Toshiba Releases New Dual-Motor, ARM Technology-Based Microcontroller

Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) announced the availability of the company’s newest microcontroller (MCU), the TMPM370. Toshiba’s TMPM370 32-bit MCU is designed for use in high-efficiency ac motor applications such as washing machines, refrigerators and air conditioners. The device combines an 80MHz ARM® Cortex™-M3 processing core with a hardware vector engine, providing enough computation capability to drive two independent motors.

The TMPM370 is the first ARM Cortex-M3 processor-based MCU to include a hardware vector engine. The TMPM370 MCU is also the first of Toshiba’s 5V family of ARM Cortex-M3 processor-based MCUs for industrial and home appliance control, offering good noise immunity and simple interfacing to 5V logic.

Motor control is a demanding real-time application. The algorithms that determine motor movements are computationally intensive, and a motor’s real-time control and computation requirements can conflict with each other. The TMPM370 MCU cuts the CPU load in half by offloading most of the heavy calculation to the vector engine, which also handles many of the timing tasks, such as collecting samples from ADCs and directing inputs to the PWM circuits. The end result is that TMPM370 has enough compute power and real-time control capacity to handle two motors simultaneously.

The TMPM370 also includes on-chip 256Kbyte FLASH, 10Kbyte SRAM, dual 12-bit analog-to-digital converters, 4 serial interface controllers, eight 16-bit timers, 76GPIOs, voltage regulator, power-on reset, low voltage detection and oscillator frequency detection, making it a complete one-chip solution for motor control. TMPM370 complies with IEC60730 Class B requirements for appliance safety. Power-on tests and continuously-operating fault condition checks are handled by a combination of on-chip hardware blocks and a software library.

"The reduction of power consumption in appliances is a key concern for design engineers as many utility companies are incentivizing consumers to purchase more power efficient appliances," said Andrew Burt, vice President of the Imaging and Communications Marketing Group in the ASSP Business Unit at TAEC. "Toshiba’s new TMPM370 MCU provides the right combination of processing power and hardware peripherals to help our customers design the low-power appliances that are in demand among today’s green-minded consumers."

"Toshiba’s innovative implementation of vector space math acceleration in a 5V Cortex-M3 processor-based MCU will help motion control engineers achieve the higher levels of efficiency and functionality required in the next generation of appliances and HVAC systems," said Eric Schorn, VP marketing, Processor Division, ARM. "Toshiba’s adoption of the ARM Cortex architecture is a clear demonstration of the growing support for the ARM Cortex-M3 processor’s low power, high computation abilities."

Engineering samples of the TMPM370 MCU are available now. Mass production of the device is currently scheduled for Q2 2010. The TMPM370 MCU is priced at $4.50 per unit in 10,000 unit quantities.