Xuanzhi Technology launches automotive-grade motor control chip SPD1179, which will be mass-produced in the third quarter of this year

Steve Jobs once said: "The fairy child is like a mature dandelion. If you blow it gently, the seeds of entrepreneurship will fly in the wind."

Ding Wen, deputy general manager of sales of Xuanzhi Technology, said: "Xuanzhi is the last seed of Fairchild, which fell to China to take root and develop."

Picture | Ding Wen, deputy general manager of sales of Xuanzhi Technology

So what kind of flowers will this seed named "Xuanzhi" that was born from the fairy child bloom? In fact, we can tell from the English name SPI NTROL of Spin Intelligence Technology . SPIN means rotation, and TROL is selected from the second half of control. Therefore, Spin Intelligence Technology is a semiconductor company focusing on motor control.

Why focus on motor control? On the one hand, it is because when Xuanzhi Technology was still called Fairchild Motor Product Line Division, it was engaged in motor-related R&D and production. On the other hand, because motors consume more than 60% of the world's energy, the development of motor control can Provide assistance to solve environmental crises and promote sustainable social development.

In the past eight years or so, Xuanzhi Technology has developed rapidly, completing Series A, Series B, and Series C financing in 2016, 2018, and 2021 respectively. At the same time, it mass-produced industrial-grade motor microcontrollers and integrated Pre-drive microcontroller, and in 2019 began to develop the built-in N-FET pre-drive microcontroller SPD1179 for automotive brushless (brushed) motors.

Ding Wen mentioned: “Xuanzhi Technology’s product markets cover household appliances, industrial control, short-distance travel, power tools, mobile phone information consumption and automotive fields, and have been favored by many domestic and foreign major customers, such as 100% of DJI’s motors. The driver chips all use Xuanzhi Technology’s highly integrated chips. So far, Xuanzhi Technology has shipped more than 60 million units to first-tier customers.”

After nearly 4 years of hard work, today at the 2023 International Integrated Circuit Exhibition and Symposium (IIC) hosted by AspenCore, SPD1179 was finally unveiled.

Figure | Built-in N-FET pre-drive microcontroller SPD1179 for automotive brushless (brushed) motors

According to reports, SPD1179 is China’s first automotive-grade highly integrated system-on-chip (SoC) microcontroller that meets the functional safety ASIL-B level, benchmarking international first-line brand products (non-pin-to-pin compatible), such as Infineon’s TLE989x/8x/7x/6x/5x, NXP’s S912ZVMB/L/C, Elmos’ E523.05/06 and Melexis’ MLX81340/4/6, SPD1179 will not lose in terms of integration or functional safety. In addition, it also has the advantage of more sufficient computing power, such as being able to run Simulink and do some automatic code generation. Therefore, SPD1179 will provide a high-performance, high-integration and high-reliability solution for automotive 12V DC motor applications.

Figure | Common application scenarios of automotive 12V DC motors

SPD1179 has a built-in ARM  Cortex-M4F core with a maximum frequency of 100MHz. It is equipped with up to 128KB Flash, 32KB SRAM and 1KB  EEPROM storage. It provides 13-bit high-speed SAR ADC, 2-channel PGA, 2-channel analog comparator , 3-channel phase comparator and BEMF voltage divider circuit, current mode pre-driver (excellent EMC performance), multi-channel LDO , LIN transceiver and rich interfaces including CAN, CAN-FD, etc.

In order to provide reliable functional safety features, SPD1179 provides ECC protection of the entire storage space, dedicated ADC for critical voltage background detection, VDS overcurrent monitoring of external MOSFET , main power high-side E-fuse (anti-reverse connection) function, open circuit and short circuit Detection, backup clock, watchdog interrupt (or reset), etc.

SPD1179 supports 5.5V ~ 40V single power supply, and the operating junction temperature supports -40 ⁰C ~ +150 ⁰C, meeting AEC-Q100 Grade 1.

Figure | SPD1179 configuration

Regarding wafers, Ding Wen pointed out: “SPD1179 isolates the main control and driver from the wafer level, which means that SPD1179 has two wafers inside, one is an MCU wafer, and the other is a high-voltage driver wafer. , these two wafers are combined and divided into one chip. What benefits can this bring? If 12V in the future car will be replaced by 48V, then the MCU wafer of the digital part and the driver of the analog part will Wafer upgrades can be done separately and in parallel. If you need higher computing power and more interfaces, you only need to upgrade the MCU part; if you do not require improvement in computing power and interfaces, you only need to upgrade the voltage resistance of the driver part. , and 48V drive is not difficult for Xuanzhi Technology, because it has previous practical experience in industrial low-voltage servo, garden tools, server fans and other fields. "

Regarding packaging , SPD1179 adopts 2 packaging forms, one is 48pin wettable flank QFN, and the other is 56pin QFN. The difference between these two packages is mainly reflected in the number of GPIOs and the number of ADC channels. For example, 48pin has 5 ADC channels, and 56Pin has 9 ADC channels. Taking applications such as oil pumps as an example, the 56Pin chip can access more sensor.

Regarding supply, Ding Wen revealed: "SPD1179 will be mass-produced in the third quarter of 2023. It is currently in the testing process at the main engine factory. There are already some interested customers. If the testing goes well, there will be orders soon."