Actel to display SmartFusion mixed signal FPGAs at ESC 2010

MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA; Embedded Systems Conference 2010: Actel Corp. will be displaying SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGAs in action, offering a compelling solution for high complexity motor and motion control applications.

With SmartFusion’s integrated 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller, programmable analog, on-chip embedded nonvolatile memory (eNVM) and proven low power flash based FPGA fabric, SmartFusion directly address the challenges of motor control design.

The development of smaller and more powerful motors, along with recent advances in high-energy batteries, has opened new markets to a wide range of motorized products. New designs for AC and DC motor control must be highly efficient and consume little power in order to provide longer operation without affecting performance.

The need to adopt smaller, more cost-effective motors in traditional motor applications is also influencing electronic motor control techniques for the industrial sectors. Tremendous technology improvements in semiconductor processes and integration are helping designers face these challenges.

Industry experts are partnering with Actel to leverage the capabilities and strengths of SmartFusion devices for motor control applications to provide solutions to this growing market.

Power and Control Design Inc. is an industry leader in sophisticated motor control design and works with major customers targeting motor control applications.

It is jointly developing SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGA based motor control solutions with Actel and was an early adopter as part of the Actel partner program, developing a suite of reference designs that illustrate the compelling fit realized using SmartFusion devices in high-end motor control applications.

The SmartFusion motor control demo developed by Power and Control Design provides sophisticated simultaneous control of up to four Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors (PMSM). All motors are controlled in trapezoidal and sinusoidal commutation using Hall effect position sensor input, optical encoder position sensor input or a sensorless mode using Back-EMF input to determine motor position and speed.

TRINAMIC Motion Control GmbH & Co. KG, a leader in embedded motion control, is building on its experience as an Actel partner program FPGA user and participation in Actel’s SmartFusion Lead Customer Program to offer motor control to their customers.

TRINAMIC has developed a variety of motor control solutions to solve high-complexity, space-limited motor control challenges. By taking advantage of SmartFusion’s unique feature set, TRINAMIC created a BLDC motor control block unit for high speed commutation. This unit is a functional block coded in VHDL, with control via register access from the SmartFusion 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 processor.

With the commutation block implemented in hardware, the Cortex-M3 processor is free to implement higher level control algorithms. Utilizing the SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGA together with a TRINAMIC TMC603A integrated BLDC motor gate driver, customers can implement a complete BLDC motor control with only two components.