Press Releases for Europe 

11th November, Electronica, Munich - Renesas Technology Europe today announced an expansion of its popular M16C Platform microcontroller*1 lineup with 16 low voltage models that can operate down to 1.8V. These devices, especially trimmed versions of the M16C/60 group, are fully compatible with previous products.

The M16C/63 family of devices can operate between 1.8 to 5.5 V and utilise the high-performance, M16C/60 16-bit CISC CPU core. At 1.8 to 2.7 V the CPU is running at speeds up to 5 MHz. From 2.7 to 5.5 V, 20MHz operation can be achieved.

In addition to the low voltage operation, the devices power consumption is extremely low. In full active mode, with Vcc=3V, WDT, RTC and external 32kHz crystal running and the CPU clocked at 20MHz, a total power consumption of 9mA is possible. In the devices wait mode, with WDT, RTC and external 32kHz crystal running, 3.5μA is achievable at Vcc=1.8V.

New features include a CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) circuit, a low-voltage detection (LVD) circuit, real-time clock with full calendar functionality (RTC), high-precision (40MHz) on-chip oscillator and a watchdog timer with an independent oscillator (125kHz). A hardware multi-master I2C-bus has also been added in place of the simplified I²C-bus.

The on-chip peripheral functions have been improved to include a fast A/D converter, 6 USART, 2 SIO, CRC unit and 4 DMA controllers. The 10-bit A/D converter achieves a fast conversion speed of 2.15 μs and offers 26 channels. The devices are available with on-chip Flash and RAM memory in density combinations of 128kB/12kB and 256kB/20kB. The ICs also have an extra flash memory for data storage. Two banks of 4kB DataFlash*2 each, with an endurance of 10,000 cycles in both read and write operations, as well as a bank of 16kB to store a customised boot-loader are included. The M16C/63 will be available in 80-pin and 100-pin QFP packages.

“With the 1.8 V operation of the M16C/63 we can now support customers to use a limited supply voltage in their systems more effectively”, said Bernd Westhoff, product marketing manager Reneas’ consumer, industrial and distribution business unit, “With the pin-to-pin compatibility to other M16C products, along with the attractive price and low current consumption footprint making M16C/63 an easy choice for engineers. Further developments of the M16C/63 product line-up will extend to even larger embedded memory of up to 512kB Flash.”

In addition to traditional industrial and consumer applications, the new M16C/63 is particularly well suited for portable applications such as glucose meters and metering application where low power consumption is important. Furthermore due to the integrated CEC circuit, M16C/63 is an ideal solution for a general power management unit in the HDMI environment for home entertainment equipment.

The new E8a on-chip debugging emulator is available as a development environment. The E8a can also be used as a flash programmer.

The M16C/63 group is currently sampled to lead customers and samples will soon be generally available.

Notes to editors
1. M16C Platform family are CISC microcontrollers, comprising a varied product lineup of 16-bit and 32-bit products in the M16C Series, M32C Series and R32C Series. Features include highly efficient C-language support, excellent noise characteristics, low power consumption, and comprehensive on-chip peripheral functions. The range of low-end to high-end series featuring the same architecture, pin assignment compatibility, and peripheral function upward-compatibility provides support for a wide range of application areas, including the automotive, industrial, and consumer fields.
2. DataFlash is Renesas’ own flash memory for data storage.