Renesas Technology’s latest SH7216 flash microcontrollers are aimed squarely at industrial applications such as AC servos, building automation and general purpose networking.
These are 200MHz 32-bit MCUs and to support these applications the 72 devices in the range include options for FPU (floating point processing unit) and Ethernet functions as well as various memory and package options.
Based on the firm’s SH-2A superscalar core, some devices also include 400MFLOPS single and double precision floating point unit.
“Due to the superscalar core which executes two instructions simultaneously, the device can achieve up to 400DMIPS,” said Renesas.
With the CPU running at 200MHz fast flsh access time is a real benefit, and the firm’s MONOS (Metal Oxide Nitride Oxide Silicon) embedded flash offers deterministic zero-wait operation with 10ns access time.
The core’s CPU registers are now arranged in “banks”, with the 16 registers being mirrored 15 times. Using this technique, a subroutine can use a second set of registers leaving the current ones ready for use upon return from the subroutine.
“This means that the registers do not need to be popped onto and back from the stack, providing a quicker return from the subroutine. As a result, the response time to an interrupt request (IRQ) is as quick as a simple branch instruction,” said Renesas.
See: Renesas RX series microcontrollers - an overview
The SH7216 group adopts the SH2A-FPU, which adds an FPU function into the SH-2A CPU core, and can perform double precision floating point operations at speeds up to ten times faster than previous products.
The microcontrollers also include a CAN controller to enable a wide range of industrial communication protocols. The Ethernet interface includes a media access controller (MAC) that conforms to the IEEE 802.3 standard, and can connect to a 10 or 100Mbit/s Ethernet.
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Embedded World 2010