Home Appliance
To meet expanding consumer expectations and to provide differentiation, manufacturers are using more and more semiconductors in household staples such as refrigerators, microwave ovens, washers, dryers, air conditioners, dishwashers, and more. Today’s typical appliance is expected to be aesthetically appealing, energy efficient, environmentally friendly, and network connected. These appliances are networked and self-monitoring with sleek designs—far beyond the traditional goods we once knew.
The generic version of the modern home appliance (see Figure 1) contains the following functions: human-machine interface (HMI) such as an LCD touch screen, network connectivity for monitoring and diagnostics, motor control, sensors, and power management.
Figure 1. Typical Home Appliance Block Diagram
Typically each of these functions are performed by a microcontroller unit (MCU) and several MCUs are required in a home appliance. A single Altera® low-cost FPGA, and a Nios® II processor can replace several MCUs to create a highly integrated design (see Table 1). For power management and I/O expansion requirements in the portable home appliance applications, Altera’s MAX® II CPLDs offer superior performance and optimal power consumption. FPGAs offer great flexibility and programmability to enable home appliance manufacturers to adapt quickly to fast changing consumer requirements and go to market with a differentiated product. Altera’s design software is easy to use and has patented technology to optimize designs for power. Altera and Altera’s suppliers are quality-certified for ISO 9000, QS9000, and ISO14000 standards.
| Table 1. Altera Devices for Home Appliance Applications |
| Function |
MAX II CPLD Series |
Cyclone® FPGA Series |
Feature |
Benefit |
| LCD Driver |
- |
 |
Built-in LVDS I/O interface, video and image processing library |
High integration, cost reduction, image enhancement
|
| LCD Touchscreen |
- |
|
Platform-independent Planetweb touchscreen GUI, taking less than one week to port
|
Faster time-to-market, easy to add features to existing platform
|
|
DSP Motor Control
|
- |
|
Embedded digital signal processing (DSP) blocks with intellectual property (IP) library for function customization
|
Flexibility; reconfigurability for DSP implementation
|
|
Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM)
|
|
|
Internal user flash memory oscillator (CPLDs); DSP blocks (FPGAs)
|
One single device to control several analog motor circuitries
|
|
Power Management
|
|
|
Process optimized for power consumption; designed with portable consumer applications in mind
|
Increase product functionality while reducing power consumption
|
|
Network Interface
|
- |
|
Powerline network interface with Nios II processor and Echelon powerline smart transceiver
|
Time-to-market; future proof design; flexible soft core processor
|
|
I/O Expansion or Peripheral Replacement
|
|
|
Serial bus (I2C, SPI) for I/O expansion, adding more functions or glue logic
|
Flexibility; expandability
|
|
Quality Measurement
|
|
|
Defect density less than 5 ppm
|
Low defect density; high- quality product
|
|
Safety Measurement
|
|
|
Mold compounds and BGA substrates meet UL94 V0 flammability rating
|
Consumer safety for flammable home appliances
|
Related Links
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Literature
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