Renesas Technology Expands H8SX 32-Bit CISC Microcontroller Family, Adding Faster External Interfaces, USB and TFT LCD Direct Drive Capability
The H8SX devices offer up to 50MIPS performance and 1MB on-chip flash to meet the needs of home automation, office automation, consumer, and industrial applications.
SAN JOSE, Calif. - July 17, 2007 - Renesas Technology America, Inc. today announced twelve 32-bit devices in the H8SX/1658R, H8SX/1668R, H8SX/1558, and H8SX/1568 groups, expanding the H8SX family of 32-bit CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) microcontrollers (MCUs). The new products extend the capabilities of the H8SX product line by offering more on-chip flash memory (up to 1Megabyte), large SRAM (64KB*), higher-performance system-connectivity functions such as analog and digital interfaces, and lower power operation. The new devices' high-throughput operation (up to 50 MIPS) and extensive peripherals are ideal for applications that require reliable system connectivity including office automation equipment and home automation products such as appliances, environmental controls and security systems.
"Many of our customers in the home automation and office automation space requireexternal interfaces that allow faster communication, such as high-speed serial, USB and parallel bus interfaces, while keeping power consumption low," said Ritesh Tyagi, director, system LSI business unit, Renesas Technology America, Inc. "The new devices in the H8SX MCU product line have a large array of peripherals for connectivity and power-down modes for low power operation such as a software standby mode which can be woken up by multiple external interrupts. This gives an MCU the ability to wake up from the deep sleep mode and start fully operating immediately. This is important when the MCU needs to wake up on an external activation such as sensor network applications. The H8SX architecture also complements this by providing a powerful CISC instruction set, fast single-cycle access of on-chip flash memory, and deterministic operation for time-critical processing routines."
At the heart of the H8SX/1658R group and H8SX/1668R group MCUs is the ability to drive VGA TFT-LCD panels with up to 65 frames per second performance. The devices in both groups have a new flexible TFT-LCD interface that can directly drive an LCD panel with complex images while also performing other system operations. Updates to the external frame buffer are supported during LCD panel operation, allowing the creation of complex GUI images or animation.
Note: *the 8KB JTAG debug memory is accessible as main system memory when not in debug mode
The three models in the H8SX/1658R group and the three in the H8SX/1668R group have 384, 512, or 1024 Kbytes of on-chip flash memory. This flash memory operates from a single power-supply and can be accessed by the CPU in single clock cycle. The H8SX/1658R group and H8SX/1668R group support Full-Speed USB 2.0 device functionality with an on-chip peripheral. This peripheral gives the option of self power or USB bus powered for power sensitive applications.
All of the new H8SX MCUs offer extensive sets of on-chip peripheral functions suitable for diverse embedded control applications. For example, the six 40MHz devices in the H8SX/1558 and 1568 groups have 5V interfaces and two or three separate high-speed, 10-bit A/D converter units, each of which has approximately 2µsec conversion time. Using the advanced features of the on-chip timers, the sampling of these A/D converters can be interleaved at a sample rate of 1.5 megasamples per second (Msps) at 5V operation.
Two channels of the serial communication interface (SCI) can transfer data at rates up to 720kbps. An 8-bit timer can be used as a programmable clock for implementing flexible SCI transfer rates. The number of programmable pulse generator and timer pulse units has been expanded, and these versatile peripherals offer independent operation and easy-to-use functions. Other on-chip functions include an 8-bit D/A converter, DMA (direct memory access) controller, and I2C bus interface.
The members of the H8SX/1658R, 1668R, 1558, and 1568 groups all feature 120-pin and 144-pin packages that are compatible with current Renesas models. Thus, customers can use existing hardware assets and easily upgrade current product designs to higher levels of performance and functionality by directly replacing older H8SX devices with newer models. System engineers can use the USB-bus powered E10A-USB emulator as a development environment. A comprehensive suite of other hardware and software tools is available from Renesas and a global community of third-party suppliers.
