TI's floating-point Piccolo MCUs provide optimized performance and power line communications capabilities for energy-efficient apps

HOUSTON, USA: Bridging the gap between low-cost Piccolo and high-performance Delfino floating-point microcontrollers (MCUs), Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) announced its new low-cost TMS320F2806x Piccolo floating-point MCUs.

Rooted in TI's 25+ years of digital signal processing leadership, the new Piccolo MCUs offer an enhanced math engine specifically designed to simplify programming and optimize performance in real-time control applications that may require integrated communications.

Developers of energy-efficient motor control and renewable energy applications can now use a single F2806x MCU to cost-effectively execute control loops as well as power line communications (PLC) protocols and modulation schemes. Balancing performance with the integration and ease-of-use inherent to MCUs, the new F2806x MCUs also deliver a broader range of connectivity and memory options and are backed by TI's robust tools and free controlSUITE software.

Key features and benefits of F2806x Piccolo floating-point MCUs
* Cutting-edge math engine comprised of 80 MHz floating-point C28x core, new Viterbi Complex Math Unit (VCU) and Control Law Accelerator (CLA) options.
* Floating-point core greatly eases programming, improves compatibility with meta-language tools, and improves performance by up to 40 percent over fixed point.
* New VCU complex math unit provides 75 tailored math instructions to accelerate processing of communications algorithms, such as those for PLC, by a factor of up to 7X.
* Increased communications and throughput via USB 2.0 full-speed (host and device), CAN and direct memory access (DMA).
* 15+ MCUs provide an increased memory range of 52 – 100KB RAM, 128 – 256 KB flash as well as options for 80 and 100 pin packages.
* Control-oriented peripherals, including industry's highest resolution PWMs (150ps), 3 MSPS 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and 3 analog comparators with 10-bit reference.
* Low-cost F2806x controlSTICK and modular controlCARD enable easy evaluation with TI's compatible experimenter and real-world hardware application development tools.
* Free controlSUITE software includes application and math libraries with source code as well as detailed documentation so developers can easily, fully harness F2806x features.
* IQmath Library for code compatibility and scaling throughout the C2000 platform, including the low-cost Piccolo series and high-performance Delfino floating-point series.