On the design of a special-purpose digital control processor

This paper examines the design of a special-purpose digital processor targeted for linear-regulator control system implementation, and monolithic microelectronic fabrication. In order to improve the computational dynamic range, accuracy, and speed of this digital control processor (DCP), a logarithmic arithmetic is selected. This selection is based upon an examination of DCP data wordlength requirements which are in turn estimated from computational dynamic range and accuracy considerations. DCP arithmetic implementation and architecture are also examined, and the selection of a logarithmic arithmetic is seen to be advantageous from these viewpoints. Finally, contemporary microcomputer technology is used to estimate DCP computational speed. When compared to microcomputers, the proposed DCP appears to allow a computational speed increase in excess of 300-fold while maintaining an equivalent computational accuracy and dynamic range.