Wolfspeed SpeedVal Kit™ expands control options with NXP cards

Designers working with Silicon Carbide (SiC) evaluation kits, often built around just one SiC device, find themselves constrained to a narrow set of components for testing. Wolfspeed’s SpeedVal Kit instead takes a modular approach to offer designers the flexibility, customizability and rapid, painless evaluation of multiple devices at the system level.

The kit’s building blocks form an ecosystem of Wolfspeed Silicon Carbide power daughter cards, partner gate driver and controller cards, as well as other accessories that engineers can easily switch on the motherboard. The card-edge connections mean devices can be tested and changed quickly without soldering.

Digital control optimizes power conversion

Among the SpeedVal Kit’s selection of daughter cards are NXP’s HVP-56F83783 and HVP-56F81768 high-voltage development cards, featuring NXP’s 32-bit digital signal controllers. While these control cards are optional for using the SpeedVal Kit, they can help the engineer not only test the SiC and gate driver behavior in this system, they also provide an ideal environment to begin firmware development for their own design.

SpeedVal: A growing ecosystem advantage

The NXP HVP-56F81768 and HVP-56F83783 controller cards are part of Wolfspeed’s growing ecosystem supporting the SpeedVal Kit evaluation platform offering multi-supplier solutions. Serving as the starting point for all Silicon Carbide designs with bill of materials, design and simulation files and expert support. This ecosystem approach allows customers to evaluate and develop all facets of a SiC power converter quickly and easily to accelerate their product development and achieve first-pass design success.