Vendors have revved up their 32-bit microcontrollers for 2003, inspired by automotive applications that demand speed and power not only from the engine but also from entertainment systems, navigation systems, security systems and everything in between. Buoyed by significant price/performance improvements for 32-bit MCUs and the growing sophistication of vehicle control systems, suppliers are prepared to cruise along on the new sales activity automotive apps are generating.

In fact, NEC Electronics America Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) plans to add 60 MCUs within the next few months, according to Yukio Kabeya, general manager of the automotive strategic business unit. Kabeya mentioned the company's plans while unveiling the 32-bit V850ES/Kx and Fx2 microcontrollers at the Convergence Conference in Detroit in October.

At least six other major manufacturers are also expanding or enhancing their MCU lines.

With changes in automotive requirements coming like quicksilver, NEC is stressing upgradability in its V850ES/Kx series, which supports identical peripherals and deploys local-interconnect network-capable UARTs across an 8- to 32-bit range. Kabeya said users can migrate designs as the performance and serial-bus speed requirements of their applications evolve. NEC's V850ES/Fx2 automotive microcontrollers use the Kx1 bus architecture and support a full controller area network.

NEC's MCUs feature an on-chip ring oscillator, a clock monitor, power-on clear/power-on reset circuits and a low-voltage indicator that helps with safety-critical functions. Door and mirror controls and such safety equipment as passive occupancy detection systems are among the apps the new devices can accommodate, Kabeya said.

Oki Semiconductor (Sunnyvale, Calif.), meanwhile, is fielding a QS-9000-compliant, ARM9-based 32-bit engine control unit it said is the only such ARM-based device in production. The ARM966E-S core-based ML67Q-2003, built on a bus-centric platform from Automotive Integrated Electronics Corp., includes a vector floating-point coprocessor, 1 Mbyte of flash memory and 48 kbytes of SRAM.

An engine control unit, according to Ike Saeed, Oki's vice president of marketing, helps improve a car's fuel efficiency and reduces emissions, and can affect transmission and suspension systems, as well as rollover control. It also determines engine functions such as throttle, timing, oil temperature and pressure, battery, transmission and brakes.

Also riding the MCU bandwagon is Mitsubishi's Electronic Device Group (Sunnyvale, Calif.), which last month launched two M32R/ECU 32-bit microcontrollers for high-end controller-area network (CAN) automotive apps such as engine control and airbag systems. Mitsubishi is positioning the devices as cost-effective, high-performance alternatives to microprocessors.

The M32R/ECU#5 (M32180 Group) and M32R/ECU#5HL (M32182 Group) offer up to 1 Mbyte of flash memory, the company said. The devices also feature an advanced M32R floating-point unit (FPU) core and a clock speed of up to 80 MHz.

"Adding the FPU and doubling the processing speed accelerate performance to a microprocessor level in high-end automotive systems, for a more cost-effective value," said Richard Sessions, Mitsubishi's director of embedded systems. "We also accelerated the process of debugging code with our new JTAG Interface With Tracing development tool, so customers can get to market faster."

Similarly, the 32-bit, 104-Mips SH7058F RISC MCU that Hitachi Semiconductor (America) Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) introduced last month offers 80-MHz performance and a 1-Mbyte flash capacity for automotive and industrial apps. It deploys twice the operating speed, twice the on-chip flash capacity and, at 48 kbytes, half-again as much RAM as the earlier ST7055F MCU, which uses the same SH-2E core, the company said.

The SH7058F also provides two Hitachi CAN II channels that comply with the Bosch CAN V. 2.0B active specification. Mitsubishi fabricated the MCU on an 0.18-micron process and packaged it in a 256-pin QFP. The company said it is developing smaller packages, as well. Types of support include an on-chip debugging function along with Hitachi's E10A emulator/debugger and E6000H in-circuit emulator. OSEK, VxWorks and Nucleus are among the operating systems the device supports.

In other MCU announcements, Motorola Inc.'s Semiconductor Products Sector (Austin, Texas) is offering the MPC565, with a PowerPC core running at clock speed of 56 MHz, plus 1 Mbyte of flash E2PROM memory. Manufactured on Motorola's 0.25-micron embedded nonvolatile-memory wafer process, the part also includes 46 kbytes of fast static RAM and a four-bank external memory controller.

"Today's cars and trucks demand processing power under the hood, on the engine block and even inside the transmission on certain new gearbox applications," said Paul Grimme, Motorola's vice president and general manager for advanced-vehicle systems. "Such a harsh environment requires a very rugged memory and processor technology."

Grimme said the MPC565's CPU contains the advanced FPU that the model-based strategies and autocoded control algorithms in leading-edge automotive apps require. Its logic core operates on a 2.6-volt supply while peripherals maintain compatibility with external voltages up to 5 V. The MPC565 operates within the -40 degrees C to +125 1/4 degrees C temperature range. Three timer processor units, each with a 32-bit microRISC engine capable of processing 28 Mips, supplement the part.

At Infineon Technologies Corp. (San Jose), the MCU development road map includes the AUDO-NG family of 32-bit chips for engine and transmission control systems. The chips offer a tenfold computing-power improvement over current solutions, the company said, and can enable complex functions such as advanced direct injection and electromechanical valve train control. They also allow for the development of new transmission control systems that can interact with the engine management system, said Infineon.

Infineon based the AUDO-NG MCUs on its TriCore Unified Processor architecture, which combines the strengths of a microcontroller, a microprocessor and a digital signal processor in a single core, the company said. The TC1766 and TC1796, both built on the TriCore 1.3 architecture, and the TC2700, based on TriCore 2 and able to run at up to 400 MHz, are the first products to hit the market. These devices are software compatible and will support applications designed for the earlier AUDO generation, TC1765 and TC-1775, the company said.

Underpinning the increased computing power are fast bus systems for on-chip communications, and intelligent peripheral units. The extended peripheral set includes a MultiCAN module with up to four CAN nodes and time-triggered CAN functionality, an A/D converter module operating at 10 times the conversion speed of previous models and a high-speed serial interface. A multiprocessor interface specifically designed for power train applications enables a number of AUDO-NG microcontrollers to exchange data streams and is a prerequisite for the development of future drive systems with intelligence distributed over multiple processors, according to Infineon.

Meanwhile, Texas Instruments Inc. (Dallas) is entering the 32-bit automotive MCU market with the not-yet-announced TMS470R1x. It is based on the 16/32-bit ARM7TDMI (Thumb) core licensed by TI from ARM Ltd. The company currently sells 16-bit MCUs for automotive industry applications.

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COMPANY CONTACTS

Hitachi Semiconductor
(800) 285-1601
www.hitachi.com/semiconductor/automotive.html

Infineon Technologie
(800) 777-4363
or (408) 501-6000
www.infineon.com

Mitsubishi Electric & Electronics USA
(408) 730-5900
www.mitsubishichips.com

Motorola Inc.
(512) 895-6511
www.motorola.com

NEC Electronics America
(800) 366-9782
www.necelam.com

Oki Semiconductor
(408) 720-1900
www.okisemi.com/us

Texas Instruments Inc.
(800) 477-8924, ext. 4500
www.ti.com