Renesas Electronics Announces Low-Power Microcontrollers with Large Capacity Memory

These new MCUs are ideal for applications such as smart meters and healthcare equipment. Their low power capability combined with 1MB flash and 80KB RAM memory is perfectly suited to smart meters. Many smart meters are subject to regulatory power limits. Yet with more communication radios and more complex software, every component, including the MCU, has to consume less power to keep the system under the limit. The increasing amount of communication software can be adequately supported by the larger Flash memory. Healthcare systems, especially portable measurement and monitoring devices such as blood glucose meters, can take advantage of the low power to extend battery life and utilize the large Flash memory for data storage. The USB support enables these healthcare systems to support patient-doctor information exchange, such as the Continua Alliance standard. Moreover, the 32-bit processing power can support graphic computation for different displays from segmented LCD to dot matrix and OLED.

Software complexity continues to increase in many applications. Product designers are faced with the difficult design decision between extending design cycles to reduce software size and paying for extra external memory to shorten design time. The high density Flash eliminates this design dilemma. These V850 MCUs with up to 1MB Flash can support many applications without resorting to external memory.

Renesas Electronics’ V850ES/JG3-L MCUs address these needs, and even in the J Series, these new products reduce the normal operating current by 50 percent compared to the company’s existing products, achieving industry-leading low power consumption while providing large internal memory capacities.

In conjunction with the product announcement, Renesas Electronics Europe has introduced a V850ES/Jx3-L low power USB stick demonstrator. This kit utilizes a V850ES/JG3-L with 512KB Flash to provide a platform that demonstrates the different standby modes. The kit supports current consumption measurement with use of an ampere meter.