Seoul, South Korea, April 10, 2014 – Continuing to expand one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of ARM-based microcontrollers (MCUs), Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL) today announced the flagship family of its new Kinetis V Series, optimized for motor control and digital power conversion applications. Complementing the Kinetis V Series, the company also announced the Kinetis Motor Suite, a bundled set of enablement tools that maximize motor efficiency while reducing development costs and accelerating time to market.

Modern sensored and sensorless motor control is a demanding task for MCUs, requiring precise speed and position measurements alongside general-purpose processing. MCUs must not only provide high-speed, high-resolution ADCs and PWMs for fast, accurate signal capture and response, but also support a wide range of control algorithms, from entry-level BLDCs to advanced PMSM and ACIM control loops. Developers must also have access to intuitive software tools that enable them to quickly and efficiently create, modify, and implement control algorithms.

The Kinetis V series' fast signal acquisition and processing capabilities, combined with the intuitive Kinetis motor family, provide a unified hardware and software platform for developing scalable, cost-effective motor control systems. From low-cost pool pumps to advanced robotics, the Kinetis V series allows designers of a wide range of products to leverage the improved efficiency, quiet operation, and enhanced reliability of the latest motor technology.

“With more than 20 years of expertise in motor control processors and a very strong reputation in this market, motor control and digital power were the next logical development steps on our Kinetis roadmap,” said Geoff Lees, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale’s microcontroller business unit. “The Kinetis V series’ outstanding price-performance ratio, tailored peripheral set, and bundled Kinetis motor family enable developers to create highly efficient designs faster and easier than ever before.”

The Kinetis V series MCUs and new Kinetis motor family software will be on display during the Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) Americas in Dallas, Texas, April 8-11.

The KV4x family is the flagship of the existing V series, targeting PMSM and ACIM applications requiring high dynamic control, as well as digital power conversion designs. Designed for optimal performance, KV4x MCUs integrate a 150MHz ARM Cortex-M4 processor with a floating-point unit (FPU) running from up to 256KB of flash memory via a 128-bit wide interface that minimizes CPU wait states. With up to 30 timer channels (12 provided by the flexible eFlexPWM), KV4x family devices provide multiple 3-phase motor drive capabilities with dead-time insertion, complementary pairs of PWM, half-cycle reload, and fault detection. For sensorless motor control speed/position sensing, two 12-bit ADCs support sampling rates of up to 1.9Msps and can be triggered by modules connected to the MCU's internal peripheral crossbar, including timers, analog comparators, or GPIOs. For switch-mode power supply applications, the eFlexPWM module offers 300 picoseconds of resolution, while the ADC samples at 4.1 Msps. Enhanced real-time control ensures critical timing intervals for data acquisition and system updates. Furthermore, the KV4x family's high feature integration allows for up to 30 PWM outputs, 38 ADC channel inputs, and CAN, UART, and SPI interfaces to be packaged in a single 100-pin LQFP package.
The KV3x family is also based on the Cortex-M4 and targets mid-range PMSM applications with CPU frequencies of 100-120MHz, up to 512/96KB of Flash/SRAM, and optional external bus interfaces for off-chip system expansion.

The KV1x family represents the entry-level of the series and integrates the industry's fastest Cortex-M0+ MCU core. With a CPU frequency of 75MHz, hardware partitioning, and a square root block, KV1x devices deliver over 25% increased performance in arithmetic-intensive applications compared to other MCUs in their family class. By integrating this high processing efficiency into a compact 32KB solution, KV1x MCUs establish themselves as a cost-effective option for BLDC and PMSM designs that currently rely on expensive, large-scale 32-bit MCUs.

Traditional PID loop tuning relies on trial and error, requires in-depth motor control expertise, and can result in suboptimal system performance that can degrade over time. The Kinetis motor family addresses these challenges, streamlining development cycles, delivering more predictable system response, and accelerating time to market.

The Kinetis motor family consists of three software components for tuning, observing, and managing motor control system behavior. The Kinetis Motor Tuner is a GUI for configuring motor parameters that enables fast and precise PID loop tuning in minutes, replacing months of manual tuning. The Kinetis Motor Observer is advanced software pre-programmed into the MCU that allows tuning of control loops and prediction blocks to adjust motor and inverter efficiency, power factor, current/torque ripple, and noise. The Kinetis Motor Manager provides a non-intrusive, real-time display of system variables and the MCU memory map. The Motor Manager includes a software oscilloscope with debugging and data logging capabilities. Kinetis V Series MCUs pre-programmed with the Kinetis Motor Family software will be available for order in Q3 2014.
Freescale also offers a wide range of GUI-based motor configuration and debugging tools, software libraries, and Tower System development modules.