Dual-core MCU is made for industrial control

A novel industrial SoC microcontroller contains two ARM 946E cores, two CAN channels, two 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet MACs and a versatile motion control logic capability.

A novel industrial SoC microcontroller is available from Saelig which contains two ARM 946E cores, two CAN channels, two 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet MACs with hardware extension for real-time protocols, and a versatile motion control logic capability, specifically designed for time-critical and other industrial control applications.

The DCIC9907 is destined to be the central digital element of advanced servo system platforms, as one of the two ARM cores can be used for complex real-time control tasks and the second for time-variable OS support and system overhead.

Although optimised for motion control applications, the DCIC9907's key features will find application in a wide variety of industrial communications situations, such as: fieldbus controller node (CAN 2.0B, Ethernet Powerlink), fieldbus to Ethernet network (bridge/firewall, gateway/TCP/IP, web server, firewall), real-time Ethernet control node (EPL manager or control node), or real-time data acquisition and measurement (precision time/capture and intelligent ADC/DAC interfaces).

The DCIC9907 is a highly integrated circuit, which supports many high-level functions for controlling and supervising industrial applications.

Additionally, the DCIC9907 allows you to control applications under difficult real-time conditions, such as tasks which need accurately predicted time performance under all conditions, even when running in parallel with an operating system.

Within the DCIC9907, one of the two ARM cores can be used for complex real-time control and the second one for system infrastructure, such as an HMI (human machine interface) and the required communication interfaces.

For this purpose, the versatile real-time operating system Euros has been ported to DCIC9907.

The two 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet MAC ports have hardware extensions which support real time protocols via Ethernet.

Because there are few affordable solutions available in the market today with such functionality, the new DCIC9907 is ideally suited to time-critical, cost-conscious control applications.

Features incorporated in DCIC9907 are the direct result of feedback from key industrial users.

For instance, the DCIC9907 includes 16 hardware interrupts controlled via the internal vector interrupt controller, with a total of 32 interrupts available (16 software and 16 hardware).

An additional novel feature is a complex-motion control block integrated into DCIC9907.

This control block has all the built-in features necessary to control and supervise any kind of electronic motor directly from the IC.

For example, it is possible to control three PWM channels in parallel.

The DCIC9907 can be clocked up to 128MHz and provides sufficient performance even for very demanding control applications.

With 109 I/O pins, DCIC9907 represents a highly flexible SoC.

The 128MHz DCIC9907 was designed to keep power dissipation as low as possible - so no need for heatsinks or even fans.

This means that the form factor of customer products can be reduced to a minimum, system costs are decreased and MTBF is increased because critical heat on silicon will not be reached.

Made in Germany by DualCore, the DCIC9907 will be available from March 2006 in an industrial temperature range 305-pin BGA package for less than US $20 in volume.

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