The best has just become better

Introducing the B-Box 4

Imperix announces today a new performance benchmark with the launch of the B-Box 4, taking position as the highest-performance Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP) system available for power electronics.

Featuring a proprietary architecture optimized for low-latency operation, the B-Box 4 delivers unrivaled control loop speeds and signal fidelity. Thanks to its high performance and the easy-to-use Cockpit software, the device significantly accelerates experimental prototyping in both industrial and academic research environments.

A controller tailored for SiC and GaN

As SiC and GaN semiconductors continue to push switching frequencies beyond 200 kHz, legacy RCP architectures – developed in the era of millisecond-scale automotive control and kilohertz-scale industrial drives – are facing inherent bottlenecks, creating a performance ceiling that has become a hard limit on innovation. The B-Box 4 shatters this barrier, offering high temporal resolution and low round-trip latency, characteristics that are key to research on wide-bandgap converters. With the B-Box 4, maximum performance and ease of programming are no longer opposed objectives.

FPGA-level performance with the ease of CPU programming

The platform natively supports code generated by engineering software such as MATLAB/Simulink or PLECS, with performance figures previously achievable only through custom FPGA-based implementations. “With the B-Box 4, we are enabling researchers to obtain the same results from the CPU in one minute as previously from the FPGA in one hour,” says Nicolas Cherix, Head of Engineering at imperix.

Unprecedented technical specifications

The key to the B-Box 4’s performance advantage lies in its I/O interfaces, which are fully dedicated to power electronics. In particular, the advanced analog frontend outperforms that of standard industrial targets by over one order of magnitude.

• 20Msps synchronous sampling: While competing platforms typically limit sampling rates to 1-2Msps, the B-Box 4 samples all analog inputs simultaneously at 20Msps. This captures the full high-frequency content of current ripple or medium-frequency waveforms, unlike conventional strategies that retrieve only one or two samples per PWM period. This significantly improves immunity to noise and perturbations and also permits the direct visualization of waveforms without additional instrumentation. Thanks to this oversampling, the B-Box 4 is not only a control system but also an agile monitoring and debugging tool, usable directly from the readily available measurements, at no extra cost.
• 250 ps PWM resolution: The system offers 250 ps PWM resolution. This ultra-fine granularity is critical for ultra-fast switching applications, especially for techniques that rely on phase-shift control, such as those used in medium-frequency converters.
• Down to 2µs total cycle delay: From the sampling instant to the moment the PWM parameters are effectively updated, the B-Box 4 can execute the control loop of simple systems in under 2 microseconds, directly from the CPU. This makes automated code generation perfectly compatible with advanced performance requirements.
  For engineers seeking performance beyond this benchmark, programming the FPGA is still possible at no extra cost by using the embedded AMD UltraScale+ 7EV, which offers Kintex-grade programmable logic. The device is also the largest FPGA that can be programmed with the free Vivado edition.

A complete prototyping ecosystem

The B-Box 4 is fully integrated into a comprehensive ecosystem of products designed to accelerate prototyping in power electronics. High-performance, factory-calibrated current and voltage sensors, along with ready-to-use power modules, are available to enable the rapid implementation of a wide range of laboratory prototypes. These products offer plug-and-play connectivity with the controller, and the latest even support auto-configuration. For industrial applications, guaranteed code portability with the B-Board PRO enables a seamless transition to a smaller, cost-effective, and product-embeddable controller variant.

Availability

B-Box 4 product release

The new controller is available for shipping today.
Technical details, benchmarks, and pricing are available at https://imperix.com/b-box4