Renesas Electronics and Renesas Mobile Introduce SuperH™ Microcontroller Supporting High-Resolution Displays and Gigabit Ethernet

The new SH7734 MCU features built-in Open VG 1.1 (Note 1) 2D graphics display functions, allowing animation-like displays to be implemented with minimal amounts of memory to improve human-machine interfaces (HMI) in application equipment. To provide high-speed data communications, the SH7734 MCU also includes a built-in Ethernet controller with a data rate of 1 gigabits-per-second (Gbps). To support higher-performance systems and system miniaturization, 16 versions of the SH7734 device are available including offerings with and without an SD memory-card interface.

Having the requirement of advanced graphics functionality has become increasingly common for equipment that includes a display. In addition to higher-performance and higher-resolution LCD panels, more and more products from office automation (OA) equipment, home appliances, games, through security systems, also acquire information from multiple external sources over a network and display it in a variety of different ways. This has created a strong demand for graphics functions such as those in the Open VG interface to implement even more complex HMIs. To address these needs, single-chip solutions are demanded that not only provide high-functionality and high-resolution display functions and high-speed network connectivity, but also integrate powerful peripheral functions that can contribute to system miniaturization.

While Renesas Electronics already mass produces MCUs with built-in display functionality, and these products have been widely adopted in applications that include displays, the company is meeting the increased and future market demands by releasing the SH7734 MCU, which integrates both an Open VG conformant graphics accelerator and a gigabit Ethernet controller.
Key features of the SH7734 MCU

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(1) Open VG conformant graphics accelerator for improved operability in end products
By including graphics display functions that conform to the Open VG 1.1 specifications, the SH7734 MCU can implement, with minimal memory and high speed, visual effects such as animated display as well as enlargement, rotation, deformation, and color gradation in figures and text.
The SH7734 device also provides digital RGB (red/green/blue) output pins that can provide full-color (16.77 million colors) WVGA size (800 × 480) display or high-color (65,536 colors) XGA size (1024 × 768) display to support increases in size and resolution of end-product screens.
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(2) Built-in gigabit Ethernet controller achieves high-speed data transfers
The SH7734 MCU includes an on-chip gigabit Ethernet controller, GMII (Gigabit Media Independent Interface) that complies with the IEEE 802.3 (Note 2) standard. The built-in Ethernet interface supports data rates of 10 and 100 megabits-per-second (Mbps) and can be also connected to 1 Gbps (1000 Mbps) Ethernet LANs.
The SH7734 MCU also incorporates a dedicated direct memory access (DMA) controller to reduce CPU overhead and enable smooth large-capacity data transfers.
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(3) Processing speed increased by approximately 1.6 times from Renesas Electronics’ existing MCUs
The SH7734 MCU uses a Renesas SH-4A CPU core operating at 533 megahertz (MHz) and is approximately 1.6 times faster than the existing SH7764 MCU. The new SH7734 MCU can quickly perform the audio processing, diverse display control operations, and signal processing required for high-functionality HMIs.
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(4) Built-in DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM memory controller
The SH7734 MCU includes a built-in memory controller that supports DDR2 and DDR3 SDRAM with a maximum clock frequency of 300 MHz The controller provides memory bandwidths up to 1.2 gigabytes-per-second (GBps) to support large-capacity data transfers.

The SH7734 MCU will be available in 16 versions that differ in the combination of SD memory card interface, CAN (Note 3) interface, and other hardware features allowing system designers to select their optimum version for the specifications of a wide range of applications. The SH7734 MCU is provided in a lead-free 440-pin BGA package.