“The number of AI servers and data centers continues to grow, making more efficient power conversion critical. With the specialized peripherals and high-performance core of the dsPIC33AK512MPS family, developers can now achieve significant energy savings and reduce the size of their power supply,” said Joe Thomsen, corporate vice president of Microchip’s Digital Signal Controllers business unit. “The new DSC dsPIC33A families incorporate advanced features that enable efficient and reliable designs for modern power conversion, motor control, and sensing applications.”.
The dsPIC33AK512MPS family provides precise, high-speed control through best-in-class, high-resolution 78 ps pulse-width modulation (PWM) and low-latency 40 Msps analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). This enables fast and accurate control loops, two essential requirements for optimizing the performance of silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN)-based DC/DC converters. Furthermore, the dsPIC33AK512MPS devices incorporate advanced safety features, an integrated touch controller, and a large pin count of up to 128.
The dsPIC33AK512MC family is designed to offer low latency, 40 Msps ADCs with a 1.25 ns PWM resolution, thus providing a solution with features and cost optimized for complex, multi-motor embedded control applications.
The DSC dsPIC33A family, with up to 512 KB of Flash memory and a powerful set of peripherals, integrates a double-precision floating-point unit to accelerate mathematical calculations and leverages a 32-bit architecture for full adoption of model-based design code. Its enhanced instruction set, coupled with digital signal processing (DSP) capabilities such as single-cycle MAC operations and a 200 MHz core speed, makes these devices highly efficient for low-latency, real-time control applications. Supported by the MPLAB® Machine Learning Development Suite, the dsPIC33A devices streamline the machine learning workflow by automating data preparation and incorporating extraction, training, validation, and firmware conversion of optimized models.
“Microchip’s DSC dsPIC33A chips deliver high levels of performance and reliability for advanced automotive electronic control units (ECUs),” said Norbert Weiss, Managing Director of Lauterbach GmbH. “Together with the support of our new TRACE32® solutions, we help DSC dsPIC33A customers accelerate their time to market by using our excellent debugging and monitoring tools from the very beginning of the development process.”.
Thanks to their numerous hardware security features, the DSC dsPIC33AK512MPS/MC microcontrollers meet functional safety standards and have been developed in accordance with ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 26262 and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) 61508 processes, making them suitable for safety-critical applications in the automotive and industrial sectors. The DSC dsPIC33AK512MPS family integrates cryptographic accelerators and a Flash security module to further enhance system-level security, enabling an immutable root of trust, secure boot, secure firmware updates, and secure debugging capabilities.
“The combination of the dsPIC33A DSC and our pre-certified, safety-critical real-time system, SAFERTOS®, simplifies the development of safety-critical applications,” said Andrew Longhurst, managing director of WITTENSTEIN high integrity systems (WHIS). “This system-level solution enables our customers to deliver reliable and efficient solutions that meet safety standards in the automotive and industrial sectors.”.
Development Tools
The DSC dsPIC33AK512MPS/MC features support from Microchip's ecosystem of development tools, such as MPLAB XC-DSC Compiler, MPLAB Code Configurator (MCC), and MPLAB ML Development Suite.
Separate in-line dual modules are available to facilitate the development of embedded applications for motor control, digital power conversion, and general-purpose use. The DSCs are also supported by software and tools from partner companies, such as the WHIS SAFERTOS® real-time operating system, the Lauterbach TRACE32® debugger, and others.
