Renesas Electronics intros RX600 series MCUs that reduce standby mode power consumption by approximately 90 percent

SANTA CLARA, USA: Renesas Electronics Corp., a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced the availability of three new groups of products in the RX600 Series of 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs): the RX630 Group for consumer, office automation, and industrial equipment; and the RX63N/RX631 Groups for networked equipment.

Introduced in March 2010, the preceding RX62N, RX621 and RX62T MCU Groups were designed with a full complement of on-chip analog and communications functions in various combinations to serve a wide variety of applications.

These devices offered Ethernet, USB 2.0 host/ device/OTG (On-The-Go), CAN, a color TFT-LCD interface, and complex analog signal acquisition capabilities to serve the requirements of building automation, security/fire/alarm systems, factory automation, white goods and motor control, power management, and patient monitoring applications.

All of the RX62x Group MCU devices will reach mass production by the end of 2010, and today, designers can enjoy a full range of support to quickly evaluate and upgrade their existing embedded MCU designs.

“There are now increasing demands for faster speeds and lower power in networking applications,” said Ritesh Tyagi, director, Microcontroller Product Marketing, Renesas Electronics America.

“To respond to these market needs, Renesas Electronics released the RX63N/RX631/RX630 MCU groups that offer high performance, 165 DMIPS at 100 megahertz operation. The new MCUs include a new deep standby mode with real-time clock self wake-up that consumes only 2.5 uA of power. This is very useful for applications that are battery powered.”

The noted applications constantly drive the need for expanded MCU capabilities and offerings. Renesas Electronics has anticipated these market requirements and is now introducing the RX63N/RX631/RX630 Groups which provide a number of enhancements in the areas of memory and package selection, as well as new features.

While the outstanding RX CPU performance and speed remain unchanged at 165 DMIPS (Dhrystone version 2.1) at 100 MHz, the memory range of these new MCU groups now spans from 256 KB to 2 MB of on-chip zero wait-state flash memory, as well as 16 KB to 128 KB of SRAM. Package offerings also have expanded now with a range from 64 to 177 pins in sizes starting at 7x7mm with pin compatibility between like packages for easy migration of designs.

Many functional enhancements were added to reduce system cost, reduce power consumption, and increase system capabilities, including a pin for connection to an alternate voltage source (coin cell or super cap) to automatically power the real-time clock (RTC) while drawing just 0.6 uW typical power in Deep Standby mode (~90 percent less than the RX62x Group MCUs with RTC), a tamper-detection system within the RTC to time stamp an intrusion event from three independent sources, an on-chip temperature sensor, an on-chip 50MHz oscillator to boot up a system at high speed, an on-chip voltage reference for the analog to digital converters, more serial communication channels, and better on-chip data flash characteristics with up to 100K erase cycles and finer write/erase granularity at just 2-byte write and 32-byte erase to eliminate the need for an external EEPROM device.

The RX63N/RX631 Groups support Ethernet, USB 2.0 host/device/OTG, and CAN connectivity, while the RX630 Group is the same except the USB 2.0 interface is device only. Compared to the RX62x Groups, there are additional CAN (up to three), I2C and serial channels.