Brushless motor control is certainly not a trivial matter. A host of parameters including commutation, speed, acceleration, deceleration, heat dissipation, and torque among others must be taken into account when designing this kind of hardware.

It used to be required that it was a large assembly including many logic ICs, comparators, and discrete power components. Now, there exists several sophisticated integrated motor-drive modules, incorporating virtually all logic and drive functions internally. In addition to the power components used to drive the motor, a number of dedicated, motor-control DSP chips have become available. These ICs perform the complex math and control functions necessary in precision motion control. These motor-control DSP modules and chips replace what were once large boards packed full of components.

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) provides an efficient means of controlling motors. PWM can control torque, speed, acceleration, and braking (deceleration) by controlling the duty cycle and phase of the PWM drive. This method is efficient in terms of power consumption and thermal performance because the drivers in the output bridge are either fully on or fully off. Moreover, the technique lends itself to flexible digital control of all parameters.