Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Renesas expands flagship RX Flash MCU family adding broad capabilities

SAN JOSE, USA: Renesas Technology America Inc. has introduced two new groups, the RX62N and RX621 Flash 32-bit MCUs that combine extreme high performance and low power consumption with diverse connectivity functions.

These MCUs provide true single-chip solutions for demanding applications such as building and factory automation, medical monitoring and therapy equipment, security and fire alarm systems, climate control, home appliances, communication gateways and point-of-sale devices.

RX62N and RX621 Group MCUs have up to 512KB Flash memory, 96KB SRAM, and 32KB of data Flash, and provide extensive communication capabilities with options for Ethernet, CAN, and up to two USB-FS 2.0 channels, each operating as USB Host, USB Device, or USB OTG (On the Go).

A Floating Point Unit (FPU) and a Multiply-Accumulate (MAC) unit are included to enhance math and signal processing capabilities. At a top operating frequency of 100MHz, these MCUs achieve a performance of 165 DMIPS, executing code directly from no-wait Flash memory while consuming only 53 mA of current (all peripherals active, typical conditions). To manage power, all clocks can be scaled, peripherals can be gated off individually, and four low-power modes can be employed. Standby options include maintaining SRAM contents or keeping time-of-day using the Real Time Clock (RTC) while consuming only a few micro-amps.

These new MCUs are architected for both high computational performance, as well as high data throughput. The 32-bit CISC RX core has Harvard architecture and a 5-stage instruction pipeline which achieves a RISC-like rate of one clock per instruction.

The embedded 90nm Flash memory, among the fastest in the industry, can be read at 10 nsec, feeding instructions to the CPU with no delays all the way up to 100MHz operation, maintaining peak performance and maximizing determinism. Both of these critical attributes for real-time embedded control are achieved without the complicated memory acceleration or caching techniques that must be used by many competing Flash MCUs.

Ritesh Tyagi, Director, Microcontroller Group, System LSI Business Unit, Renesas Technology America, said: “Connectivity plays an important role in many embedded systems today, and networking is being applied more often as control systems grow in complexity. But now more than ever before, multiple communication channels are being used simultaneously on the MCU, and sometimes even for driving a color TFT-LCD panel, which is very demanding in terms of CPU performance and memory size.

“Our customers will enjoy the unique advantages provided by the RX62N and RX621 compared to competing MCUs. For example, superior CPU performance enabled by the world’s fastest embedded Flash in production on the market today; multiple internal high speed busses and DMA for streaming data; large Flash memory to store the programs for many different communication protocols such as Ethernet TCP/IP, USB Host, and CAN; and large SRAM to ensure there are no bottlenecks. Thus, we expect these MCUs to be winners from the start. By employing new design techniques, Renesas will be able to release new devices every six months to expand coverage.”

RX62N and RX621 MCUs will be supported by a comprehensive hardware/software tool set from Renesas and third parties. Renesas offers the popular High-Performance Embedded Workshop (HEW) integrated development environment (IDE). HEW includes the RX optimizing C/C++ compiler with integrated support for the low-cost E1 JTAG on-chip debugging tool, as well as the comprehensive E20 high-speed trace on-chip debugging tool. Renesas will also provide a full firmware library for all peripherals and hardware development kits with sample code and protocol stacks.

Third-party support for RTOS, middleware, communication protocol stacks, and color graphics will be available from the global community of Renesas Technology’s partner vendors.

The 100MHz RX62N and RX621 devices are currently sampling to lead customers and are priced in 10K quantities starting from $3.90, with USB-FS 2.0 Host/Device/OTG and CAN with 256KB main Flash, 32KB data Flash, and 64KB SRAM (R5F5621BDLD).

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