A RISC-V-based System on Chip for High-Speed Control in Safety-Critical 650 V GaN-Applications

Conference: SMACD / PRIME 2021 - International Conference on SMACD and 16th Conference on PRIME
07/19/2021 - 07/22/2021 at online

Proceedings: SMACD / PRIME 2021

Pages: 4Language: englishTyp: PDF

Authors:
Richter, Mike; Luedecke, Andre; Lee, Yoon-Cue; Stanitzki, Alexander; Utz, Alexander (Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems (IMS), Duisburg, Germany)
Grau, Guenter; Kappert, Holger (advICo microelectronics GmbH, Recklinghausen, Germany)
Kokozinski, Rainer (Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems (IMS), Duisburg, Germany & Department of Electronic Components and Circuits, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany)

Abstract:
In power electronics applications, Gallium Nitride (GaN)-based transistors generally offer benefits in efficiency and switching speed, but come at the cost of harder controllability and thus more complex control circuits. As a contribution towards easier and safer control for GaN-devices, we present a new system-on-chip (SoC) specifically dedicated to the control of GaN-based power modules. The main processing unit is compliant with the RISC-V specification and implements the RV32IMC instruction set. Major parts of a control algorithm may be performed by peripheral modules that reduce workload on the processor and enable low-latency reactions towards safety-critical events in the GaN-circuit. The output is generated by a PWM-unit that supports sub-nanosecond resolution. The processor achieves a benchmark score of 2.03 CoreMark per MHz. The SoC reacts to threshold violations on measurement inputs within 25 ns. Future steps will involve expanding the SoC with more safety features and the coupling of several SoCs for multiphase synchronization.