Renesas Technology Adds 50MHz 32Bit Microcontrollers for PC Peripherals, Office Equipment, POS and Smart Card Payment Terminals, and Digital Consumer Electronics Products

Business Wire, March 8, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO -- The High-Speed H8SX/1653F and H8SX/1651 Devices Have Greater Communication Capabilities and Other Peripheral Enhancements, Plus an On-Chip Debugging Function That Eases System Development

Renesas Technology America, Inc. today expanded its extensive portfolio of solutions for the 32-bit embedded system market by announcing H8SX/1653F and H8SX/1651, two new and faster models in the H8SX family of 32-bit CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) microcontrollers. Operating at clock speeds as high as 50MHz, the new devices offer high performance and deliver on-chip functionality that enables advanced designs of PC peripherals, office equipment, consumer electronics products, industrial systems, POS (Point-of-Sale) and smart card payment terminals. Moreover, because the H8SX/1653F and H8SX/1651 maintain upward code compatibility with lower-performance devices in the popular H8 product line, they save time and expense when customers upgrade existing designs.

Renesas launched the H8SX series last year with the H8SX/1650 and H8SX/1657F, 35MHz devices optimized for consumer electronics products. Besides being almost 43 percent faster, the new 50MHz microcontrollers provide an expanded set of on-chip peripheral functions. In particular, the serial communication interface (SCI) which supports both asynchronous and clock-synchronous data transfers, has been increased to five channels in the H8SX/1651 and six channels in the H8SX/1653F. The H8SX/1653F also includes two channels that support high-speed asynchronous serial data transfers and has a USB 2.0 (full speed) function. To allow engineers to perform system debugging with the device mounted on the circuit board of the end product, both microcontrollers incorporate an on-chip, JTAG-compliant debugger interface.

Additionally, the H8SX/1651 and H8SX/1653F support a smart card interface as an asynchronous mode extension. This makes it possible to implement highly tamper resistant POS terminals or smart card payment terminals by combining either device with a Renesas AE-series smart card microcontroller.

The H8SX/1653F has 384-KByte of on-chip flash memory that can be accessed in a single cycle, even at the full 50MHz clock speed, for the fastest possible program execution. By contrast, the H8SX/1651 has no flash or ROM and, therefore, must access external ROM. Both chips incorporate a vector base register (VBR) that improves interrupt responsiveness and system throughput. A boot function for writing program data to external ROM allows programs to be rewritten after the ROMless H8SX/1651 is mounted on a circuit board. Both microcontrollers have 40 KBytes of on-chip RAM.

Renesas development tools for the new H8SX microcontrollers include the E6000H full emulator, E10A-USB compact on-chip emulator, and High-performance Embedded Workshop, an integrated development environment with C/C compiler, editor, etc. The large community of independent vendors that support devices in the H8 series offers many other tools and services.

Renesas Technology will continue to respond to the demands of the market with further additions to the H8SX family, many of which will incorporate flash memory or other higher-functionality features.

Availability

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                                 Flash
                                 Memory                  Sample
Product Name        Product No. Capacity  Package  Price/Availability
------------------- ----------- --------- -------- -------------------
H8SX/1651:          R5S61651FTV   None    120-pin    $4.73/June 2005
 50MHz, 32bit                               TQFP
 microcontroller
 with SCI,
                    ----------- --------- -------- -------------------
TPU, PPG, A/D, D/A  R5S61651FPV   None    120-pin    $4.73/June 2005
 and more                                   LQFP
------------------- ----------- --------- -------- -------------------
H8SX/1653F:         R5F61653FTV   384KB   120-pin    $18.7/June 2005
 50MHz, 32bit                               TQFP
 microcontroller
 with flash, SCI,
 USB, TPU, PPG,
 A/D, D/A and more
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Reader contact

Readers can find additional product and contact information on the Renesas Technology Web site at www.renesas.com.

About Renesas Technology Corp.

Renesas Technology Corp. designs and manufactures highly integrated semiconductor system solutions for automotive, mobile and PC/AV markets. Established on April 1, 2003 as a joint venture between Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501)(NYSE:HIT) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TSE:6503) and headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Renesas Technology is one of the largest semiconductor companies in the world and the world-leading microcontroller supplier globally. Besides microcontrollers, Renesas Technology offers system-on-chip devices, smart card ICs, mixed-signal products, flash memories, SRAMs and more.

www.renesas.com

Note to Editors: A specification summary is included in this release, and a photo and block diagram of the new H8SX microcontrollers are available.