NEC intros 14 new 8-bit MCUs for automotive dashboard apps

KAWASAKI, JAPAN, SANTA CLARA, USA & DUESSELDORF, GERMANY: NEC Electronics announced the availability of 14 new All Flash™ microcontrollers (MCUs), the 78K0/Dx2 product series with simple gauges. The new offering includes a wide range of peripherals with either 80 pins or 64 pins and memory capacity ranging from 60 kilobytes (KB) down to 24 KB.

Automotive sales in the emerging markets, including China, India and Brazil, have been showing strong growth buoyed by their continuous economic growth. NEC Electronics is offering these new products to support the manufacturers of small cars and motorcycles as they capture accelerating consumer demand.

For over 10 years, NEC Electronics has been providing MCU product offerings for automotive dashboards by integrating meter functionalities into its 8-bit 78K0 CPUs. To further address customer demand, NEC Electronics revised the peripherals of the dashboard meters and believes these new MCUs will promote expansion of its lineup of automotive MCUs for China and India.

Extensive variety of peripheral functions
NEC Electronics’ MCUs provide a rich set of new peripherals such as a stepper motor driver/controller and an increased total number of timer channels from six to nine. Also included are an LCD driver/controller, a CAN interface, and a sound generator all in a single chip, enabling system manufacturers to reduce external components and trim system development costs.

Wide selection of products
NEC Electronics offers an extensive lineup of MCUs that differ by flash memory capacity, RAM capacity, necessity of a CAN interface, number of stepping motor driver/controller channels and LCD drive/display capability, which allows designers to choose the optimum configuration for their applications.

Samples of the new MCUs are currently available. Mass production of these new products is scheduled to begin in October 2010 and is expected to reach a monthly production of 100,000 units by October 2013.