At Embedded World 2010 in Nuremberg today, Infineon brought out two new series of its 8-bit XC800 microcontroller portfolio designated XC82x and XC83x.
"In addition to motor control, intelligent powerful microcontrollers can help to significantly improve the efficiency of lighting, air conditioning, induction cooking, with the potential for energy savings of 40 percent or more," says Juergen Hoika, microcontroller marketing director at Infineon, "low cost and easy-to-use microcontrollers like the Infineon XC82x and XC83x series will help system designers introduce high efficiency designs with no compromise in the use of sophisticated control methods."
Better energy efficiency and reduced system costs, are key goals in the design of modern motor controllers used in fans, pumps and compressors, in new types of lighting solutions, and in any kind of power converters.
The implementation of intelligent control concepts and connectivity with various communication interfaces helps to fulfill these demands.
The XC82x and XC83x series aim to enable high energy savings at very low implementation costs.
Some of the new devices offer special features to improve the design of man-machine interfaces such as touch panels and LED display applications.
They cost under 0.40 eurocents (in 100k unit quantities). Features comprise capacitive touch sense and LED matrix controller, EEPROM emulation, 10-bit A/D Converter (ADC), Capture Compare Unit (CCU6) with hardware link to ADC, window watchdog timer, power down modes, and various communication interfaces, such as UART, high speed SPI and I2C.
The XC82x series integrates a Multiply-Division-Unit (MDU). The XC83x provides a 16-bit vector computer and a ROM library for field oriented control functions, and high current pads (30mA to 50mA).
Both of the new series provide features for generation of high resolution PWM signals, fast ADC measurements, autonomous peripherals, and comparators for control loop and for protection.
Specifically, the XC82x/XC83x MCUs provide a Capture/Compare unit (CCU6) clocked at 48MHz and a fast 16-MHz ADC with a sample time of only 125ns and a conversion time of about 820ns.
The direct hardware link between ADC and CCU6 in the design ensures fast and reliable control loops. In addition, the integrated ADC limit checker realizes a digital comparator with 8-bit resolution.
A variety of application kits and tools support new series: inDrive800 offers 8-bit solutions for drives and automation applications to support faster development cycles; inTouch800 addresses human machine interfaces. Capacitive touch control and operation of LED-displays or stepper gauges without further driver-devices is managed with a 24-pin MCU.
DAV Bench is a platform for development tools for Infineon's microcontrollers. The first version for the XC800 family includes an Eclipse based IDE, connection to DAVE, SDCC C compiler, HiTOP level 1 debugger, Flash Loader and UART terminal U-SPY incl. data visualization.