NEC Electronics America expands lineup with 78 new 32-bit MCUs

SANTA CLARA, USA: NEC Electronics America Inc. announced 78 new members to the V850ES/Jx3 family of 32-bit All Flash microcontrollers (MCUs) with industry-leading low power consumption, optimized pin counts and expanded functionality.

The new MCUs are ideal for industrial applications, such as electricity meters and Ethernet systems; and compact, handheld, battery-driven systems with USB 2.0 connectivity such as PC peripherals and healthcare equipment, including blood glucose meters.

This new lineup provides a complete and scalable platform approach for system designers, allowing them to choose the optimum memory, pin-count and peripheral combination for their applications. In addition, by sharing the same architecture and development environment, the new MCUs enable easy migration of software and hardware for system designers, contributing to faster time-to-market at lower cost.

Features of the new microcontrollers

1. High performance with industry-leading low power consumption
Operating at 20 megahertz (MHz), the new V850ES/Jx3-L (low power version) MCUs deliver 38 DMIPS of performance while requiring only 0.9 milliwatts per million instructions per second (mW/MIPS), offering approximately 60 percent reduction over the other V850/Jx3 family members that require 1.7 mW/MIPS. Power consumption is 0.7µA in standby mode with the real-time counter (RTC) operating. Featuring the industry’s leading low power consumption, the new MCUs realize longer life for battery-driven systems.

This new low-power MCU lineup also offers flash memory sizes up to 512 kilobytes (KB), an RTC with independent power supply pins, an increased number of serial interfaces and optional on-chip USB 2.0 controllers.

2. Smaller and thinner packages
The new family of V850ES/Jx3 MCUs offers lower pin-count package options such as the 40-pin quad flat no leads (QFN) measuring 6 millimeters (mm) x 6 mm x 0.75 mm. For applications requiring even smaller and thinner packages, a lineup of ball grid array (BGA) products are available.

BGA package options range from 64 pins (5 mm x 5 mm) to 113 pins (8 mm x 8 mm), reducing space requirements and enabling design of compact systems. Quad flat package (QFP) options are also available and range from 64 to 144 pins. Prior to these new parts, the V850ES/Jx3 family’s smallest pin-count package was an 80-pin QFP.

3. Extensive lineup in a single architecture
With the addition of the new devices, NEC Electronics’ V850ES/Jx3 series now includes 117 MCUs with flash memory sizes ranging from 16 KB to 1 megabyte and packages from 40 to 144 pins. Increased connectivity is enabled by USB 2.0 host and function options available in the V850ES/Jx3-H and V850ES/Jx3-U series as well as embedded Ethernet MAC in the V850ES/Jx3-E series.

NEC Electronics’ 32-bit family of V850 MCUs provides operating frequencies from 20 to 200 MHz, (38 to 380DMIPS). The common architecture provides a wide range of price/performance points facilitating upward and downward system-migration paths.

Combined with highly reliable flash security functions, this new lineup of MCUs provides customers with a competitive edge in battery-driven products and connected electronics. NEC Electronics remains committed to further expansion of its lineup of power-efficient, high performance 32-bit MCUs.

Mass production of the initial products is scheduled to begin in June 2010, and additional devices will be introduced throughout 2010.