Comment by edg5000
2 days ago
This is very interesting, for someone not involved in doing chip design, it's very interesting to get an idea of the open source landscape. Very exiting. I like the idea of consolidating some power electronics and logic into a single chip at some point, for example a BLDC driver with embedded MOSFETs, gate drivers and MCU. But this is a pipe dream for now. But I know it's possible.
I already see single-chip battery chargers (admittedly a lot simpler) that do both the charging logic (constant current until setpoint, then constant voltage until current drops below configured threshold).
A lot of stuff could be consolidated into single chips, making PCBs smaller and simplyfing designs.
The issue with consolidating a BLDC driver is thermals more than anything else, right? Much easier to keep the MOSFETs cool if they aren't packed in on chip. Plus you can customize their size to the load.