Ultra-low latency MCU designed for efficiency in power electronics

The Texas Instruments TMS320F28003x (F28003x) is a member of the C2000 real-time microcontroller family of scalable, ultra-low latency devices developed for efficiency in power electronics, including but not limited to high power density, high switching frequencies, and supporting the usage of GaN and SiC technologies.

Typical applications include motor drives, appliances, hybrid, electric and powertrain systems, solar and EV charging, digital power, body electronics and lighting, and test and measurement.

The real-time control subsystem is based on the company's 32-bit C28x DSP core, which provides 120MHz of signal-processing performance for floating or fixed-point code running from on-chip flash or SRAM. The FPU, TMU further boost the C28x CPU and VCRC extended instruction sets, speeding up common algorithms key to real-time control systems.

The CLA enables significant offloading of common tasks from the main C28x CPU. The CLA is an independent 32-bit floating-point math accelerator that executes in parallel with the CPU. Furthermore, it has its own dedicated memory resources, and directly accesses the key peripherals that are needed in a typical control system. Support of a subset of ANSI C is standard, as are main features such as hardware breakpoints and task-switching.

The MCU supports up to 384KB (192KW) of flash memory divided into three 128KB (64KW) banks, allowing parallel programming and execution. Up to 69KB (34.5KW) of on-chip SRAM is also offered to supplement the flash memory.

The Live Firmware updates hardware enhancements permit fast context switching from the old firmware to the new firmware to minimise application downtime when updating the device firmware.

High-performance analog blocks are integrated on the real-time MCU and are closely coupled with the processing and PWM units to deliver optimal real-time signal chain performance. Sixteen PWM channels, all supporting frequency-independent resolution modes, allow control of various power stages from a three-phase inverter to power factor correction and advanced multi-level power topologies.

The inclusion of the CLB permits the user to add custom logic and potentially integrate FPGA-like functions into the C2000 real-time MCU.

Interfacing is supported via various industry-standard communication ports, including SPI, SCI, I2C, PMBus, LIN, CAN and CAN FD, and provides multiple pin-muxing options for optimal signal placement. The FSI allows up to 200Mbps of robust communications across an isolation boundary.

New to the C2000 platform is the HIC, a high-throughput interface that permits an external host to access the resources of the device directly.