Texas Instruments Announces Floating Point Digital Signal Controllers
Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) announced what it claims is the industry’s first floating point digital signal controllers (DSCs). The new TMS320F2833x devices are said to provide 300 million floating point instructions per second (MFLOPS) performance at 150 MHz while providing the lower costs typically associated with fixed point processors. Simplified software development common to floating-point processors and the performance boost is claimed to allow solar power inverters to more efficiently convert energy from photovoltaic (PV) panels, offers better power efficiency and performance to variable speed ac drives and provides greater performance for automotive radar applications.
The new F2833x floating point controllers are claimed to increase performance by an average of 50% over TI’s previous leading digital signal controllers while operating at the same 150 MHz clock rate. Some algorithms, such as a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) used for complex calculations, will see a 200% improvement over an equivalent 32-bit fixed-point implementation. Overall system bandwidth is also increased with the addition of a six-channel direct memory access (DMA) controller that offloads the central processing unit (CPU) from servicing the ultra-fast, on-chip analog-to-digital converter (ADC) along with user-configurable 16- or 32-bit external memory interface and high-speed serial ports.
All F2833x controllers are said to offer exceptional system integration for single-chip control applications from signal input to high-resolution control output. The on-chip 12-bit, 16-channel ADC operates at 12.5 mega-samples per second – which the company claims is the fastest on-chip ADC operation of any digital signal controller in the industry today. The F2833x controller series features up to 18 pulse width modulation (PWM) channels, six of which include TI’s high-resolution PWM (HRPWM) technology with 150 pico-seconds (ps) resolution. Communication interfaces include CAN, I2C, UART, SPI and TI’s Multi-channel Buffered Serial Ports (McBSP).
F2833x controllers are fully software compatible with all previous TMS320C28x™ controllers. Samples of the F28335, F28334, and F28332 devices will be available in September 2007 and will be fully AEC Q-100 qualified for automotive applications. Hardware and software development tools, including the Code Composer Studio™ Integrated Development Environment will be available with F2833x controllers. Developers can start programming using any available F28x based eZdsp development tool and IQ Math, TI’s ‘virtual’ floating point software library. Software written with IQ Math will automatically run on the F2833x controllers.
The F2833x devices will also be supported by TI’s TMS320C2000™ Digital Motor Control and Digital Power Supply software libraries. This free, fully documented software provides aides developers in quickly prototyping a motor control or digital power system using C2000™ controllers.
