Prolific month for Renesas again and Microchip
31
Jan
2022
Renesas is again the darling of this month with a host of new groups both in the Cortex-M and the RL78 realms edging their bets between the ubiquitous Cortex-M and the large installed base of Renesas-born cores. Nuvoton continued to spin new Cortex-M4 MCUs. Microchip for its part released low pin parts to support raw inputs requiring signal conditioning and filtering.
Dialog got acquired by Renesas in February, no change to the portfolio.
Infineon has now completed the integration of the Cypress parts and website.
A number of familes got some attention this month:
- The AT89C51 got 22 parts updated with a newish nomenclature that includes an extra character e.g. AT89C51ED2T-RLRUM
- The ATSAMC21 is also adding extra characters at the end of the part numebr e.g. ATSAMC21J18A-AUT64
- The PIC16F171xx is a new family with advanced analog peripherals designed for raw sensor applications requiring signal gain or filtering. It offers an op-amp and a 12-bit differential ADC with computation in low pin count packages. Over 80 products were released. Alas, with availability for some of them not until March… 2023.
- The PIC16F181xx is a F171xx without the operational amplifier. The same number of parts were released too.
No change.
Nuvoton unveiled the Cortex-M4-based M471 series with 5 parts, targeting the smart home appliance applications. With the growing requirement of the safety functions on the home appliance, the M471 series provides certified Software Test Library (STL) and an application note for IEC60730-1 Class B Annex H. The M471 series runs up to 72/120 MHz, has a 2.5V to 5.5V operating voltage, -40°C to 105°C operating temperature range , a variety of packages with wide pin pitch, and excellent high immunity characteristics by ESD HBM 8 kV and EFT 4.4 kV, to meet the rigid requirements for stability, reliability and safety of home appliance systems.
The M471 series provides up to 512 KB Flash for code, 64 KB SRAM for run time operation and 32 KB independent Data Flash for parameters. Besides, a peripheral direct memory access (PDMA) is provided to reduce the data access overhead of CPU core to peripherals.
The M471 series supports a Customizeable IR receiver (CIR) to communicate with a remote controller, up to 24 channels of 16-bit PWM, 6 sets of UART, 2 sets of SPI/I2S, 2 sets of I²C, and a real-time clock (RTC), 2 analog comparators, up to 24 channels of 12-bit SAR ADC, and 1 channel of 8-bit DAC. The M471 series also integrates a pseudo random number generator (PRNG) to support the requirement for encryption and decryption of smart home appliances.
No major changes.
The Renesas RA6T2 Group appeared this month with 20 new parts, targeting motor and inverter control solutions. The RA6T2 combines a Cortex-M33 with a hardware accelerator for motor control and high-speed flash memory for high-speed real-time performance at 240MHz. It can also realize next-generation high-speed, high-response motor algorithms and improve parallel processing performance such as other communication processing. Other characteristics include:
- 256KB -512KB Flash memory and 64KB SRAM with ECC
- 16KB Data Flash to store data as in EEPROM
- 48-pin to 100-pin packages
- HW accelerators for motor control calculation
- 12-bit ADC and DAC
- Programmable Gain Amp
- High speed comparator
- PWM timer
- CAN FD (option)
- SCI (UART, Simple SPI, Simple I2C)
- SPI/ I2C multi master interface
The RL78 had a prolific month with 254 new additions in the RL78/G13 series. Most of them were addition to existing variants, while the R5F101M (80-pin), R5F101P (100-pin) and R5F101S (128-pin) had diffeent RAM/Flash combinations.
Finally, the RX had its share of additions with close to 200 new part numbers. The R111, RX231, RX651, RX65N, RX671 and RX72N shared the majority of the additions, mostly as new variants of existing parts came online.
SiliconLabs has quietly removed 5 parts numbers in the EFM32HG350/WG360 families for lack of volume according to the PCN.
Long live Cypress, it will now reported under Infineon.
No significant changes this month.
TI had 2 new multiprotocol 2.4 GHz parts this month, the CC2652.
Closing the year
23
Dec
2021
Infineon has now fully digested the Cypress.com website and parts. With Dialog acquired by Renesas, these are 2 major acquisitions in the microcontroller space, with respectively 9 and 5 billion Euros changing hands. We are already seeing significant changes to Cypress’ ex-portfolio. There will be further consolidation, who will be next?
Enjoy the holiday season!
Dialog got acquired by Renesas in February, no change to the portfolio.
No change yet.
This month it is the DSPIC33CHxxxMP505/6 who got their PTVAO (Automotive-grade) variant, so did the ATSAMC21J17/19 and ATSAMC21G18.
No change.
No change.
NXP released the 72MHz version (12 parts) of the KE1xZ128/256 MCUs. They are based on a Cortex-M0+ with 128 or 256 kB of Flash, up to 48 KB RAM, CAN, touch interface with a 1Msps 12-bit ADC. They are ideal for after market auto applications and BLDC motor control systems
No change.
No change.
The Cypress website is now fully redirecting to Infineon, this is very exciting!
Goodbye Cypress, hello Infineon!
In the process, the following families have been put on the chopping block (called legacy):
- FM0+
- FM3
- FM4
- PSoC5
Only the PSoC4, PSoC6 and PSoC Analog Coprocessor survived the move.
There were only minor changes to the STM32 portfolio with variants of existing parts.
TI only had a few minor variants this month.
| Sign up for our newsletter |