NEC Electronics America expands 8-bit microcontroller line
Peripheral set delivers precision analog sensing for battery-powered portable devices, and industrial building automation sensors and monitoring devices.
Renee Robbins
NEC Electronics America, Inc. has expanded its 8-bit microcontroller (MCU) portfolio with the new All Flash 78K0/Kx2-A MCU series, which features enhanced analog functionality for battery-operated portable devices. The four new MCUs offer robust peripherals combined with NEC Electronics' 78K0 MCU interface and safety features to support applications that require high-precision analog sensing capabilities. Target applications include industrial building automation sensors and monitoring devices, and consumer electronics devices with human interface systems such as game-control handsets.
The new MCUs include up to 12 channels of 12-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), and 3-channel operational amplifiers (op-amps) interlocked with 12-bit ADC inputs.
To facilitate easy migration within the 78K0/Kx2 series, the new MCUs also share many of common built-in features. The peripheral set includes UART, I2C and CSI/SPI serial interfaces, 8- and 16-bit timers to manage an array of real-time input and output events, clock generators, and a real-time counter with clock and calendar functions to maintain time-of-day clock without CPU intervention.
The analog and serial interface integration helps to reduce system costs, while the optimized 8-bit circuit design helps designers achieve low power consumption and high performance levels similar to those associated with NEC Electronics' other 78K0/Kx2 devices. Development tools include the CubeSuite integrated development environment, compiler, assembler, software debugger and code generator, as well as hardware tools such as NEC Electronics' IECube in-circuit emulator with real-time trace and MINICUBE2 on-chip debug emulator and stand-alone flash programmer.
- Edited by Renee Robbins, senior editor
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