23 January 2012
Embedded World: Infineon 32bit mcus target industrial applications
Infineon Technologies has announced a new 32bit microcontroller family that uses the ARM Cortex-M4 processor and is designed for industrial applications.
According to Infineon, the XMC4000 mcus combines application optimised peripherals and real time capability with the advantages of a widely distributed core architecture. The series has been designed to support three main trends in industrial applications – by helping to improve energy efficiency, supporting a large number of communication standards and reducing software complexity during development. Target applications include electric drives, solar inverters and the automation of manufacturing and buildings.
Infineon says it is using the XMC4000 range to close the performance gap between the 16bit XE166 family and the 32bit TriCore family. It's designed to enable scalable, compatible solutions with a high degree of software reusability and consists of five series: XMC4100; XMC4200; XMC4400; XMC4500; and XMC4700. These series differ mainly in terms of core frequency, memory capacity and peripheral functions and number of I/Os. The XMC4000 series has a cpu subsystem, dsp functionality, a floating point unit, a fast flash memory with 22ns read time and error correction code, large sram and extended peripheral functions. These include new timer modules; up to four parallel 12bit a/d converters with a sampling rate of 70ns and a conversion time of 500ns; up to two 12bit d/a converters, up to four high resolution PWM channels (150ps); and integrated delta-sigma demodulator modules and touch button modules.
Communication is provided by an IEEE 1588 compatible Ethernet 1588 compatible Ethernet MAC, USB 2.0, CAN and SD/MMC interfaces and up to six serial communication channels which can be individually configured as UART, SPI, Quad, SPI, IIC, IIS or LIN using software. According to Infineon, the XMC4000 family offers a fast external bus interface that supports synchronous standards such as sdram or Burst Flash, and asynchronous standards such as sram, nand Flash and nor Flash.
The integrated development environment DAVE 3 is designed to make convenient, fast and application oriented software development possible. The Eclipse based environment with free GNU compiler, debugger and data display utilities can be extended using third party tools. "Our XMC4000 family combines optimized peripherals with the advantages of the widespread ARM architecture for industrial applications", said Dr Stephan Zizala, senior director, Industrial and Multimarket Microcontrollers at Infineon Technologies. "Our customers in industrial electronics benefit from our many years of application experience that result in convincing novelties: flexible timers, fast a/d converters, fast and robust Flash memory and extended temperature ranges of up to 125°C. Using the development environment DAVE makes familiarization with the XMC4000 family convenient, time saving and free of charge."
The first device in the XMC4000 family that Infineon is bringing to market is the XMC4500 series. These mcus offer a 120MHz cpu, up to 1MByte of embedded Flash memory, 160 Kbytes of RAM and a range of peripheral and interface functions. The peripherals include four parallel fast 12bit a/d converter modules, two 12bit d/a converters, four delta sigma demodulator modules, six capture/compare units (CCU4 and CCU8), two positioning interface modules and a module for eight touch buttons. Communication functions comprise interfaces for Ethernet, USB, and SD/MMC.
Samples of the XMC4500 series and DAVE 3 will be available from March 2012, with high volume production scheduled for May 2012. Infineon will present the XMC4500 series and the development environment DAVE 3 at its booth 142 in hall 4 at the Embedded World 2012 trade show (Nuremberg, Germany, February 28, to March 1, 2012).
Author
Chris Shaw
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.infineon.com/xmc
Companies
Infineon Technologies
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