Microcontrollers for motor control

Toshiba has introduced seven new 32-bit microcontrollers with Arm Cortex-M4 cores, expanding its motor control MCU lineup. These devices are suited for field-orientated control (FOC) of up to two AC motors, brushless DC (BLDC) motors and multiple types of inverter control such as variable frequency drives or servo drives.

All seven newly-released devices feature CPU cores with a floating-point unit (FPU) and memory protection unit (MPU), an internal oscillator of 10MHz (±1%), and a DMA controller (DMAC). They offer functional blocks for field-orientated control of BLDC and PMSM motors such as advance-programmable motor drivers (A-PMD), advanced encoders 32-bit (A-ENC32), and high-speed/high-resolution 12-bit analog/digital converters. The devices feature UART, TSPI and I²C as integrated general communication interfaces. New microcontrollers come with self-diagnosis functions for flash memory, RAM, ADC and Clock, helping designers achieve IEC 60730 Class B functional safety certification.

Six of the newly released devices constitute the new M4K group (1), which is included in Toshiba’s TXZ+ Family of MCUs. These microcontrollers operate at speeds up to 120MHz and have code flash memory options of 128KB or 256KB, and 18KB of RAM. The microcontrollers feature additionally an operational amplifier (OPAMP), operate at a voltage range of 2.7 to 5.5V, and are available in 0.5mm pitch LQFP64 (TMPM4K4FxBUG), 0.5mm pitch LQFP48 (TMPM4K2FxBDUG), and 0.8mm pitch LQFP44 (TMPM4K1FxBUG) packages.

The seventh new MCU, TMPM471F10FG, expands Toshiba’s M470 group, included in the TX04 Series. It operates at up to 160MHz and supports firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updates with its 1MB flash memory. The microcontroller operates at a voltage range of 4.5 to 5.5V and is available in a 0.5mm pitch LQFP100 package.

Documentation, sample software with actual usage examples, and driver software that controls the interfaces for each peripheral are available for free download from Toshiba’s website. Evaluation boards and development environments are provided in co-operation with various technology partners and with Arm global ecosystem partners.