Sunrise drives down the cost of microcontroller system design with new feature-rich members of NEC F Series family

Dedicated distributor, Sunrise Electronics has just introduced an exciting new series of devices in NEC’s F Series family of 32-bit microcontrollers, featuring on-board CAN support together with a host of other features and offering the best price: performance ratio in its class.

The F Series was specially developed to bring added value to project development in terms of flexibility, scalability and system cost, thus accelerating development time, decreasing overall cost and increasing investment security. The family consists of a variety of competitively priced devices with a wide range of pin counts and memory sizes.

Based on a 32-bit V850ES core operating at 20MHz, with a min 50ns instruction cycle time, NEC’s new V850ES/FG2 series offers a choice of RAM sizes from 6K to 16K and a variety of FLASH and Mask ROM options – 128K, 256K, & 384K ROM. Single voltage FLASH technology allows both in-circuit and in-application programming of this series of devices. Other on-chip resources include 10 channels of 16-bit PWM, 4 DMA channels, 2 CAN channels and a LIN-capable UART.

NEC’s F Series features several extra on-chip peripherals that help reduce the number of external components, thus reducing system cost and increasing system reliability. Power-On Clear (POC) monitors the external power supply during power-up and holds the reset until a secure voltage level is achieved. This replaces an external reset device. A Low-Voltage Indicator (LVI) generates a reset or an interrupt when the supply voltage level drops below a defined level – this replaces an external voltage detector. The Internal Ring Oscillator can be used as a clock monitor to observe the main clock during operation. It can also operate the internal Watchdog timer replacing an external Watchdog device. Finally the LIN UART provides hardware support for automatic Sync Break Field recognition and LIN wake-up without an additional interrupt pin. This considerably reduces software development for LIN communication.

The F Series microcontroller family addresses the day to day challenges faced by developers of modern electronic systems. The F Series's scalability in terms of package, memory and peripherals gives the highest development flexibility, allowing engineers to react flexibly on changing requirements during development.

Once written for a specific F Series core, software modules can be re-used for other devices in the family without changes. This is possible due to the consistent re-use of core and peripheral macros in all devices, including registers and address areas. On-chip debug facilities also reduce development times. Similar economies are maintained for hardware design. As the same placing has been used for the peripheral macros in all package options, designers can easily change the package without facing a complete redesign of the PCB.

Devices in the new V850ES/FG2 family are packaged in a 100-pin QFP outline. Versions are also available rated for operation over a wide-temperature range (-40°C to +110°C).

<ends>

Sunrise Electronics is the only dedicated franchised distributor in the UK electronics market and provides a high level of technical design support to customers for the whole range of NEC semiconductor products including microprocessors, microcontrollers and ASICs as well as memory and colour LCD panels. The field sales team is technically qualified to ensure total support from design concept through to purchasing.

Sunrise is a direct ship distributor. The majority of shipments are delivered directly to customers from NEC’s own ISO9000 warehouse. This ensures reduced handling; correct packaging, especially for fine pitch surface mount devices requiring vacuum sealing, factory fresh product and timely deliveries.