Toshiba Electronics has expanded its family of ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers with the launch of an MCU with hardware-based vector control of high-end, three-phase motor applications.

The TMPM370FY is based on the Cortex-M3 core running at 80MHz and operates from a 5.0V supply.

The chip integrates Toshiba’s proprietary PMD3+ programmable motor driver technology, a vector engine (VE) 12-bit ADC functionality and a comprehensive set of peripherals and interfaces into a single 100-pin IC.

It will be used in applications requiring precision control of sensored and sensorless three-phase brushless DC (BLDC) motors or three-phase induction motors.
 
Offloading motor control to the PMD3+ means that the ARM core is free to manage other elements of the embedded design.
 
The two channel PMD3+ block and the single channel VE manage all of the functions needed to control a motor including three-phase PWM waveform generation at 16-bit resolution, speed control and position estimation.

The 12-bit ADC provides high-speed, PWM-synchronised analogue-to-digital conversion, while an on-board comparator can be used for detecting emergency stop conditions.

Other on-board features include a regulator, a single-channel encoder, power-on-reset/low-voltage detection, a watchdog timer and an 8-channel 16-bit timer. 

See more news at Embedded World 2009