Dedicated computation engine for power electronics application - a new architecture microcontroller

Motor control is one of the most computationally demanding applications required for microcontroller. In order to satisfy the performance demand on motor control application, microcontroller or DSP manufacturers have traditionally been introducing higher MIPS performance together with memory size increase. The recent emerging appliance motor control such as variable speed motor controlled air conditioner and washer requires further advancement for energy saving which mandates the use of high energy efficiency motor such as permanent magnet motor even without a position sensor. It becomes difficult to fulfil this daunting task by using traditional computation method. This paper discusses a new architecture for motion control application based on a dedicated hardware computation engine. This paper goes through technical comparison between traditional DSP/microcontroller based solution and this new solution for emerging appliance motor control and discusses the silicon architecture advancement.