Re: Interface. Gauging interest.

On 5/19/06, yracg <gcary@...> wrote:

>
> How much does an MPC55xx cost?

The quickie board I just finished designing is the brain of an
avionics 150 kVA electrical generator controller. It's responsible for
monitoring basically everything about the electrical system and
sending tweaks to the rate governor to maintain 400 Hz sync with the
backup generator, driving the excitation windings, safety breakers,
etc. It was a low volume build and the final quote on the CPU
(MPC5554) was mid $40s.

I chose it's cousin, the MPC5553 for my board because 1) I just
finished a detailed analysis of it, 2) it had a CAN bus and Ethernet,
3) It has a bad-ass ADC, 4) I can write PowerPC assembly, and most
importantly 0) I could do the design in two weekends because
everything is still fresh and clear in my aging brain.

And these things are sold by to truckload into the auto industry,
wringing every penny out of the margin.

Important features to motion controllers:

* 2 fast 12-bit ADCs attached to a 40 channel analog mux (supports
four differential analog inputs)
* Timer Processor Units and Modular I/O -- essentially soft hardware.
The eTPU actually has a microcodable state engine that runs
independently of the main processor. These two features are
specifically designed to support motor controls and to offload
real-time CPU tasks.
* SPI -- interface to lots of cheap peripherals, including DACs and
temperature monitors.
* General Purpose I/O for basic bit banging and on/off monitoring.
* Everything is interrupt driven.

Important features to system integration:

CAN bus
Ethernet
SPI
Serial Controller (configurable as basic UART (RS-232))
2 Mbyte internal Flash
64 kByte internal SRAM
Built-in core voltage regulator
JTAG programming
Boot from CAN or serial as well as external Flash.