipulate the enforcement, or pre-bugging, is a significantly use of CSE where, for example, an OEM is out- more efficient use of resources. By adopting best I Freescale: three new Power sourcing its software development and re- practice coding standards, organisations not Architecture families for automotive quires the supplier to meet certain quality lev- only improve their time to market but also Freescale Semiconductor has expanded its els of software development. Here, CSE acts as reduce rework and re-testing. Fewer bugs in portfolio of Power Architecture microcon- a gatekeeper, checking all incoming source released software helps to support their reputa- trollers to address a broad range of cost-sen- code against the specified standard. tions, whilst improving customer satisfaction sitive automotive applications requiring 32- and limiting the risk of litigation in case of bit performance. The company has intro- Code reviews, unit and system testing, includ- system failure. It appears therefore that compa- duced three new automotive MCU families ing coverage analysis, functional verification nies do not need to use their intellect to solve optimized for safety, chassis, instrument steps, and feature upgrade cycles can all be con- problem bugs, but simply have the genius to cluster, body electronics and gateway designs. siderably shortened by using CSE. Bug-ridden prevent them by using Coding Standard News ID 1630 software does not magically heal itself in the Enforcement (CSE) tools. I next design iteration; it simply transfers its problems elsewhere. The goal, therefore, should be to empower software engineers to prevent mistakes, or to identify and correct them before they reach the test environment.

The follow-on benefits from a prevention-oriented approach to code construction can be as high as 50%. CSE protects software developers from using parts of the language that are known to give rise to problems. It can prevent straightforward coding mistakes, misuse of language and unexpected behaviour which can result when language definitions are not suffi- ciently strict. PRQA tools analyze source code on a file-by-file basis and also across a complete project to identify potentially dangerous usage of language. The tools also identify language usage which is not compliant with the relevant ISO standard. In the QAC and QAC++ tool suites, comprehensive libraries of selectable warning messages are used to highlight source code which is non-portable, difficult to maintain, overly complex, or written in any way that is likely to cause problems. A message browser displays diagnostics on source code and associated header files for the complete project. These are cate- gorized and grouped across all source files and can also be viewed as an annotated source code listing, with the option to view in HTML format with links to additional information and advice.

As embedded software systems become increasingly complex, companies are beginning to consider C++, rather than C, as their embedded language of choice, and dealing with technologies that allow them to abstract away from the C and assembler-level code that they might have been working with for 10 years or more. This will necessarily mean that even greater levels of protection and care with software implementation will be required.

These changes mean that the industry has reached a turning-point in its approach to as- suring software quality. The past three years have seen a huge rise in the acceptance of the need for CSE and companies are taking more pro-active control of the whole issue of software

43 October 2008 AUTOMOTIVE

Flexible system solutions for in-car display instruments

By M. Bräuer, M. Mierse, Fujitsu Microelectronics Europe

This article announces components with an integrated APIX interface, a new in-car interface standard, for applications which require greater computing power.

I Safety and comfort in modern vehicles de- creased number of TFT displays with increas- for example, can be transferred at a speed of up pend decisively on increasingly powerful dis- ing resolution and colour depth. Displays to 8 Mbit/s independently of the main channel. plays – this applies just as much to information which are increasing in size for reasons of mod- In addition to the APIX Physical Layer Stan- and communication as to navigation and en- ularity and flexibility are being used in different dard, Inova also provides a protocol for com- tertainment. For developers, their simple and locations to the actual control units. A typical munication using the sideband channels. This cost-effective control is of primary impor- example of a modular construction consists of is implemented in the automotive shell (A- tance. APIX technology (Automotive Pixel the head unit (control unit for the central op- shell), which controls the transfer of data via the Link), developed by Inova, is helpful in this re- erating panel) and the central information dis- sidebands. For certain data, such as control data spect. Fujitsu Microelectronics Europe (FME) play, which is now generally installed in a sep- for stepper motors, safety standards must be was the first leading manufacturer to integrate arate location. Modularisation here also permits met here in order to ensure the correct transfer this technology into its micro and graphic con- simpler scaling. Certain control units are the of data. Each transfer is protected by a CRC. Er- troller architectures in order to expand the same for all production series others are rors in transmission are reported. Safety-relat- functionality and versatility of its products. As equipped according to requirements with ed can also be sent automatically using the im- a result, an innovative and open system plat- greater or reduced performance (display reso- plemented ARQ (automatic repeat query) form was created, leading to increased per- lution, colour depth). The secure and cost-ef- management (Go-back-N) until the transfer is formance and low costs of implementation. fective transfer of picture data between both of free of errors. these devices still remains a problem (for ex- Modern automotive electronics must establish ample 800 x 480 pixels in 24 bit/pixel colour Fujitsu, which this year was the first semicon- itself in the area of conflicting interests between depthat60Hzrefreshratecorrespondstoarate ductor company in the world to present proces- increasing demands for more functionality, of approximately 500 Mbit/s). sors and graphics controllers with an integrat- comfort, flexibility and safety on the one hand ed APIX (Figure 1) offers solutions for all ve- and shorter development times and increased A good approach to solving this problem is the hicle bus systems. The first two components cost pressure on the other. Well-known meas- automotive pixel link (APIX), a potential new with an APIX interface, the MCU MB91F467S ures here are the standardisation of hardware standard developed for the transfer of video from the MB91460 series and the MB88F388 (e.g. the interfaces or bus systems in the vehicle) and peripheral data in the car. An EMC-opti- (Indigo) graphics controller are the suited and modularisation aimed at simplified multi- mised bit-serial transfer of picture data is al- combination for the development of a low-end ple uses. Increased functionality requires con- ready possible in the first APIX generation with instrument panel architecture, where the constant increases in hardware performance and a transfer speed of up to 1 Gbit/s using two trol unit including MCU is installed separate- faster bus connections between individual screened pairs of copper wire up to a distance ly from the display unit with an MB88F388. hardware components. In the field of display in- of 20 m. In addition to the main channel, the Low-end here means that the graphics to be dis- struments, the demand is for more comfort and APIX link offers two bidirectional side band played are primarily in the form of bitmaps or information as part of a trend towards an in- channels through which control information, sprites and there are no complex rendering

October 2008 44 AUTOMOTIVE

tasks to carry out. Figures 2 and 3 show the block diagrams for the components. MB91F467S is a 176-pin variant of the 32-bit FR (Fujitsu Risc) MB91F467D dashboard controller. Stepping motor controllers (SMCs), now featured on the Indigo are not included on the MB91F467S. It also features 1 MBytes of flash memory and 64 KBytes of RAM on-chip memory. Graphics data can be read in by internal flash memory or via the external bus interface and forwarded via the APIX transmitter (Tx). Two CAN channels enable connection to an in-car network, if necessary also redun- dantly, in order to increase transfer security. Further serial interfaces available are the 6 LIN USART modules, which can operate as an SPI, UART or LIN, as well as three I²C interfaces. 16 channels of a 10-bit ADC and a wide range of timers take over other necessary functions.

The APIX interface is connected to the internal Figure 1. Comparison of the different standards buses in such a way that DMA transfers from external memory to the APIX can be performed without disturbing the CPU. The MB91F467S has two pairs of APIX sideband connections. Two connected APIX receivers can thus be controlled if necessary (for example for an instrument panel and HUD). The MCU works with a cycle frequency of up to 100MHz and thus offers enough performance for a timely supply to devices connected to the APIX with data and commands and the completion of various software tasks in its own core.

The counterpart to the MCU is the MB88F388 graphics controller. This component is distinguished primarily by the fact that it is a single chip solution which does not need external memory. It was optimised especially for in-car applicationssuchasclusterinstruments(especially hybrid clusters), head-up displays (HUDs) and central information displays. Figure 2. Block diagram of the MCU MB91F467S Using the programmable display controller, timings for displays with resolutions of 320x160 to 1280x480 pixels can be generated. Colour values can be optimised with the integrated gamma correction and dithering unit according to the parameters and colour resolution of the displays used.

In addition to the graphics engine, the graphics controller also offers numerous peripheral units to cover all necessary interfaces. The sideband channel can therefore be used to transfer control data for these resources. Their number and selection are specifically defined for the requirements of displays and dashboards. In addition to UART, I2C and SPI as possible communication channels to external components, SMCs there move the stepper motors of ana- logue pointer instruments, PWMs control the brightness of the display background illumi- nation and LEDs are switched on and off via Figure 3. Block diagram of the MB88F388 (Indigo) graphics controller GPIOs. This mix of features makes external

45 October 2008 AUTOMOTIVE

components such as watchdog, external mem- panel. The ambient brightness values on the of microcontrollers and graphics controllers ory or special external interfaces superfluous. display have to be recorded so that the backlight with integrated APIX interfaces from FME pro- MB91F467S and Indigo can, for instance, be can be dynamically readjusted, for example. vide exactly this feature and therefore offer used for the implementation of an instrument This process requires a bidirectional exchange clear advantages for system architecture in the panel which consists of two modules which can of data in addition to the flow of image data, vehicle. be installed into different locations in the ve- which naturally must not be disturbed. The dis- hicle. A separation like this is useful for a num- play brightness must be recorded cyclically In addition to the A-shell, which enables a se- ber of reasons. Such as if there is little room using a light-sensitive component (digitalised cure transfer of data, there is a remote handler available in the dashboard area, electricity using an ADC channel) and transferred to the function. This supports the control of periph- consumptionorheatposeaproblemoreven control unit – subsequently the PWM value cal- eral functions on the Indigo (SMCs, sound for better system scalability. Instead of being culated is transferred to the display in order to generator etc). It therefore supports the trans- connected by lines with various cables, the two correct the backlight accordingly. Precisely this fer of data in both directions as well as han- modules need only be connected via the APIX task is performed by the sideband channel of dling interrupts and for the user, solves the link. Pixel data is transferred from the the APIX interface. The transfer bandwidth tasks which can arise as a result of different cy- MB91F467S via the APIX link to the Indigo and possible here is 6 Mbit/s. cles on the two components or latency periods saved in the RAM. In order to reduce electric- in the transfer of data via the APIX link. To- ity consumption and radiation, the APIX is op- If the sideband channel is integrated and fixed gether with the driver software also offered by erated in a slower mode, namely 105 Mbit/s. In into the processor structure, all relevant data Fujitsu (Remote Handler API), the customer is combination with other components, the from and to the display can be transferred offered an interface with which he can operate Indigo can also be operated with full APIX using the same interface. In ideal circum- Indigo peripherals almost as peripherals on the bandwidth. However, other than the transfer of stances, this architecture replaces a vehicle-spe- MB91F467S. Remote Handler and Automotive picture data, further information is necessary cific communication channel such as a CAN Shell offer many turnkey functions in hardware for this separate installation in the vehicle to en- node, which is expensive due to the hardware and at an API level and thus simplify the cus- sure the operation of the instrument display and software expense. The newest generation tomer’s software development decisively. I

Product News

I SEGGER: task sensitive embOS plug-in I CMX: software suite supports I TI: support tool for high-speed analog for Embedded Workbench for ARM ColdFire and Flexis processors designs SEGGER has announced the availability of a CMX Systems offers two RTOSes, two TCP/IP Texas Instruments has introduced a support new task sensitive plug-in for the IAR Embed- stacks, five Flash File Systems and multiple USB tool that enables designers to rapidly evaluate ded Workbench for ARM. The plug-in not only stacks for the ColdFire and Flexis processor signal chain performance for test and meas- visualizes the state and stack usage of all tasks families. CMX-RTX is a truly preemptive, urement, industrial and communications ap- and other OS-objects such as mailboxes, timers multi-tasking RTOS supporting a wide variety plications, including arbitrary waveform and and semaphores in the system. The new version of 8-, 16-, 32-bit microcomputers, micro- signal generators. The development kit simpli- of the plug-in also allows selecting and ana- processors, and DSP's. CMX-RTX offers the fies the complexity of interfacing between lyzing any task. This means the register, call smallest footprint, the fastest context switching high-speed digital-to-analog converters (DAC) stack, source code and disassembly windows, times, and the lowest interrupt latency times and amplifiers and includes clocking and power which normally show the state of the running available on the market today. RTOS function- management devices to further ease design and task only, switch to the state of the selected task. ality provided in CMX-RTX includes: task reduce cycle time. This works for all tasks in the system, includ- management, message management, queue News ID 392 ing tasks which have not been started, the run- management, system management, event man- ning task as well as blocked and interrupted agement, memory management, resource man- tasks. agement, semaphore management and timer I QNX: BIOS-less instant-on platform News ID 439 management. for Atom processors News ID 453 QNX and Kontron announce that the Kontron nanoETXexpress-SP Computer-on-Module is I Atmel: 6-channel touch controller with the first commercial embedded platform to LED driver I Freescale: lower pow, low cost dual support QNX’s fastboot technology for Intel Atmel has announced the AT42QT1060, a core processor Atom processors. Designed to enable boot touch control chip that integrates 6 channels Freescale introduces the MPC8640D ‘ a lower times of milliseconds, QNX fastboot technolo- of touch sensing with the ability to drive up cost, lower power version of the MPC8641D gy is an advanced feature of the QNX Neutrino to 7 low current LEDs directly through a dual core processor. The device is available in RTOS. It eliminates the need for a BIOS on x86 pulse width modulated output function. The single and dual core versions and is ideal for platforms, including those that support Intel device operates from 5.5VDC down to networking, telecom, pervasive computing, Atom processors, thereby reducing hardware 1.8VDC and consumes less than 1uA in aerospace and defence applications. The costs and dramatically improving instant-on standby mode to give long battery life; it MPC8640D enables customers to utilize high performance. Systems designers can use QNX comes in a 4mm x 4mm MLF28 package, performance e600 Power Architecture cores and fastboot technology to improve startup times for making it ideal for use in mobile phones and AltiVec 128-bit vector processing at lower price a wide variety of automotive, medical, indus- other handheld devices. points and power requirements. trial, military, and consumer products. News ID 424 News ID 1764 News ID 475

October 2008 46 TEST &MEASUREMENT

Automated station saves time in DPI measurements on ICs

By Stefan Steude, Langer EMV Technik

Industries producing and using ICs need to know how they behave under radiated electromagnetic emissions. Manual measurements according to the Direct RF Power Injection method (DPI) are however extremely time-consuming. This article describes automated measuring technology. Figure 1. DPI method according to IEC62132-4

I Measuring ICs according to the DPI (Direct mation on the maximum input RF voltage or An automated run of the flow chart (figure 2) RF Power Injection) method provides infor- on the IC pin's impedance is also crucial for IC overcomes these drawbacks. The automated mation on their behaviour under the influence manufacturers and users. An automated se- measuring station controls the entire sequence of radiated electromagnetic emissions. Indus- quence reduces the duration of the measuring according to the DPI method. This also includes tries that produce and use ICs need compre- procedure and its susceptibility to errors. The the storage, evaluation and visualisation of the hensive knowledge about this disturbance be- DPI method will be briefly introduced and then haviour, to guarantee the function of an indi- further developed to an automated measuring vidual circuit or the entire electronics under the station in the following. influence of RF disturbances. Measurements according to the DPI method, however, are The set-up principle for measuring the distur- extremely time-consuming. Automated and bance immunity according to the DPI method flexibly adaptable measuring stations are thus isshowninfigure1.TheRFgeneratorgenerates required. a sine-wave alternating voltage (RF signal). The power amplifier increases the power of the RF The DPI method according to standard IEC signal. This power is measured by the direc- 62132-4 defines the measuring procedure for tional coupler and injected into an IC pin via a the direct injection of conducted disturbances decoupling capacitor C. The capacitor C pre- into a semiconductor pin. This disturbance in- vents useful signals from entering the power jection simulates the share of a disturbance amplifier. The filters (resistance R / inductivity which is caused by field coupling into a cable L) prevent RF current from leaking to control harness or an antenna-like structure on the and supply lines. The IC is monitored for mal- PCB. The DPI method is designed to inject RF functions by an appropriate device. The fre- current into IC pins according to a predefined quency and power of the disturbance threshold measurement set-up. The power and frequen- as well as the respective abort condition are cy of this RF current are increased gradually. recorded if a malfunction occurs. The meas- The measured result is the maximum RF uring sequence on an IC pin is shown as a flow power that can be injected into the pin as a chart in figure 2. During a manual measure- function of frequency. The expectations for the ment, each IC pin is examined individually ac- results of an IC measurement have changed cording to the flow chart. The measuring time since the publication of the standard in depends on the number of frequency and 10/2006. A pin's compatible RF power is not the power steps and takes several days. In the Figure 2. Flow chart for the DPI method as a only IC information that is important. Infor- course of this procedure errors slip in as a rule. basis for an algorithm

47 October 2008 TEST &MEASUREMENT

ily expandable. The Around 210 frequency steps are required for a flow chart for the measurement between 0.1 MHz and 1 GHz ac- DPI control soft- cording to the recommendations of the DPI ware can be adapted standard. The number of power steps has also to individual needs. to be taken into account, in this case assumed The retention time to be 40 steps based on reality. The time that is and frequency steps, required for a measuring sequence on the pin for example, can be was estimated as shown below: varied. More steps can be added to the Estimation of time per pin for a manual meas- sequence and the urement: entire sequence can even be rearranged. T = (10 sec adjusting time + 3 sec retention Notification by e- time + 10 sec evaluation time) mail, for example, -40powersteps can be added to the - 210 frequency steps measuring sequence. ≈ 54 h (7 working days) / pin Furthermore, various abort conditions Estimation of time per pin for an automated are possible in the measurement: course of the measurement sequence. -40powersteps A wide variety of - 210 frequency steps Figure 3. Automated measuring station with DPI control software different IC faults ≈ 16h/pin that are recognized measured results. The measuring station (figure by monitoring can be used as an abort condi- The automated measurement reduces the time 1) described in the standard is supplemented by tion, such as: violation of the tolerance mask of needed for a measurement by 70%. This time the following devices: a PC with DPI control signals, evaluation of digital information can be further reduced if the power steps are software, a P500 probe as a RF ampere and volt- (restart, reading out of error registers), optical not executed on the basis of a fixed list but cho- meter on the IC pin, and an oscilloscope for the monitoring (via video camera and image pro- sen intelligently. The DPI control software visualisation of the measured current and volt- cessing), power supply monitoring, and results provides two additional methods: age characteristics. The probe and oscilloscope of an IC test software or firmware. There are also 1) The power at which the IC failed in the measure the time characteristics of current and abort conditions not concerned with the prop- previous step minus X dBm is chosen at a new voltage. The DPI control software stores these er functioning of the IC but intended to protect frequency; time characteristics. The effective current and it, such as: reaching a maximum RF voltage on 2) A rough and a fine power run are organised voltage values as well as the phase angle are de- the IC pin (measured with the probe), reaching one after the other. This considerably reduces termined in the oscilloscope. The DPI control a maximum power on the IC pin (measured the number of power steps. The time of a meas- software can calculate other electric parameters with the directional coupler or probe), and urement run decreases in proportion to the such as the impedance of the test IC, forward reaching a maximum IC temperature. number of power steps. power of the injected RF signal, generator voltage etc, on the basis of these values. All The measuring instruments can be changed to The automated measuring station in figure 4 measurement steps are stored in a SQL database keep the measuring station flexible in terms of has been proven and tested on many test ICs. and as an Excel file during the automated meas- its hardware design. The software supports a The disturbance immunity of a LIN ICs is cho- urement sequence. multitude of measuring instruments. The sen as an example here. The measurement was measuring stations functionality is not bound taken using the following parameters: The measured results are evaluated using the to a special hardware. The measuring instru- RF injection into the LIN pin via C = 4.7 nF, database or MS Excel. The desired measured re- ments are connected to the PC that hosts the fixed list for setting the frequency generator was sults can easily and quickly be visualised DPI control software via standard interfaces in frequency steps [MHz]: [25, 50, 100, 150, through an enquiry to the database. Measuring such as USB, GPIB and Ethernet. The IC can 200, 250, ..., 950, 1000.0] (21 steps) and level the time characteristics of the RF current and easily be changed via an adapter board to adjust steps (power of the RF generator) [dBm]: [-28, voltage provides a lot of additional information the measuring station to different measuring re- -27.5, -27, ..., -18.5, -18] (21 steps), Retention which is important for examinations in the quirements (figure 4). The freely moving probe time was 3 sec, and during fault triggering the course of development. Concrete statements ensures the accessibility of each individual pin tolerance tube over signal RxD at: about IC characteristics are possible. The cur- for injections. The time needed for a measuring timing of < 7.5 µs and amplitude of < 0.9 V was rent and voltage characteristics, for example, sequence on an IC pin can be calculated by measured. show when damping diodes release current multiplying T, the adjusting time plus retention paths to functional complexes and trigger time plus evaluation time, by the number of The PDirectional coupler power was measured error mechanisms. The information gained is power steps and by the number of frequency by the directional coupler. The PProbe power important for both IC manufacturers and IC steps, as follows: was calculated on the basis of the time charac- users. The IC manufacturer can use this infor- teristics of current and voltage. This automat- mation for IC development. IC users can derive T =(adjusting time for all devices + retention ed measurement run theoretically takes 51 EMC measures for circuit and layout design. time + evaluation time) min. But in practice the measuring run took no Flexibility is another advantage of the auto- -Numberofpowersteps morethan21minutessincenotallpowersteps mated measuring station. The software is eas- -Numberoffrequencysteps were carried out at each frequency. I

October 2008 48 PRODUCT NEWS

I Wind River: test automation solution They feature a comprehensive range of ana- Wind River announces a test automation solu- logue functions such as A/D and D/A convert- tion, called Wind River Test Management, that ers, dual-channel comparators, Serial UART will automate the software quality assurance I/O and both 8-bit and 16-bit timers. Editors process and improve overall code quality. It is News ID 1658 Jürgen Hübner expected to be available in the third quarter of phone +49(0)8092-2477413 2008. Test Management will be a scalable, dis- fax +49(0)8092-2477429 tributed testing framework that links device I ADI: 16-bit, 10-MSPS SAR data converter [email protected] software development and quality assurance Analog Devices expandeds its PulSAR family of Wolfgang Patelay teams in an intelligent, collaborative workflow. precision 16-bit SAR with the AD7626 PulSAR [email protected] News ID 1800 ADC that achieves a new level of 16-bit data capture performance, with best-in-class 15-bit ENOB Tony Devereux [email protected] and 10-MSPS throughput.The AD7626 PulSAR I Toshiba: platform for sensorless ADChasa92-dBSNRthatis8dB(1.3bits)bet- For Reader Inquiries and Address Changes BLDC motor control design ter than any ADC, regardless of architecture. please contact: Toshiba has expanded its family of motion con- [email protected] News ID 1701 trol development platforms with a new evalu- Sales & Marketing Director ation board that will speed implementation of Manfred Blumoser sensorless drives for three-phase brushless DC I HCC: USB audio features for embedded phone +49(0)8092-2477411 motors. The new board is ideal for testing and applications fax +49(0)8092-2477429 [email protected] prototyping drives for motion control applica- HCC-Embedded announces the release of tions requiring motor bridge voltages ranging USBH-Audio, a class driver for use with HCC’s Claudia Mellein from around 10V to 42V. USB Host stack. USBH-Audio supports a full [email protected] News ID 1759 spectrum of audio features for embedded ap- Christiane Lockner plications. Included are FORMAT TYPE I [email protected] (PCM/PCM8) streams, FORMAT TYPE II I Sales Office - UK and USA, Benelux, Maxim: dual-/quad-channel DACs simplify (MPEG) streams, sampling rate adjustment to Scandinavia power-supply adjustments rate supported by the audio device, streaming Blue Sky Communications Maxim Integrated introduces the type input terminal (playback), streaming type Malcolm Cameron DS4422/DS4424 low-cost, dual-/quad- output terminal (e.g., record from a micro- Kent Innovation Centre Thanet Reach Business Park channel, sink/source current DACs. These I2C- phone), AF Version 1.0. Millennium Way controlled, 7-bit current DACs feature two News ID 1560 Broadstairs Kent CT10 2QQ UK (DS4422)/four (DS4424) output channels that phone +44 (0)1843 609357 are specifically designed for power-supply mar- fax +44 (0)1843 609358 I [email protected] gining and adjustment. Each output channel TI delivers RFID asset visibility in harsh provides control of a DC-DC power supply by and metallic environments Sales Office - Asia sinking or sourcing current directly into the Texas Instruments announces two additions to Jean Cheng, [email protected] power supply's feedback node. its LF product family: the 12 mm Multi-Usage Vivian Hung, [email protected] Innovative Media Information & Services News ID 1704 Wedge Transponder and 24 mm LF Circular 7F-3, No. 26, Sec. 2, Ming-Quan East Rd. Inlay.The12mmMulti-UsageWedge Taipei 104 Taiwan Transponder offersimprovements in chip cir- phone +886 2 2563 1186 I Tilcon supports MontaVista Linux platform cuitry that enables direct-on-metal mounting. Head Office Tilcon announces the availability of Version The24mmLFCircularInlay,manufactured 5.5.5 of Interface Development Suite for Mon- using TI’s patented tuning process, provides taVista Linux. Tilcon’s IDS directly supports improved consistency in read and write per- many X-windows variants including X.org, formance in applications such as waste man- ICC Media GmbH NanoX, and TinyX. Alternatively, MontaVista agement and industrial production. Rauwagnerstr. 5 Linux users can leverage the Tilcon embedded News ID 1703 85560 Ebersberg / Germany window manager which further supports OpenGL ES and DirectFB for direct HW ac- Editorial Office UK I 36a Blackacre Road celeration. Tilcon’s window management tech- Express Logic: MCAPI support for Theydon Bois nology for MontaVista Linux introduces the ThreadX RTOS Essex, CM16 7LU capability to provide optimized support for Express Logic and PolyCore Software announce any custom 2D/3D graphics library. the first commercial RTOS integration of the Copyright© All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted News ID 1865 Multicore Communications API specification. in any form or by any means without the prior express written MCAPI provides an industry standard, imple- permission of ICC Media. mentation agnostic API for multicore systems Although we make every effort to present up-to-date, accurate information, boards&solutions will not be responsible for any I Renesas: low pin-count R8C/Tiny communication. PolyCore Software’s Poly- errors or omissions or for any results obtained from the use of microcontrollers Messenger/MCAPI is a communications frame- such information. The magazine will not be liable for any loss caused by the reliance on information obtained on this site. Renesas announces availability of the latest ap- work simplifying multicore communication. Furthermore, ece does not warrant the accuracy or plication specific standard products in its Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS is a widely-used, completeness of the information, text, graphics in this maga- R8C/Tiny series. Four groups of devices have small, fast, royalty-free real-time operating zine. The opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and not necessarily the opinions of the publisher. been launched. The R8C/2E and /2F are 32-pin system for embedded applications. devices, offering 8KB or 16KB flash memory. News ID 533

49 October 2008 PRODUCT NEWS

I QNX announces support for Intel MHz. According to SST, the maximum active Atom processor N270 powerconsumptionforbothreadandwriteop- COMPANY PAGE QNX Software Systems announces support erations is significantly less than that of the low- for the Intel Atom processor N270 and the Mo- est power 3V products currently on the market. bile Intel 945GSE Express chipset. As a result, News ID 1860 Actron 42 embedded developers can combine the superi- or performance-per-watt of the Intel Atom processor N270 with the fault-tolerant opera- I RTS: new version of Real-Time Hypervisor tion, advanced graphics capabilities, and rich software ATMEL 11 multimedia support of the QNX Neutrino Real-Time Systems has introduced the latest ver- RTOS and QNX Aviage middleware family. sion of its Real-Time Hypervisor software, QNX support for Intel Atom processors in- which enables the simultaneous running of Digi-Key 2 cludes an HMI player based on Adobe Flash multiple operating systems on multi-core Lite 3, optimized 2D/3D hardware-assisted processors, also supports Microsoft Windows graphics based on OpenGL ES, and an Intel-op- XP.The RTS Real-time Hypervisor makes it pos- timized compiler for high performance. sible to run ‘ simultaneously, independently and Express Logic 51 News ID 500 robustly ‘ a number of standard operating systems on a single x-86 multi-core execution platform. Moreover, RTS software technology does I Crossware: tool suite supports not in the least interfere with any of the sup- Green Hills 5 SiLabs C8051F9xx MCUs ported operating systems’ timing behavior. Advertisers Index Crossware has enhanced its 8051 Development News ID 1697 Suite by adding support for the C8051F9xx fam- HCC-Embedded 52 ily of mixed signal microcontrollers from SiLabs. I Coverity introduces Software Readiness The C8051F9xx MCUs are capable of operating Manager for Java down to 0.9 V,enabling portable devices to de- Coverity announces the availability of Coverity rive power from a single-cell battery. The novel Software Readiness Manager for Java. The Hilscher 14,15,21,25 8-bit architecture with an integrated high-effi- product allows development managers, release ciency dc-dc boost converter, which can supply managers and executives to objectively assess the up to 65 mW of power for both internal MCU release readiness of their critical code by use and to drive other components, creates a combining essential data from multiple sources Holtek 9 true single-cell battery system solution. including Prevent, Coverity’s static analysis News ID 1723 product. News ID 1854 Lauterbach 43 I Aonix: GUI development for 64-bit architectures I SiliconSystems doubles capacity of Aonix has released TeleUSE version 4.0, the lat- Embedded USB products Messe München 31,33 est version of its object-oriented user interface SiliconSystems announces higher capacity of- management system environment, for 64-bit ferings across its entire SiliconDrive II product architectures. Platform support in TeleUSE family supporting the industry-standard Uni- 4.0 enables seamless cross-platform motif versal Serial Bus interface. SiliconSystems’ Sil- MSC 3,23 graphical user interface application develop- iconDrive II USB CF, SiliconDrive II 10-pin ment on the latest 64-bit systems running module and SiliconDrive II USB Blade products Linux, Solaris, and HPUX. A 32-bit edition of are now available in capacities of up to 16 gi- TeleUSE 4.0 continues to support development gabyte, 8GB and 4GB, respectively. NEC 13 of applications on 32-bit platforms. News ID 1845 News ID 426 Peak System 35 I TI: zero-drift instrumentation I SST expands 1.8V Serial Flash product amplifier for portable applications line with 4-Mbit device Texas Instruments introduces a zero-drift in- SST has added a 4-Mbit device to its 1.8V 25WF strumentation amplifier with only 75 uA of pls 17 Series SPI serial flash memory family. The quiescent current and operation on power small form factor SST25WF040 is intended for supplies as low as 1.8 V, the INA333 maxi- battery-powered, space- and height-constrained mizes power efficiency. Low offset voltage of mobile applications. The SST25WF040 has a full 25 uV and offset drift of 0.1 uV/C deliver ex- Texas Instruments 7 voltage range from 1.65V to 1.95V for read and cellent accuracy and long-term stability. writeoperationsandafastreadspeedof40 News ID 1756 ore information about each news story is available on Mwww.embedded-control-europe.com/ece_magazine You just have to type in the “News ID”. —

October 2008 50 MAKING ONE OF THESE?

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ThreadX is Express Logic's small, fast, THREADT H R E A D • SmallSmall footprintfootprint royalty-free RTOS that powers over • LowLow overoverheadhead 500 million electronic devices, with millions more produced each month. That's because ThreadX is easy-to-use, • FullFull source source code code making your development job easier and more likely to finish on time or even • Easy-to-useEasy-to-use ahead of schedule. Developers of consumer, medical, networking, industrial, aerospace, and automotive electronics products rely on ThreadX for their • Field-provenField-proven RTOS. Call today to find out how ThreadX can help you bring your next • LowLow cost electronic product to market faster. Make it better - make it with ThreadX. • Royalty-freeRoyalty-free For a free evaluation copy, call one of our European Offices or visit www.rtos.com

ExpressExpress LogicLogic (UK)(UUK)L Ltdtd ExpressExpress LogicLogic GmbHGmbH ExpressExpress LLogicogic GGmbHmmbH 4b EmpireEmpire Court Court Hanover Ofﬁce: Munich Ofﬁce: PrProspectospect HilHilll Am SaegewerkSaegewerk 2a Eichbaumstr.Eichbaumstr.80 80 Redditch B97 4D4DADA D-29308D-29308 WWinseninseen D-85635D- 85635 SiegertsbrunnSiegertssbrunn UK GermanyGermany GermanyGermany TTel:el:e +44 (0) 1527 152275 59700797007 Tel:Tel:e +49+49 5143 911-303 9911-303 Tel:Tel:e +49+49 8102 784-5865 7884-5865 FFax:ax: ++4444 (0) 152152727 597701 Fax:Fax: +49+49 5143 911-305911-305 Fax:Fax: +49+49 8102 784-58667884-5866 EEmail:mail: info@[email protected] EmailEmail [email protected]@expresslogic.de Email:Email: [email protected]@expresslogic.de

CopyrightCopyright © 2008, ExpExpressress Logic, Logic, Inc. ThrThreadXreadX is a rregisteredegistered trademark of EExpressxxpress LoLogic,gic, Inc. All other tradematrademarksrks aarere the prpropertyoperty of their rrespectiveespective owners. One Size Doesn’t Fit All

With HCC, you can choose a file system that’s • File Systems right for your application. HCC products run • USB Stacks with the broadest range of CPUs and memory • Bootloaders devices, with or without an operating system. • Windows Drivers • Embedded Development THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE PORTFOLIO OF FILE Services SYSTEMS FOR EMBEDDED APPLICATIONS

HCC-Embedded FILE SYSTEMS WITH A DIFFERENCE ZbWZYYZY www.hcc-embedded.com • [email protected]