New DSC devices with specialized peripherals for efficient power conversion are targeted for power supplies in data centers and other complex real-time systems.
Changing safety and functional safety requirements, coupled with the increasing complexity of real-time embedded applications, are driving designers to seek innovative solutions that increase accuracy, improve reliability, and enhance compliance with industry standards. To address these challenges, Microchip Technology has added the Digital Signal Controller (DSC) family. dsPIC33AK512MPS512 y dsPIC33AK512MC510 to its dsPIC33A DSC product line. These devices enable the implementation of compute-intensive control algorithms to improve energy efficiency in motor control, server power supplies for AI, energy storage systems, and complex sensor signal processing using machine learning-based inference.
“The number of servers and data centers for AI continues to grow, making more efficient power conversion critical. With the specialized peripherals and high-performance core of the dsPIC33AK512MPS family, developers can now achieve significant power savings and reduce the size of their power supply,” said Joe Thomsen, corporate vice president of Microchip’s Digital Signal Controllers business unit. “The new dsPIC33A DSC families incorporate advanced features that enable efficient and reliable designs for modern power conversion, motor control, and sensing applications.”
The dsPIC33AK512MPS family delivers high-speed, precise control via industry-leading, high-resolution 78 ps pulse-width modulation (PWM) and low-latency 40 Msps ADCs, enabling fast, accurate control loops – critical requirements for optimizing the performance of silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) DC/DC converters. In addition, the dsPIC33AK512MPS devices incorporate advanced safety features, an integrated touch controller, and have a high pin count of up to 128.
The dsPIC33AK512MC family is designed to deliver low-latency, 40 Msps ADCs with 1,25 ns PWM resolution, providing a cost- and feature-optimized solution for complex, multi-motor embedded control applications.
The dsPIC33A DSC families, with up to 512KB of Flash and a powerful set of peripherals, integrate a double-precision floating-point unit to accelerate mathematical calculations and take advantage of a 32-bit architecture for full adoption of model-based design code. Their enhanced instruction set, combined with digital signal processing (DSP) capabilities such as single-cycle MAC operations and a 200MHz core speed, make these devices highly efficient for low-latency, real-time control applications. Supported by MPLAB®, the dsPIC33A devices are also available.® Machine Learning Development Suite streamlines the machine learning workflow by automating data preparation and incorporating optimized model extraction, training, validation, and firmware conversion.
“Microchip’s dsPIC33A DSCs deliver high levels of performance and reliability for advanced automotive electronic control units (ECUs),” said Norbert Weiss, Managing Director of Lauterbach GmbH. “Together with the support of our new TRACE32 solutions,® We help DSC dsPIC33A customers accelerate their time to market by leveraging our excellent debugging and monitoring tools from the very beginning of the development process.”
Thanks to their extensive hardware security features, the dsPIC33AK512MPS/MC DSCs meet functional safety standards and are developed in compliance with ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 26262 and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) 61508 processes, making them suitable for safety-critical applications in the automotive and industrial sectors. The dsPIC33AK512MPS DSC family integrates cryptographic accelerators and a Flash security module to further enhance system-level security, enabling an immutable root of trust, secure boot, secure firmware updates, and secure debugging capabilities.
“The combination of the dsPIC33A DSCs and our pre-certified, safety-critical real-time system, SAFERTOS®“It simplifies the development of safety-critical applications,” said Andrew Longhurst, Managing Director of WITTENSTEIN High Integrity Systems (WHIS). “This system-level solution offers our customers the opportunity to deliver reliable and efficient solutions that meet safety standards in the automotive and industrial sectors.”
Visit the website for more information about the dsPIC33A DSC family from Microchip.
