SCIENCE

Renesas Electronics Corporation has 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 7 x 7 mm 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.

Main features of the RX63x MCUs

(1) All new groups achieve a low voltage operation of 2.0 volts for the RTC

The RX63x Groups include a VBATT pin for a separate RTC power domain which automatically switches over from Vcc to VBATT when Vcc falls below VBATT. The VBATT domain also includes a tamper-detection unit to time stamp tamper events registered on up to three input pins. This allows applications, such as home security and utility metering systems to record the time of day when the system is maliciously opened, even when the main power is off and the CPU is not operating.

(2) Communication and TFT display functions for improved ease of use and lower costs

The RX630 Group MCUs now include a new USB 2.0 (full speed) device interface as a standard feature. To improve ease of use, their peripheral functions have been strengthened: (a) The number of serial communication (synchronous and asynchronous) channels has been increased from 6 to 13. (b) The RX630 Group supports up to three channels of full CAN interfaces. (c) The number of 16-bit timer channels has been increased from 12 to a maximum of 22. (d) The number of A/D converter channels has been increased from 16 channels to a maximum of 29 channels (12-bit a/d converter:21 channels)(10-bit a/d converter:8 channels). Furthermore, the optimal number of channels can be selected for pin compatibility for different packages. The RX630 Group lineup includes flash memory capacities from 256 KB to 2 MB, and packages from 64 to 176 pins.

The RX63N/RX631 Group MCUs allow the user to freely add communication functions according to the needs of the application while maintaining upward compatibility from the RX630 Group MCUs as well as the company's existing RX62N and RX621 MCUs. Functions that can be added include Ethernet and USB 2.0 host/function/OTG (full speed). To support the connection with a wide range of external devices required by industrial equipment and to support communication between different circuit boards within the same system, the RX63N/RX631 Group MCUs increase the number of IC bus interface channels from 2 to 4, and increase the number of CAN interfaces from 1 to up to 3 channels. The RX63N/RX631 Group MCUs also add an EXDMAC that can transfer data over an external bus independently. This allows these MCUs to easily move the data from an external frame buffer to color TFT-LCD panels with resolution up to WQVGA and 16-bit color depth. The new MCUs also include additional peripheral functions, such as a low-voltage detection circuit (LVD) that can detect three voltages and an on-chip oscillator to improve ease of use.

(3) Extensive lineup of memory, package and other variations to support a wide range of applications

The RX63x Group lineup includes flash memory capacities from 256 KB to 2 MB, and LQFP, LGA and BGA options from 64 to 177 pins with compact 7 x 7 mm size. For the first time, the RX63x Groups include 32 KB of E2 data flash memory that supports 100,000 rewrite cycles (compared to previous data flash memory that only supported 10,000 rewrite cycles).

(4) Development tools and ecosystem support

Since the rollout of the RX MCU family in 2009, Renesas Electronics has been steadily introducing new devices, features, tools and partnerships to expand the capabilities of the MCUs. Renesas Electronics supports the RX600 MCUs with a comprehensive hardware/software tool set from the company and third parties. Renesas Electronics offers the popular High-Performance Embedded Workshop (HEW) integrated development environment (IDE), which 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.

The HEW IDE and Renesas Electronics' C/C++ compiler come with unlimited use for 60 days, and then the compiler size is limited to 128 KB thereafter. Renesas Electronics also provides 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 is available from the global community of Renesas Electronics' partner vendors.

With the addition of the RX63N/RX631/RX630 MCU groups, Renesas Electronics' RX600 Series now forms a lineup with 45 individual products. Based on this extensive product lineup and with these three groups as the core of the RX600 Series, Renesas Electronics will be deploying an aggressive sales promotion campaign in North American, European, Japanese and Asian markets.

Pricing and Availability

The new RX63x Group MCUs are sampling to lead customers now with mass production scheduled to begin in June 2011. Pricing varies depending on memory capacity, package type, and number of pins. For example, the RX630 with 1 MB of flash memory, 96 KB of RAM, and a 144-pin LQFP package are priced at US$6.99 in 10,000-unit quantities. Production is expected to reach a combined volume of 1,000,000 units per month by October 2012 for the RX63N, RX631 and RX630 Groups.