Renesas expands RX63T MCU line-up
Renesas Electronics Corp. has extended its portfolio of RX63T microcontrollers (MCUs). According to the company, the MCUs have higher pin counts and larger memory versions and also expand the functions that they feature including USB 2.0, 10bit D/A converter and faster ADC with a minimum conversion time of 0.5µs, and increase the number of channels of timers and serial I/Fs.
The RX63T also inherits the features of the RX62T and existing RX63T. The MCUs help to reduce system costs and power consumption in applications such as industrial motor control, air conditioners, washing machines and solar inverter solutions, added the company.
The RX63T platform is built around the high-performance 32bit RX CPU core featuring 100MHz operating frequency with zero-wait-state flash to achieve an outstanding 165 Dhrystone MIPS (DMIPS) performance and 312 CoreMark score.
All RX63T and RX62T MCUs include a built-in floating-point unit (FPU) and DSP functionality that make them ideal for the intense computation required to implement sensorless vector control and advanced motor control algorithms, flaunted Renesas.
The RX63T maintains a close compatibility with RX62T and RX63T small pin-counts products, allowing current customers to migrate to higher versions of their RX62T and RX63T designs easily with the new RX63T. As part of the RX family of products, the RX63T comes with comprehensive support, tools and a software ecosystem aimed at facilitating hardware design and software development.
The RX63T MCUs include multi-function timer pulse unit 3 (MTU3) specialised for motor control that can drive up to two 3-phase motors and a 16bit general-purpose PWM timer (GPT) capable of driving a 3-phase motor. The GPT can independently control four channels of single phase inverter. The timer uses the same clock as the CPU at 100MHz. This enables it to achieve a wide range of width measurements for PWM output waveforms with resolutions as small as 10ns.
In addition, the devices claim to reduce the cost and increase usability of motor vector control applications. It features two 12bit ADCs that can capture analogue input values with a minimum conversion time of 1µs. The ADCs can easily be used for sensorless vector control methods such as three-shunt or single-shunt current detection, as simultaneous sampling of three input channels is possible. Continuous A/D conversion is supported by the double data registers installed in the 12bit A/D module.
The 12bit ADC includes three programmable gain amplifiers and three window comparators. This eliminates external operational amplifiers and comparators used for over-current and over-voltage protection. Elimination of these external components reduces system cost and simplifies PCB layout. The RX63T also has a 10bit ADC unit which can capture analogue input values with a minimum conversion time of 0.5µs.
The RX63T group of MCUs incorporates many safety features that help to meet safety standards, e.g. IEC60730, such as an independent watchdog with its own on-chip clock source (IWDT) and so on, indicated Renesas.
To help customers shorten the development cycles of new embedded systems, Renesas’ third-party suppliers and Alliance Partner networks support the RX MCUs with a variety of hardware and software tools.
The devices in the new RX63T group provide a scalable memory solution from 256KB flash to 512KB flash with up to 48KB of embedded SRAM.
They also include an additional independent 32KB of data flash memory with a background operation (BGO) function that enables data to be written while a program is executing.
The embedded flash memory is based on Renesas’ proven metal oxide nitride oxide silicon (MONOS) technology that can be accessed without wait state insertion.
This enables a maximum performance level of 1.65 DMIPS/MHz at any CPU frequency, without any limitation from flash technology.
These products will be offered in 100-pin, 112-pin, 120-pin and 144-pin LQFP packages.
Samples of the RX63T MCUs are available from the end of November 2012, priced at $4.10 per unit in 10K unit quantities.
Mass production of the RX63T devices is scheduled to begin in the end of May 2013 and is expected to reach a scale of 400K units per month in March 2014.
—————————————————————————————————————–