Renesas Technology Europe has launched its latest member of the SuperH line-up of products. The SH7286 is the first SuperH product offering up to 1Mbyte of fast MONOS (Metal Oxide Nitride Oxide Silicon) embedded flash memory that has been designed specifically for the high-end drives, AC servos and general-purpose inverter markets. The new larger flash memory marks a small step for the world’s number one microcontroller manufacturer but a revolution for the European Motor Control Market.

The SuperH family has already launched products for other applications with up to 2.5Mbytes, so a new product with 1Mbyte of is a relatively easy step for Renesas. However, this provides a significant leap for European motor control and inverter customers. The typical code size for a high-end drive or inverter application in Europe is currently somewhere in the region of 384kbytes of code but growing at an alarming rate. The shape of motor control applications is also changing from a dual MCU to a single MCU solution and this is putting pressure on the code size. In turn, this is making European system designers consider using external memories and ROM-less devices because microcontrollers with up to 1Mbyte of embedded flash and dedicated motor control peripherals were previously not available.

The SH7286 device offers a comprehensive MTU2 timer unit with six channels of 16-bit timers, support for up to 16 input capture/output compare functions, and a three-phase PWM capability for electrical motors. Additional motor control features are enabled by a quadrature encoder feedback capability and a special channel that can measure dead times at the power stage, thus enabling both the shortest possible dead times for highest efficiency and safe, non-destructive operation of the power stage. The MTU2 also incorporates additional safety features with its Port Output Enable (POE) pins that provide a faster and more deterministic response time to ensure safe quick shutdown of the motor. Also included is an MTU2S peripheral, this is simply a subset of the MTU2. This means that the SH7286 can drive two vector controlled industrial inverters simultaneously.

The IC includes three ADCs with four channels each, 12-bit resolution and 1.0us conversion time. Each ADC can be triggered by the MTU2 with an additional defined delay time to support algorithms such as single-shunt motor drive.

For a product that is offering the capability of combining the functionality of the two MCUs in a motor control system communications is an obvious and important question. The SH7286 offers a CAN module, USB2.0 module, five SCI channels, one SSU (Synchronous Serial communication Unit) channel and one IIC channel.

The device makes use of the powerful SH-2A core. This core, an enhanced version of Renesas’ SH-2 core and having a superscalar architecture, has two execution units in the pipeline, allowing two instructions to be processed concurrently and code can be executed up to twice as fast as the CPU clock. In addition, its Harvard-based architecture ensures that no bus conflicts occur between instruction fetch and data access. The SH-2A also features the addition of an optional Floating Point Unit (FPU) and although not featured on the SH7286, provides an upgrade path for codes needing faster DSP functionality.

The core’s CPU registers are now arranged in “banks”, with the 19 registers being mirrored 15 times. Using this technique, an interrupt subroutine can use a second set of registers leaving the current ones ready for use upon return from the interrupt subroutine. This means that the registers don’t need to be popped onto and back from the stack, providing a quicker return from the interrupt subroutine. As a result, the response time to an interrupt request (IRQ) is as quick as a simple branch instruction: Just 6 cycles!

The device is complimented by, a watchdog timer, two channels of compare-match timers, 32k or 24kbytes of RAM and comes in two 176pin packages (either 24x24mm 0.5mm pitch or 20x20mm 0.4mm pitch) that operate at 3.0V to 5.5V.

For further information and reader enquiries:

Jasper Credland, Renesas Technology Europe Ltd., Dukes Meadow, Millboard Road, Bourne End, SL8 5FH
Tel: +44 (0)1628 585163
Fax: +44 (0)1628 585180
Web: www.renesas.eu
E-mail: jasper.credland@renesas.com

About Renesas Technology Corp.

Renesas Technology Corp. is one of the world's leading semiconductor system solutions providers for mobile, automotive and PC/AV (Audio Visual) markets and the world's No.1 supplier of microcontrollers. It is also a leading provider of LCD Driver ICs, Smart Card microcontrollers, RF-ICs, High Power Amplifiers, Mixed Signal ICs, System-on-Chip (SoC), System-in-Package (SiP) and more. Established in 2003 as a joint venture between Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE:6501, NYSE:HIT) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TSE:6503), Renesas Technology achieved consolidated revenue of 951 billion JPY in FY2007 (end of March 2008). Renesas Technology is based in Tokyo, Japan and has a global network of manufacturing, design and sales operations in 17 countries with 26,800 employees worldwide.

For further information, please visit http://www.renesas.com

Headquartered in Buckinghamshire, UK, Renesas Technology Europe has offices in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany (3 offices), Italy, Spain, Sweden and Turkey, and representation via related companies in the Czech Republic, South Africa, Russia and Israel.

In Europe, Renesas focuses on automotive (control, networking, infotainment), wireless (GSM, CDMA and Bluetooth), smart card and industrial microcontroller applications. It employs over 150 engineers to develop solutions for the European market and to assist customers with application development. Renesas is a leading supplier of smart card ICs in Europe. Europe is the world’s largest market for automotive electronics and microcontrollers, and is the region of most design influence for wireless electronic products. Feedback from customers in this market has great influence on Renesas’ product development.