Toshiba Electronics Europe has further expanded its family of 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3-based microcontrollers for motor control applications with the launch of a new device featuring the family’s highest levels of on-board memory to date. The TMPM376 will minimise component count and speed the design of industrial and home appliance motion control applications requiring efficient and accurate field oriented control of fans, pumps and compressors.
Toshiba’s TMPM376 incorporates all of the functionality needed to ensure precision motor control and rapid response without additional hardware, CPU overhead or time-consuming software development. In addition to providing the functionality needed for the accurate control of three-phase motors, the device also offers 512KB of internal ROM and 32KB of internal RAM to minimise or eliminate the need for external code and data storage. The TMPM376 motor control capabilities are derived from an integrated hardware vector engine and a proprietary, two-channel PMD3+ programmable motor drive function. The VE provides the calculations needed to control up to two motors and the PMD3+ with 3-phase PWM generator, dead time controller and protection circuit delivers the motor control PWM signals. A 12-bit ADC supports high-speed, PWM-synchronised analogue-to-digital conversion and a two-channel encoder input circuit with counter and comparator facilitates detection of rotation direction and motor position.
In addition to the ARM core, memory and motor control functions the TMPM376 also features an 8-channel 16-bit timer, a watchdog timer, a general-purpose serial interface offering UART or synchronous mode selection and a serial bus interface switchable between I2C or synchronous operation. Power on Reset and voltage detect functionality are provided as standard, while an oscillation frequency detect function supports legislation relating to the safety of home appliances. Available in 14x 20mm QFP and 14 x 14mm LQFP packages, the new microcontroller operates with voltages from 4.5 to 5.5V and a maximum operating frequency of 80MHz. An integrated clock generator supports clock gearing of 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8 or 1/16. Use of the low-power ARM core and high-efficiency NANOFLASH memory - as well as the availability of IDLE and STOP standby modes - all contribute to reducing power consumption in the target application.
