Freescale Breaks Price/Performance Barrier for Industrial and Appliance Applications; Low-End Digital Signal Controller Helps Reduce Production Costs and Speed Time to Market.

TEMPE, Ariz. -- As energy costs soar, designers of industrial and appliance applications are looking for economical ways to offer more functionality and energy efficiency in their products. Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE:FSL)(NYSE:FSL.B) has responded to this demand by introducing the 56F8000 series of digital signal controllers (DSC). The series addresses the needs of cost-sensitive applications that require a 16-bit solution.

In 2000, Freescale produced the industry's first DSC, combining the programming ease of a microcontroller (MCU) with the signal processing power and efficiency of a digital signal processor (DSP). The company's latest DSC offering -- the 56F8000 series -- is designed to provide developers with increased performance and value at price points not available with other solutions on the market today.

The price/performance and peripheral capability of the 56F8000 series is ideally suited to address motor control for appliances, as well as digital power conversion. Additional applications for the series include smart sensing, lighting control and instrumentation.

Choosing the 56F8000 for digital motor control applications enables designers to use three-phase motors and employ sensorless techniques. This results in lower system cost, higher energy efficiency and reduced motor noise.

Digital power conversion includes such applications as DC/DC and AC/DC power supplies, as well as uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). The Darnell Group estimates the market for AC/DC and DC/DC power supplies will reach $17.4 billion in 2009. Implementing digital control in power supplies that were previously dominated by analog control allows developers to create common platforms with different software applications. This results in lower inventory investments and reduced hardware development costs.

Savio Macchine Tessili, a world-leading manufacturer of equipment for the textile machine industry, currently uses a device from the 56F8000 series. "By utilizing Freescale's MC56F8013 in the Orion automatic winder, we have been able to improve our cost/performance ratio while adding new features to this machine," said Giorgio Colomberotto, R&D manager of the Electronic and Electric department. "Because of the device's central processing unit and rich peripheral set, we were able to design a more complete and flexible product."

Building on Freescale's 56800/E core, the 56F8000 series uses a third-generation, cost-effective flash memory technology successfully employed in harsh industrial and automotive environments. It combines a fully integrated core with advanced, high-performance peripherals that provide low power consumption, high speed and flexibility for low- to-mid-level applications. Power consumption is managed through various techniques, including sophisticated control of clocking to all major peripherals, auto standby mode for the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and low-frequency standby mode for the overall chip.

"Freescale's 56800/E family of digital signal controllers provides a technological advantage for our power supplies," said David Rosenbluth, director of R&D Rectifiers and Energy Solutions at Tyco Electronics Power Systems. "The sophisticated pulse width modulation (PWM) module includes the unique features for power supply applications combined with a high level of integration on Freescale's part, helping us reduce our overall system costs. The code compatibility of the families has also enabled us to accelerate our development and allowed for reuse across platforms."

56F8000 series features

The 56F8000 series is based on Freescale's 56800/E digital signal controller core with 32 million instructions per second (MIPS) and single-cycle multiply accumulate (MAC) execution. Specific features include:

--96 MHz PWM with programmable fault capability

--12-bit ADC with a 1.125 micro second conversion rate

--ADC/PWM synchronization

--16 KB program flash memory, 4 KB program/data random access memory (RAM)

--Inter-IC bus (IIC)

--Tunable relaxation oscillator

--Four 16-bit timers, computer operating properly (COP), serial peripheral interface (SPI), serial communications interface (SCI)

--Up to 26 general purpose input output (GPIO)

Speeding system development

Freescale is committed to helping customers introduce products to market more easily and quickly. The company provides an out-of-the-box development experience with cost-effective boards, production-worthy code via software libraries and the award-winning CodeWarrior(TM) development environment. The CodeWarrior(TM) Development Studio for the 56800/E family of products includes the Unis Processor Expert(TM) autocode generator. It is designed to dramatically reduce development time, improve code quality and speed time to market. It also eases the process of migrating legacy code between different platforms.

The CodeWarrior Development Studio for Freescale 56800/E Special Edition (with Processor Expert) that supports the new 56F8000 series is included in the price of development board kit, which starts at a suggested retail price of $65 (USD). In addition, as a special launch promotion, Freescale is offering a USB TAP(TM) host target interface control tool normally available at a suggested price of $250 for $99 (USD), while supplies last.

Price and availability

The 56F8000 devices are available for a suggested retail price of $2.99 (USD) in 10,000-unit quantities. For more information about these products and available services and support, visit http://www.freescale.com/files/pr/56F8000.html.

About Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (NYSE:FSL, FSL.B) is a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets. Freescale became a publicly traded company in July 2004 after more than 50 years as part of Motorola, Inc. The company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing or sales operations in more than 30 countries. Freescale, a member of the S&P 500(R), is one of the world's largest semiconductor companies with 2004 sales of $5.7 billion (US). www.freescale.com

Freescale Technology Forum

The Freescale Technology Forum, to be held in Orlando, Fla., June 20-23, will provide 15 training sessions that focus on or include the 56F8000 series. The forum will also include training labs with hands-on exercises using the 56F8013/8014 development boards. Working reference designs using ACIM & BLDC motor control and DC/DC power supplies will be displayed, and applications and systems engineers will be on-hand to answer questions.

Learn more about this inaugural forum featuring visionary keynote speeches, in-depth technical presentations and technology demonstrations from Freescale and leading hardware, software and tools providers. www.freescale.com/ftf.

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