FTM / Power & Power Management / Microchip — dsPIC33C Family of DSCs

Microchip — dsPIC33C Family of DSCs

Power & Power Management

April 3, 2025
Power & Power Management
Issue 3 2025

Digital signal controllers provide fast and robust platform for server power supplies

April 3, 2025

The dsPIC33C digital signal controllers (DSCs) from Microchip combine fast DSP functionality with microcontroller features and analog peripherals, to enable implementation of intelligent, digital power-conversion systems with a single chip.

The Microchip dsPIC33C family of DSCs provides an ideal combination of DSP performance with high speed, analog peripherals for use in power supplies and motor-control systems that require fast, low-latency performance and robustness.

Offering 100 MIPS performance, the dsPIC33C family of DSCs provides a migration path for users of older DSCs to develop more sophisticated applications. These DSCs feature expanded context-selected registers to reduce interrupt latency, instructions for accelerating DSP performance, tightly coupled peripherals, and faster execution to enable complex, high-speed control loop implementation.

This makes the dsPIC33C DSCs suitable for creating single-chip implementations of the control circuit for the power supply in servers. This is valuable as server manufacturers respond to growing demand for their products from data centers for artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

The dsPIC33C DSCs are also ideal for the control of many types of motors. The DSCs’ high level of peripheral integration enables applications to implement power factor correction and motor control with a single chip. Loaded with intelligent analog peripherals, the dsPIC33C family provides easy-to-use smart sensor interfaces for various sensing applications.

Key features include:

Dual, independent cores in the dsPIC33CH series, to enable the system to isolate time-critical control loops from housekeeping functions
High-speed ADCs, programmable gain amplifiers and a CPU with fast and predictable interrupts
PWM outputs operating at a resolution of up to 250 ps, giving the flexibility to control numerous power topologies

In addition, the dsPIC33C MPT series features an integrated hardware security module providing various security functions including:

Immutable secure boot
Secure firmware upgrade with live update
Secure on-board communication and message authentication
Electronic control unit (ECU) authentication

Features

16-bit architecture
100 MHz maximum CPU clock speed
64 kbytes Flash program memory
8 kbytes SRAM
Analog peripherals:
- 12-bit, 3.5 Msamples/s ADC
- Analog comparator
Eight motor-control PWM outputs
Quadrature encoder interface
150°C maximum operating temperature
I2C, UART and serial peripheral interfaces
MPLAB Code Configurator support

Applications

Servers
Motor-control systems
Digital power supplies
Automotive systems
Industrial equipment
Consumer equipment

Development Kit

Part Number: DM330028-2

The dsPIC33CH Curiosity Development Board is a cost-effective development and demonstration platform for the dsPIC33CH family of dual-core, high-performance digital signal controllers.

The board takes advantage of the Microchip MPLAB^® X integrated development environment. It includes an integrated programmer/debugger and requires no additional hardware, making it a good starting point for exploring the dsPIC33CH family.

Key features include:

Integrated PICkit™ On-Board programmer/debugger
Two mikroBUS™ interfaces for hardware expansion, compatible with a wide range of click boards™ from MikroElektronika
Configurable switch-mode power supply (SMPS) test circuit which can be operated in buck, boost, or buck-boost modes, using either voltage- or peak current-mode control
Configurable SMPS load step transient generator
RGB LED
Two general-purpose red indicator LEDs
Three general-purpose push-buttons
Reset push-button
Potentiometer
USB-to-UART interface