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Microcontrollers based on 32bit receiver CPU core

Renesas Electronics Europe has announced the availability of the RX210 and RX630 microcontrollers, based on the company’s 32bit RX (receiver) CPU core. The microcontrollers have been developed using two advanced MONOS (metal oxide nitride oxide silicon) flash processors to provide compatible microcontrollers with a range of different features optimised for smart metering applications. The RX210 provides up to 50MHz flash operation at 3.3V, while offering up to 20MHz performance down to 1.62V, including flash programming and erasure at this low voltage. This facilitates the design of applications that require both battery backup and read while power off. The microcontroller integrates up to 512Kbyte of on chip flash, 8kbyte of on-chip data flash supporting 100k W/E cycles and programming and erasing in the background. With up to 64kbyte of on-chip SRAM, future versions will integrate up to 1Mbyte of on-chip flash memory, claims the company. The microcontroller integrates several features designed for metering including a full RTCC (real time clock calendar), with automatic calibration, alarm and tamper logging features. It also has a 1µs 12bit ADC with triple sample and holds, with automatic control by timer available. Additional features include up to nine serial interfaces including I2C and SPI interfaces, DMA (direct memory access) and DTC (data transfer controller) as well as ELC (event link controller) functions for the easy automation of low level tasks. The RX630 offers 100MHz flash performance with an integrated floating point unit and is available in a wide range of package and memory options. It supports from 64- to 176-pin packages and up to 2Mbyte of flash, 32kbyte of dataflash and 128kbyte of on-chip SRAM. Some members of this microcontroller provide pin compatibility with the RX210 family. The microcontroller includes up to 13 serial interfaces, four additional I2C interfaces and three SPI interfaces, as well as a 21 channel 12bit ADC, and an eight-channel 10bit ADC. Versions of this microcontroller are also available with the option of CAN and USB interfaces. The microcontrollers also provide many on-chip software and hardware safety features, such as, dual WDTs with integrated dedicated oscillator, a CRC function for checking the integrity of the flash memory, systems to detect both a clock failure and a clock running at the wrong frequency. Both the microcontrollers are supported by the same range of tools, including a full C compiler package, evaluation boards and the E1 in-circuit debugger. The RX630 is also claimed to be supported by the E20 high-performance in-circuit debugger.