MCUs boast high-res PWM unit

Infineon Technologies AG has expanded its XMC4000 MCU family geared for industrial applications and uses ARM Cortex M4 processors. According to the company, the XMC4400, XMC4200 and XMC4100 are the world's first Cortex-based MCUs to offer a high-resolution PWM unit. With a PWM resolution of just 150ps, they target digital power conversion in inverters as well as switching and uninterruptible power supplies (UPS).

The XMC4400, XMC4200 and XMC4100 MCUs are part of the Infineon roadmap to serve a broad range of industrial applications with the XMC4000 family. Like the XMC4500 MCUs, the XMC4400, XMC4200 and XMC4100 series offer powerful application-optimised peripherals, fast and robust embedded flash technology, an extended temperature range of -40°C to 125°C, high quality standards and tools for automatic code generation in the DAVE 3 development environment.

The XMC4400, XMC4200 and XMC4100 series claim to have a powerful CPU sub-system with 120MHz or 80MHz, DSP functionality, a floating point unit, fast flash memory (512KB, 256KB or 128KB) with a read time of just 22ns and error correction code as well as SRAMs up to 80KB. The extensive range of peripherals includes high-speed 12bit ADC and DAC as well as integrated delta-sigma demodulator modules (XMC4400). Powerful communication is provided by Ethernet MAC (XMC4400), USB 2.0 and CAN interfaces as well as serial communication channels that can be software-configured individually as UART, SPI, Quad-SPI, I2S or I2C, detailed Infineon. They also provide a touch interface and an LED matrix display.

The XMC4400, XMC4200 and XMC4100 also are supported with the integrated development platform DAVE 3, which makes convenient, fast and application-orientated software development possible. The Eclipse-based environment with free GNU compiler and debugger can be extended using third party tools. DAVE 3 also supports automatic code generation based on predefined software components, the so-called "DAVE Apps". The DAVE Apps are configured in a user-friendly way via the GUI. DAVE 3 therefore ensures that developers of industrial applications can make full use of the functionality of XMC4000 MCUs with only little programming effort. The code that is generated can be compiled and debugged directly in DAVE 3 or imported into third party tools for further processing (currently Altium, ARM, Atollic, IAR Systems and Rowley).

Samples of all three series—XMC4400, XMC4200 and XMC4100—are available. High-volume production is scheduled to start at the end of 2Q13. The XMC4400 series (in LQFP-100 or LQFP-64 package) has a clock frequency of 120MHz and flash memory of up to 512KB. The XMC4200 and XMC4100 series (both LQFP-64 or VQFN-48) operate at 80MHz. The XMC4200 has a flash memory of up to 256KB and the XMC4100 of up to 128KB. Hexagon development kits are available for all series.