Renesas Electronics intros six new 4th-generation, 32-bit MCUs with support for Ethernet and MOST networks

SANTA CLARA, USA: Renesas Electronics, a premier provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced the availability of six new 4th-generation (X4 generation) V850-based S-series microcontrollers (MCUs), ideally suited for car infotainment systems and networking. The new products include two MCUs from the V850E2/Sx4-H group with 100 pins, two MCUs from the V850E2/SJ4-H group with 144 pins and two MCUs from the V850E2/SK4-H group with 176 pins.

The evolution in car infotainment systems and networking within the car requires the introduction of protocols such as Ethernet and MOST (Media Oriented System Transport) to support high bandwidths and reliable data transfers. This is in addition to the well-established automotive networks such as CAN and IEBus (Inter Equipment Bus) also supported by Renesas Electronics’ V850E2/Sx4-H family of MCUs.

Key features:

Enhancement of networking function By adding an Ethernet PHY and MOST network interface controller to the V850E2/Sx4-H MCUs, additional networking functionality is now possible. Routing of system data, e.g. from the diagnostic Ethernet channel to the MOST bus, as well as the routing of audio streams from/to MOST with up to eight I2S bus interfaces is supported.

High performance for the networking and system control in parallel The V850E2/Sx4-H MCUs incorporate the 32-bit V850E2M CPU core, which has an excellent performance ratio of 2.5 DMIPS/MHz (Dhrystone MIPS [million instructions per second] per megahertz), and capable of covering a performance range up to 160 MHz (at 400MIPS). This enables the device to perform the networking functionality in parallel to all system controller tasks.

Wide-range lineup for several applications The integrated flash memory ranges from 2 megabytes (MB) down to 1MB while the fast SRAM scales from 192 kilobytes (KB) down to 96KB. Further, the wide lineup of QFP packages from 100- to 176-pins together with the flexible pin assignment and application-oriented peripheral selection allow a cost-optimal choice of a solution for applications.

Wealth of the development environment The lineup of Renesas Electronics’ hardware tools, the IECUBE2 for the full-specification emulator and E1 emulator for the on-chip debugging emulator, are available for the V850E2/Sx4-H MCUs. Further, Renesas Electronics’ existing integrated environment CubeSuite± and MINICUBE are also usable.

With the introduction of the V850E2/Sx4-H family, Renesas Electronics continues the success of the market-leading V850/S-Series with the enhancement of network-oriented support of MOST and Ethernet.

Sample shipping has begun for the first device in the family, the 176-pin V850E2/SK4-H, while the other family members with 144 and 100 pins will follow later. Sample pricing is US$20 per unit, and mass production is scheduled to begin in June 2012.