Posts Tagged ‘Xilinx’

The life of ELMG Digital Power Engineers

Wednesday, May 4th, 2022

This is the life of ELMG Digital Power Engineers working for our global customers. So five years ago I was biking around Berlin after having spent the week with my ELMG Digital Power colleague and our customers and their customers, testing 12MW grid-connected power converters where the control did not yet quite work properly.

This is the Reichstag in the background. It was a beautiful, cool, Berlin day.

Eventually, the power converters worked really well and we eventually did the first commissioning for them when they were installed on the Qatar Metro Rail.

Berlin biking after power converter testing.

To address the issues we changed the software we had written and the FPGA code. This was to ensure that the gate pulses were always absolutely consistently in the right place at the right time. This is the constant challenge of power electronics. At 12MW it is very noticeable when gate pulses aren’t always in the right place.

Berlin biking route. Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenberg Gate and the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden (Holocaust Memorial) on the route.
Berlin’s Holocaust monument.

ELMG Digital Power worked on a large-scale converter project, biked around Berlin on a day off, tested further in Japan, Turin, and Prague, and then commissioned the converters in Doha. As a result, our customer is now the leader in their market segment.

Working for our global customers’ success – this is the life of ELMG Digital Power Engineers.

This is one of many successful ELMG Digital Power Electronics engineering developments.

Contact ELMG for your power converter development.

Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin

FAQ

Do you do small converters?

Yes, all sizes from 100W to 500MW – we work on converters of all sizes. Grid storage, telco, motor drives, aerospace, traction. We do power converters for any application.

Where are your customers? Can you help us?

Arizona, Belgium, California, China, Denmark, England, France, Germany, India, Massachusettes, New Zealand, North Carolina, New South Wales, Scotland, South Australia, Switzerland, Sweden, Queensland, United Kingdom, United States of America.

Yes, we can help you.

Do you need to wear a bike helmet in Berlin?

No. There is no requirement by law.

What sort of control do you use?

Mostly DSP, Microcontrollers and FPGA. Our favorite microcontrollers/DSPs are Ti ti.com. Our favorite FPGAs are Xilinx xilinx.com.

Do you have any case studies?

Contact us and we’ll provide some.

Contact ELMG for your power converter development.

Do you have any references?

Yes.

ABB

Kraft PowerCon

TNEI

Comsys

How long have you been doing Digital Power Electronics Control?

As ELMG Digital Power Electronics since 2001.

ELMG Digital Power People have been working on digital power electronics control since 1992.

About ELMG Digital Power

ELMG Digital Power provides technology, know-how, and products to control, manipulate and measure electrical power. This means we design and build the best digital controlled power electronic systems and by doing that we change the world.
For the past twenty-five years, we have been working on digitally controlled power converters in

  • motor drives
  • industrial switch mode power supplies
  • reactive power compensation
  • medium voltage system
  • power quality systems
  • motor starters
  • appliances
  • telecom switch-mode power supplies
  • UPS
  • railway converters
  • grid connected energy storage converters

ELMG Digital Power helps our customers become leaders in digital power electronics.

Contact ELMG for your power converter development.

ELMG Digital Power Continues AMD Xilinx Partner Program

Tuesday, April 26th, 2022

We are pleased to announce that ELMG Digital Power continues to be part of the AMD Xilinx Partner Program.

As ELMG Digital Power CTO Dr. Hamish Laird explains

“Being part of the Xilinx Partner Program has always been something that we at ELMG Digital Power are very proud of, grateful for, and happy with as it lets us do amazing things for our customers.”

He continues…

“It is fantastic to have the connection that gives us access to all the great AMD/Xilinx tools such as Vitis, HLS, IP Integrator, and Vivado with all its code templates. The combination of the toolchain and the devices from Spartan, Artix, Virtix, Zynq and UltraScale through to SoMs such as the Kria K26 means that ELMG Digital Power can provide great cost-effective, powerful solutions for our customers.”

Constant professional development and training for ELMG Digital Power people allow us to use the best solution for our digital power electronics control platforms.

Dr. Laird again ” We are very grateful and humbled to be part of the Xilinx Partner program. We deliver the best power electronics controllers using this technology”

About AMD Xilinx

Xilinx is now part of AMD. AMD now has the industry’s broadest product portfolio and a highly complementary set of technologies, reaching customers in a diverse set of markets. Together, AMD and Xilinx leverage the right engine for the right workload to address the compute needs of our customers.

www.xilinx.com

About ELMG Digital Power

ELMG Digital Power provides technology, know-how, and products to control, manipulate and measure electrical power. We design and build the best digital controlled power electronic systems and by doing that we change the world.


For the past twenty-five years, we have been working on digitally controlled power converters in motor drives, industrial switch mode power supplies, reactive power compensation, medium voltage system, power quality systems, motor starters, appliances, energy storage converters, UPS, and telecom switch-mode power supplies.

ELMG Digital Power helps our customers become leaders in digital power electronics.

Xilinx Alliance Program Engineer Re-Certification 2020

Tuesday, October 20th, 2020

ELMG Digital Power Engineers and the Xilinx Alliance Program

ELMG Digital Power Engineers and the Xilinx Alliance Program form an ongoing, valuable, and extremely productive partnership.

When asked about this ELMG Digital Power CTO,  Dr. Laird said

“Maintaining ELMG Digital Power’s commitment to providing exceptional service and products is our key uniqueness. To this end we are pleased to continue in the Xilinx Alliance Program membership.  We see great things happening with Xilinx All Programmable FPGAs and Zynq SoCs, UltraScale devices and the Spartan7.

It is great to see the capability of the Xilinx tools like Vitis and the Vivado Suite continue to allow exceptionally fast, reliable and robust development flows.  We are really pleased to support engineers to maintain competance and capability with Xilinx tools and devices.”

ELMG Digital Power Engineers and the Xilinx Alliance Program

Continuing Training with Xilinx Tools and Devices at ELMG Digital Power

Dr Laird continues

“As always this training opportunity let’s me stay capable and able to create Xilinx based power electronics controllers. Learning about the new improved HLS and Vitis tools is an invaluable capability to offer ELMG Digital Power Customers.”

Contact ELMGDigitalPower now.

ELMG Digital Power and the Xilinx Alliance Program

Xilinx Alliance Member ELMG Digital Power

About the Xilinx Partner Program

The Xilinx Partner Program is a worldwide ecosystem of qualified companies who offer Acceleration solutions, IP cores, Design Services, and Board development and production. Ecosystem Partners help system designers in the rapid integration of Xilinx FPGAs, SoCs, 3DICs, intellectual property, and software-defined solutions. They offer proven products and expert design support from chip level to full turnkey product development, which accelerate time to production of complex electronic systems.

ELMG Xilinx Alliance Partner Listing

Xilinx Alliance Program Re-Certification

Thursday, July 4th, 2019

ELMG Digital Power and the Xilinx Alliance Program

ELMG Digital Power and the Xilinx Alliance Program is an ongoing, valuable and extremely valuable partnership.

When asked about this ELMG Digital Power CTO,  Dr. Laird said

“Maintaining ELMG Digital Power’s commitment to providing exceptional service and products is our key uniqueness. To this end we are pleased to continue in the Xilinx Alliance Program membership.  We see great things happening with Xilinx All Programmable FPGAs and Zynq SoCs, UltraScale devices and the Spartan7.

It is great to see the capability of the Vivado Suite continue to allow exceptionally fast, reliable and robust development flows.  We are really pleased to continue with ELMG Digital Power’s Xilinx Alliance Program commitment and are please to be part of the Xilinx community.”

ELMG Digital Power and the Xilinx Alliance Program

Certification for ELMG Digital Power CTO, Dr Hamish Laird

Dr Laird continues

“For me this training let’s me stay capable and able to create Xilinx based power electronics controllers. Xilinx products are great and the support and capability we can provide to customers is amazing.”

Contact ELMGDigitalPower now.

ELMG Digital Power and the Xilinx Alliance Program

Xilinx Alliance Member ELMG Digital Power

Control Scope Integrated into Digital Power Controller

Friday, July 8th, 2016

How can I look at my digital signals in my power controller?

One of the big issues when working on digital control of power electronics is being able to look at the digital signals inside your controller.  In order to see what is going on inside the control the digital signals need to be brought out so you can look at them.

When a DAC isn’t good enough.

One way to do this is with a digital to analog converter (DAC) where the digital stream is sent out as an analogue signal.  These DAC channels are really useful and should be on every digital power electronics controller.  However processing power usually limits the logging or data streaming to a DAC to a low number of channels.  Each channel requires a scope channel of its own to do measurement.  Any measurement is limited in length to the scope’s memory and the scopes sample rate.

scope-capture

ELMG Digital Power ControlScope

Data Collection in the Controller and Detecting Events

There is also the issue that collecting enough data to allow event detection such as;

  • single sample errors
  • clipping
  • overflow
  • underflow or precision loss and
  • bursty instability due to precision loss

can be a very difficult large load on the control processor and memory if the data logging rate is very high or if the rate of the problem is very low.

Control Scope Integrated into Digital Power Controller

To solve this problem we put the data collection and logging into the controller but without loading the controller.

Using the Xlinx Zynq system on a chip (SoC) we use the flexibility of running Linux on one of the two ARM 9 cores to provide the high speed gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

Dlog Implementation

Dlog Implementation

We also use the Linux for secure remote access if required.

Using ELMG Power Core IP blocks and know how we create firmware in the FPGA fabric of the Zynq.  This connects to the Linux kernel and then the Linux user space.  Data can be logged at full sample rates into SD cards or MMX memory and simultaneously out via the Gigabit Ethernet to the internet.

To be very clear no Linux code is included in the power electronics control function which is all implemented in the FPGA fabric on the Zynq.

Put a scope on the other end of the Ethernet

The video shows the ELMG ControlScope application connected to the ELMG Digital Power Zynq data collection system (named Dlog).

This system implements a fully functional oscilloscope that allows the internal operation of the digital control to be shown and logged.

With gigabit Ethernet logging rates of 25 M bytes per second are possible using Dlog.

This means that logging of your power converter performance and waveforms, scope function or debugging can be done over the internet.

To evaluate the Dlog and the ControlScope than click below.  


Request Dlog and ControlScope Information



Free Webinar on Digital Power using Zynq

Sunday, July 3rd, 2016

On Tuesday 12thJuly, we would like to offer you the opportunity to learn about Digital Power using Xilinx Zynq SoC.

Join ELMG Digital Power (Members of the Xilinx Alliance Program) for their Free Zynq Digital Power Webinar and expand your knowledge and expertise by discovering:

  • What is important in digital power, including numeric precision and latency
  • How to design a compensator in the digital domain
  • Why you would use a FPGA for digital power and why the Zynq SoC in particular
  • Key issues in digital controllers in programmable logic, such as the serial-parallel trade-off, fixed or floating point, choosing sample rates and what precision to use
  • The building blocks for digital control and ELMG’s licensable IP cores
  • IIR digital filter design (a case study) along with understanding the delta operator
  • Using the ARM cores in the Zynq to your full advantage.

Free webinar on digital power using zynq

Xilinx Zynq SoC is a great processor for digital power electronics control.

Dr. Tim King presents

The free webinar on digital power using Zynq will be hosted and presented by Dr. Tim King, ELMG Digital Power’s Principal FPGA Engineer. Tim has considerable experience the design and implementation of varied digital control systems and IP for power electronics on FPGA platforms.

This exciting opportunity is free and includes a short Q&A session with Dr. Tim King.

Dr Tim King - Free Webinar on Digital Power using Zynq

Dr Tim King

When and where

The webinar will be held on 12th July and is available globally in your time zone. Just choose a time that best suits you from these three options:

Spaces are limited.

July 12th 2016 – commencing at 9am London, England. 1000 (10am) Berlin Germany.


Register for Europe

 

July 12th 2016 – commencing at 1pm San Francisco, 3pm Houston, 4pm New York.




Register for USA

 

July 12th 2016 – commencing at 4pm in Christchurch New Zealand, 2pm Sydney Australia, 1pm Tokyo Japan, and 9:30am New Delhi, India





Register for Asia-Pacific




If you cannot attend at the scheduled time then register now and watch the recording later.

Spaces are limited.

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