Infineon doubles speed of industrial drive controllers

Neubiberg, Germany – November 8, 2007 – Infineon today announced the XE166, a new family of real-time signal controllers (RTSCs) targeting industrial motor control.  (RTSCS are also known as digital signal controllers (DSCs).)  XE166 chips can control up to four motors simultaneously.

The family is based on the C166S V2 core, a 16-bit microcontroller (MCU) core with digital signal processor (DSP) features. XE166 devices deliver 80 MIPS and up to 768 KB of flash—twice the performance and three times the memor of of its XC166 predecessor. Software developed for existing C166 and XC166 controllers can be reused with this new family. The XE166 family feature fast interrupt response time and context switching.  It integrates an embedded voltage regulator, various clock sources, brown-out detection and watchdog. The chips also feature error-correction coding (ECC) technology that corrects single-bit errors and detects double-bit errors.

The peripheral set includes up to four capture compare units and two synchronizable 24-channel, 10-bit ADCs with a conversion time of less than 1.2 microseconds. It also includes a wide range of interface options, such as a MultiCAN interface, and up to six Universal Serial Interface channels to link to external peripherals via UART, LIN, SPI, I2C or IIS. The first two series of the XE166 family, the XE164 series and the XE167 series, are available now. Sample pricing starts around 5 Euros ($7) in quantities of 20,000. The XE166 family is supported by the full suite of development tools including Altium's Tasking C166 Compiler Toolset.  Developers can use the Tasking tool chain for free for one year. For further information on the XE166 family, see www.infineon.com/XE166.