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Allegro unveils three-phase gate driver for EV and hybrid cars

Wed, Oct 27, 2021

From Allegro MicroSystems comes the QuietMotion product line with the introduction of the A89307 automotive-qualified gate driver integrated circuit.

Designed for battery cooling fans and HVAC systems in electric and hybrid vehicles, the A89307 offers low noise and vibration by using a field orientated control algorithm to drive continuous sinusoidal current to the load. This helps car manufacturers reduce noise and improve battery life, offering more miles per charge and lowering vehicle carbon footprints, says Allegro.

“By design, EV and hybrid vehicles are quieter than traditional models with internal combustion engines – especially when they’re stopped – and drivers are becoming increasingly sensitive to noise created by components such as cooling fans,” said Steve Lutz, product line director for Motor Drivers at Allegro. “The A89307’s hardware-based algorithm makes it easier for designers to reduce fan noise while improving cooling performance and increasing miles per charge. That’s good for drivers and good for the environment.”

The A89307 includes a hardware-based algorithm, which requires no external sensors or software development; the user selects parameters using a GUI interface and loads them into the IC’s on-chip EEPROM. With only five external components, the A89307 helps designers lower material costs by reducing BOM components and facilitating very small system footprints for in-motor PCBs. Its fully integrated algorithm can even eliminate the need for a separate microprocessor.

Modes of operation include open-loop PWM or fully programmable closed-loop speed control. In closed-loop mode, the customer can program the PWM-to-speed relationship to match the PWM commands provided by an external ECU. Field weakening is included to improve performance at high speed. Low-speed operation and windmilling start-up are just a few of the features included in the A89307 hardware based digital algorithm.

While designed for xEV battery cooling fans, the A89307 can also be used in HVAC blowers as well as liquid pumps in traction inverter cooling systems. The external gate drive allows the device to be flexible enough to drive a wide range of motor powers up to 500W.

http://www.allegromicro.com

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Alliance Memory offers 3V multiple I/O serial NOR Flash memory solutions

Tue, Oct 26, 2021

Alliance Memory offers a new line of 3V multiple input/output serial NOR flash memory products designed to provide supply continuity for Micron Technology customers using discontinued N25Q series devices. Offering support for single, dual, and quad SPI modes, the AS25F series combines fast read performance up to 104MHz with fast program and erase times of 0.3ms and 40ms typical, respectively.

Available in 8-pin SOP wide body (209mils) and 8L WSON (6x5mm) packages, the devices operate from a single 2.7V to 3.6V power supply over an industrial temperature range of -40 degrees C to +85 degrees C. The solutions offer typical erase/program currents of 20mA and maximum read currents of 25mA at 104MHz, and they are said by Alliance Memory to provide reliable, long-term performance with 100,000 program/erase cycles and 10-year data retention.

AS25F series devices support uniform 4KB or 32KB or 64KB erase, offers an 8/16/32/64byte wrap-around burst read mode, and features program/erase suspend and resume. Advanced security features include block protection and 4K-bit secured OTP to protect content from hostile access and inadvertent programming and erasing.

With their enhanced performance, the serial NOR flash memory products are designed to meet the demands of the computer, consumer, communications, IoT and mobile markets. The devices are suitable for use in, among others, chipsets for PCs, DVD and Blu-ray players, wireless LANs and cable modems, printers, set-top boxes, LCD displays, mobile and wearable devices, digital cameras, handheld GPS units and smart meters.

Samples and production quantities of the 3V serial NOR flash memory products are available now, with lead times of 16 to 20 weeks.

Alliance Memory is a global provider of critical and hard-to-find memory ICs for the communications, computing, consumer electronics, medical, automotive, and industrial markets. The company’s product range includes flash, DRAM, and SRAM memory ICs with commercial, industrial, and automotive operating temperature ranges and densities from 64Kb to 8Gb. Privately held, Alliance Memory maintains headquarters in Kirkland, Washington, and regional offices in Europe, Asia, Canada and South America.

Go to http://www.alliancememory.com

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Updates add video to STMicroelectronics’ TouchGFX suite

Mon, Oct 25, 2021

The TouchGFX Version 4.18 from STMicroelectronics is for user-interface development with STM32 microcontrollers, adding video playback, enhanced tools for multi-developer collaboration, and support for new X-NUCLEO display kits.

By allowing playback of Motion-JPEG (MJPEG) video files, TouchGFX aids small devices such as home-automation products, wearables, medical devices and industrial sensors, allowing rich features such as instructional guides or entertaining startup and pause screens to enhance the user interface. Developers can use their own MJPEG files or choose from the sample movies provided. A new video widget in TouchGFX Designer, with properties including start, stop, repeat, and go-to-frame, simplifies prototyping and is added to the application by drag and drop, says ST.

TouchGFX 4.18 allows video decoding in either software or hardware. Hardware decoding is possible with STM32 MCUs that contain a suitable decoding peripheral, such as the STM32F769 and STM32H7B3. Software decoding is available on all series devices except the STM32G0 series. Various strategies for video buffering, including direct rendering to the frame buffer and double buffering, help optimise memory demand and performance.

Additional new features of TouchGFX 4.18 include enhanced support for collaborative working, using XML to store text data and translations. XML simplifies sharing and merging various elements of the project as multiple team members contribute. The features of previous TouchGFX versions are retained, including the partial frame buffer for low RAM use, ultra-efficient rendering that prevents tearing effects, and support for low-cost non-memory-mapped SPI Flash.

For an easy start to GUI development projects, TouchGFX 4.18 comes with examples showing how to use the new video capabilities and the necessary TouchGFX board setup for the STM32 Discovery boards.

ST has also updated and extended the selection of display shields that help developers get their user-interface projects running. The updated X-NUCLEO-GFX01M2 for Nucleo 64 boards has a 2.2” QVGA serial interface display and now supports the NUCLEO-WB55RG, making it easy to add a display to a Bluetooth application. A new X-NUCLEO-GFX02Z1 for Nucleo 144 has a high-speed parallel interface and QSPI Flash memory on-board, supporting among others the NUCLEO-U575ZI-Q Both are supported in TouchGFX 4.18.

Go to https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/ecosystems/stm32-graphic-user-interface.html

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Automotive wireless charging reference design is Qi 1.3-certified

Fri, Oct 22, 2021

Believed to be the first automotive wireless charging reference design to be certified by the Wireless Power Consortium for the new Qi 1.3 standard, NXP has released the Automotive 15W Wireless Charging Transmitter reference design.

It consists of a Qi-certified board with an NXP wireless charging MWCT microcontroller, as well as optional NFC, secure element and CAN / LIN transceiver. It also features a software package with NXP’s wireless charging Qi 1.3 software library and a suite of customisable software design to make it easier for developers to bring a Qi-certified wireless charger to market.

The Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi standard is used by most major smartphone manufacturers, including Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi. The Qi 1.3 standard includes new secure authentication features that verify if a smartphone or other wireless power device is Qi-certified and can reduce the wireless power transfer to lower levels if an uncertified device is detected. This ensures user safety and protects equipment from damage. It does, however, requires the addition of secure storage to the wireless power transmitter, addressed by NXP’s automotive-grade products.

Customers can use customise the wireless charging software library, based on the type of wireless charging application targeted. Design options include scaling designs from 5.0 to 15W and above with proprietary protocols, single or multi-coil chargers and across vehicles fleets.

NXP released pre-production details of the WCT-15WAUTO13 multi-coil transmitter reference platform, the first Qi 1.3-certified 15W reference design for in-vehicle wireless charging applications based on the NXP MWCT2xx3A controller IC family.

The system supports 40W power delivery to meet all customised fast charging requirements. It uses automotive-grade components and other automotive functions including EMC optimisation, safety features and MISRA C compliance software. It complies with the Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi v1.3 specification including authentication and is certified as an MP-A13 transmitter type.

http://www.NXP.com

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Allegro unveils three-phase gate driver for EV and hybrid cars

Alliance Memory offers 3V multiple I/O serial NOR Flash memory solutions

Updates add video to STMicroelectronics’ TouchGFX suite

Automotive wireless charging reference design is Qi 1.3-certified

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