Press Releases for Europe 

LONDON, UK – 22nd April 2009 – Renesas Technology Europe has added 16Kbyte Flash versions to its popular line-up of low pin count, SH/Tiny Flash microcontrollers. The lower memory versions provide a more flexible and cost effective solution with many advantages over DSPs. With their performance and small memory sizes, these devices are ideal to perform both real-time control and DSP functions.

The aforementioned family already includes pin-compatible 32Kbyte 64Kbyte and 128Kbyte derivatives which have 8KByte RAM. The new 16Kbyte version includes 4Kbyte of RAM, making it the lowest cost flash-based SuperH device in the portfolio.

The family, including the new 16Kbyte version is available in a wide line up of packages including 10x10mm 64LQFP, 14x14mm 64QFP, 10x10mm 48LQFP, and the ultra tiny 8x8mm 64VQFN and 7x7mm 52VQFN packages.

The devices boast ultra-fast MONOS (Metal Oxide Nitride Oxide Silicon) embedded Flash enabling fully deterministic zero-wait operation rated at 65MIPS. The SH2 32-bit RISC CPU core has 16 general-purpose 32-bit registers and a 32x32=64 hardware MAC unit.

The SH/Tiny devices also have a highly sophisticated MTU2 timer unit with six channels of 16-bit timers, support for up to 16 input capture/output functions capacity, as well as a three-phase PWM capability for electrical motors. Further excellent motor control features are enabled by a quadrature encoder feedback capability and a special channel that can measure actual dead times, thus enabling both the shortest possible dead times for highest efficiency and safe non-destructive operation of the power stage. To increase the suitability of these “Tiny” powerhouses to motor control applications the PWM outputs can be quickly turned off in hardware in case of an emergency shutdown and can drive 15mA for direct connection to opto couplers.

The devices have two ADCs with four channels each, 10-bit resolution and 2µs conversion time. Each ADC can be triggered by the MTU2 with an additional defined delay time to support algorithms such as single-shunt motor drive.

The SH/Tiny line-up has been developed for white goods applications such as induction cooking, washing machines, vacuum cleaner motor control and inverters such as in pumps, fans and air-conditioning (HVAC). The new 16Kbyte version is ideally suited these applications. A Motor Control Reference Platform (MCRP) for BLAC and induction motors is available from Renesas to make the design easy, and the software fits snugly into the 16Kbyte version. This MCRP can be taken directly to a customer and tuned to drive the customer’s motor to allow for a live demonstration of the performance of the little SH/Tiny device.

The tool chain starts with a low-cost, yet complete Renesas Starter Kit (RSK7124) available at around 325€ RRP via all of Renesas Europe’s distributors. The kit includes an E10A JTAG-style debugger, a board with LCD and software. The free demo version of the Renesas C Compiler is also included and has a 256K code size limit, thus supporting the SH/Tiny devices without limitation free of charge.

Additionally, Renesas has a low-cost emulation boards that offers sophisticated functionality including trace. These boards make use of the SH7086F high-end microcontroller. All SH/Tiny devices are a subset of the SH7086F, so the concept of the boards is to use the SH7086F to emulate SH/Tiny adding improved debugging features and without losing pins for the debug functionality.