Renesas Electronics intros SuperH MCUs with built-in large-capacity 2.5MB SRAM

TOKYO, JAPAN: Renesas Electronics Corp. announced the availability of two new 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs), the SH7268 and SH7269, that achieve increased functionality and enable a smaller-size solution for digital car audio, consumer and industrial applications, which drive a color TFT-LCD.

These new MCUs share the following features:
(1) large-capacity 2.5 megabyte (MB) on-chip SRAM that is almost double the size of the predecessor SH7266 MCU, allowing display of WVGA resolution (800 × 480) images without any external RAM;
(2) maximum CPU operating frequency is increased by 1.8 times (now at 266 megahertz (MHz)) elevating performance to handle additional system tasks plus digital audio signal processing; and
(3) enhanced functions such as a 2D graphics accelerator conforming to OpenVG™ 1.1, the industry’s standard graphics processing programming interface (API) for embedded equipment.

Renesas Electronics’ new SH7268 and SH7269 MCUs in the SuperH family are based on the SH2A-FPU (floating point unit) superscalar CPU core, which provides superlative real-time performance with 2.0 Dhrystone MIPS per 1MHz of CPU operation and a double-precision floating point math unit, while integrating many peripheral functions for audio and graphic applications.

Because the price of color TFT-LCD panels continues to fall, a wide variety of products using an embedded processor are now gaining a color 2D graphics display for the user interface, enhancing the overall perceived value of the end product, and making their use naturally intuitive. The trend is to use higher and higher resolutions on the displays (up to WVGA), which requires a proportionally larger RAM frame buffer memory outside the MCU.

Since Renesas Electronics’ SH7268 and SH7269 MCUs uniquely have an extremely large internal SRAM, there is no need for this external memory, which saves power and space, increases performance, and lowers emissions of electromagnetic interference.

Many applications that can benefit from these attributes include automotive infotainment and vehicle status displays, office automation equipment, home appliances, games, medical patient monitoring equipment, home and building automation equipment, and fire/security control panels.