UCD3138 vs C2000?

The UCD3138 device was designed to work with the Phase Shifted Full Bridge. The High-performance Isolated Power team is always working on new topologies that can be controlled by the UCD3138. In fact, a Phase Shifted Full Bridge EVM will become available to the public in the coming months.

As the UCD3138 is a digital device, it does require firmware and a firmware designer. However, there are many source code samples for all of our UCD3138 EVMs that can help in the design. However, as the UCD3138 was designed with isolated power topologies in mind, I suspect it would be a better starting point from the C2000 family for this application; while I do not claim much knowledge of the C2000 applications.

Some of the EVMs that are currently available for the UCD3138 that all have firmware samples are as follows:

• Power Factor Correction - UCD3138PFCEVM-026
• Resonant LLC - UCD3138LLCEVM-028
• Hard Switching Full Bridge - UCD3138HSFBEVM-029

• Open Loop EVMs - UCD3138OL40EVM-032 and UCD3138OL64EVM-031
• Control Card EVMs (plug into first three EVMs) - UCD3138CC64EVM-030

Regards,

Brandon Vonk

Paul

There are advantages to both devices, depending on what you are looking for.

The UCD devices are firmware configurable through the Fusion GUI - which is going to lower the learning curve and decrease development complexity, but this comes at the cost of (you as a user) less configurability for more general purpose MCU functions.

C2000 devices on the other hand, since they are pure DSP/MCU, do require "ground up" coding (in Code Composer), which does increase the learning curve and complexity, but allows more in the way of configuration and tweakability. The PSFB code only requires about 50% of the CPU bandwidth, so you do still have some microcontroller MIPS to play with for things such as communications, housekeeping, metrology, etc.  

We do have a PSFB kit for C2000 as well - Schematics, reference code, BOM, etc are all available online. http://www.ti.com/tool/tmdshvpsfbkit

Hope this help!