July 2003 Embedded News Digest
 

Home
Search
MicroControllerShop
Publications
Embedded News Digest
Resources
Contents
Contact Us

Home
Search
Microcontroller Shop
Marketing Consulting
Training
Electronic System Design
Tech. Writing & Translation
Project Samples
Embedded News Digest
Resources
Contents
Contact Us

Dear Reader,

welcome to this month's edition of  MicroController Pros Corporation's Embedded News Digest, your source for microcontroller and embedded system news.

 

  • Embedded Tool of the Month, August 2003: High-end emulator for Microchip PIC, offers more powerful emulation features at a lower price than Microchip's ICE2000 emulator. Through the emulator's modular design, you can easily upgrade it to support a new PIC derivative or package, at the fraction of the cost of a new emulator, by simply exchanging the POD and/or Pin adapter board. Includes full featured software package: IDE, Debugger, Simulator and Macro Assembler.


  • Please help us to spread the word about this free microcontroller news source.

    • Let your friends, colleagues or customers know about the Embedded News Digest.


This month's issue:

ARM Delivers AMBA Interface AHB SystemC Specification

Call for Papers - Embedded Systems Conference San Francisco 2004

Elan: 8-bit RISC Micro with USB

Fujitsu: New 32-bit RISC Micro with USB Host and OSDC
Microchip: New RF PIC Development Tool

Motorola Expands HCS12 Family

NEC: 32-bit Micro With 5 CAN Interfaces

Renesas : New H8 MCU with 3 Serial Channels

Sensory  Speech Recognition Microcontroller Now Shipping

ZiLOG Announces Samples of Z8 Encore! 4KB and 8KB Flash Devices


ARM Delivers AMBA Interface AHB SystemC Specification

The AMBA AHB Modeling Specification is a fully cycle-accurate representation of the AMBA AHB protocol. Designers of complex systems will be able to use the Interface Specification to explore detailed AMBA interconnect issues and co-validate their system models with RTL implementations. Besides full support of the AMBA AHB protocol, the Interface Specification includes the AHBlite protocol that is widely adopted for high-performance bus-matrix architectures.

The AMBA AHB Cycle-Level Modeling Specification is open and free of any charges. A is available now for download from the ARM® website at http://www.arm.com/armtech/AMBA. To protect the integrity of AMBA technology, the specification is made available under a simple license agreement broadly in line with the widely-accepted AMBA 2.0 specification licensing agreement.


Call for Papers - Embedded Systems Conference San Francisco 2004

The Embedded Systems Conference San Francisco is now accepting abstracts for the 2004 event (March 29 - April 2, 2004 Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA), including 1.5 hour, 3-hour, and full day tutorial sessions. ESC is looking for embedded systems developers to speak on practical development topics ranging from programming 8-bit microcontrollers to designing Internet-enabled systems. Deadline is 8/8/03!

For more info go to: http://cmp.iconvention.com/cmpbrandmgr/V40/index.cvn?ID=10211


Elan: 8-bit RISC Micro with USB

Elan Microelectronics has released  two Multiple Time Programmable (MTP) microcontrollers with on-chip USB 1.1 interface. MTP  allows customers to re-program the device up to 5000 times (similar to Flash memory).

The EM78M611/612 are 8-bit RISC microcontrollers, based on the Microchip PIC architecture,  with 6K / 2K MTP program memory, 144 / 112 RAM, 36 / 16 I/Os, 8 interrupts, 1 8-bit timer, 24 8-bit A/D channels, 4 bytes EEPROM, and USB 1.1 interface built-in.


Fujitsu: New 32-bit RISC Micro with USB Host and OSDC

The new MCU, the MB91F312, is embedded with both a high-resolution On-Screen Display Controller (OSDC) and a Universal Serial Bus (USB) host interface, enabling customers to deliver high-resolution, high-performance home theater systems.

Features: Clock frequency up to 40MHz (52 MIPS); 512 KBytes Flash; 24 KBytes RAM; 168 KBytes font ROM; I2C and UART interfaces.

The high-resolution character display with wide display area -with a wide display field of 42 characters by 16 lines and a font resolution of 24 x 32 dots per character, even large-screen TVs can display characters in crystal-clear resolution without needing to use enlarged font sizes. 1,792 character types are stored in font memory

The USB host functions allow to directly connect and control peripherals, such as a USB mouse, keyboard or printer.

Sample Price: 2900 Yen, Package: 144 pin LQFP


Microchip: New RF PIC Development Tool

Microchip introduced the rfPIC Development Kit 1, providing design engineers with an easy way to evaluate low-power radio frequency (RF) communication links for embedded control applications based on the its rfPIC12F675 Flash microcontroller plus UHF RF transmitter, and the rfRXD0420 receiver device.

Designed to work in tandem with the popular PICkit 1 Flash Starter Kit, the rfPIC Development Kit 1 consists of transmitter and receiver modules supporting the 315MHz and 433MHz frequencies. The receiver modules, featuring the rfRXD0420 device, plug directly into the PICkit 1 development board for demonstration and development. The modules are available separately so designers can create several prototypes based on the same module without having to develop an actual RF design.

Available today with 315/433 MHz Amplitude Shift Keying, pricing is $25 for the rfPIC receiver module, $30 for the rfPIC transmitter module, and $135 for a kit that includes two receivers, two transmitters and the PICkit 1 Flash Starter Kit.


Motorola Expands HCS12 Family

The new MC9S12E128 and MC9S12E64 feature: 3 V to 5 V operation and extended temperature (-40 to +125 degree Celsius) operating range; 25 MHz bus speed with 40 nanosecond minimum instruction cycle time; 128 Kbytes/64 Kbytes in 0.25 micron flash; Advanced on-chip debug module with trigger and trace for faster debug; Extensive serial communication with three asynchronous SCIs, one synchronous SPI (1), I2C, and infrared (IRDA) communication enabled; Up to 12 pulse width modulated (PWM) channels, 6 with fault protection for motor control or uninterruptible power supply (UPS) applications; Highly integrated analog functions with two 8-bit digital-to-analog converters (DAC), a 16-channel, 10-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and a low-voltage reset/interrupt; Up to 90 general-purpose input/output options

The first four devices in the 3 volt HCS12 family are in production and available today. Additional 3 volt HCS12 devices are planned for introduction later in 2003. Suggested resale pricing for the first four devices in 10,000-piece quantities is:
MC9S12E128CFU (128 KB, 80 QFP Pin Package): $8.00 (USD)
MC9S12E128CPV (128 KB, 112 LQFP Pin Package): $8.30 (USD)
MC9S12E64CFU (64 KB, 80 QFP Pin Package): $6.40 (USD)
MC9S12E64CPV (64 KB, 112 LQFP Pin Package): $6.70 (USD)


NEC: 32-bit Micro With 5 CAN Interfaces

NEC Electronics announced the availability of its new 32-bit microcontroller V850E/CG2 “CarGate-F”. Designed especially for high-end automotive applications, it offers five Full-CAN interfaces with 128 CAN message buffers and an on-chip floating-point unit, thus guaranteeing very high performance even for the most demanding gateway solutions.

Gateways are required to exchange information between the various in-car networks, for example to provide the engine temperature to the climate control system. Today’s cars feature up to five CAN networks. The resulting complexity of the network requires dedicated gateway microcontrollers tailored to high-performance routing tasks.

Based on NEC Electronics’  32-bit V850 CPU core, the new gateway controller features 32 Kbytes of RAM and a 40-MHz clock speed. Furthermore, CarGate-F offers two timers, six 10-bit A/D converters, three CSIs and two LIN UARTs. The controller provides a high-speed 32-bit bus interface with five chip selects for the connection of up to 16 Mbytes of Flash or RAM per chip select. 8 kBytes of on-chip instruction cache secure high performance even with external code execution.


Renesas : New H8 MCU with 3 Serial Channels

The new H8/36024F microcontroller operates at a maximum frequency of 20 MHz using a 3 to 5.5 V power supply. It offers a wide variety of on-chip peripherals, as well as the three on-chip USARTs. It has a  16-bit timer as well as an 8-bit timer, a 10-bit analog/digital converter, and a number of high-current I/O pins. The H8/36024F is available in two Flash versions, the H8/36024F with 32 kBytes of single supply on-chip Flash, and the H8/36022F with 16 kBytes of on-chip Flash. The device incorporates Flash memory that can be programmed and erased with a single power supply. A number of mask variants with mask sizes from 16-kbytes to 32-kbytes and a variety of SRAM sizes will also be available during 2003.


Sensory Speech Recognition Microcontroller Now Shipping

The RSC-4x features an 8 bit micro-controller with DSP assist engines, twin DMA's, 16 bit ADC with microphone pre-amp, 10 bit DAC with PWM speaker drivers, as well as 24 configurable I/O lines including 2 comparator inputs. A real-time clock, general purpose timer, a watch-dog timer, a zero cost on-chip RC oscillator are also included, along with and low battery detection. The ADC, DAC, PWM, digital filter are all customer accessible for added features and control. The RSC-4128 offers 128KBytes of on-chip, maskable ROM, with address space for up to 1MByte off-chip. 4Kbytes of RAM is on chip with sufficient memory to store speaker dependent or speaker verification templates. ROM-less versions and various memory sizes are offered throughout the RSC-4x family.

As a speech processor, the RSC-4x offers >97% recognition capabilities including robust performance in noisy environments and a large vocabulary of words and phrases. The RSC-4x also provides high-quality speech synthesis at varying data rates from 3K-64K bits per second. Included on chip is an 8-voice MIDI-like music synthesizer that supports voice overdubbing with music. Speech technologies include speaker independent, speaker dependent, speaker verification, and word spotting. Core speech modeling approaches include Neural Networks, Hidden Markov Modeling, Dynamic Time Warping, and other proprietary statistical and non-linear techniques.

The RSC-4x is supported by a complete suite of easy-to-use tools for both programming and speech processing. Programming tools are available from The MicroController & Embedded System Store (http://microcontrollershop.com), and include assembler, C-compiler, in-circuit emulator, and debugging/simulation tools, all designed for fast, bug-free programming under a user-friendly integrated development environment.


ZiLOG Announces Samples of Z8 Encore! 4KB and 8KB Flash Devices

Zilog announced the availability of engineering samples of its Z8 Encore!(R) F08 (8KB Flash) and F04 (4KB Flash) microcontrollers. This new series of Flash microcontrollers extends the Z8 Encore! family which includes the previously released 16KB through 64KB devices.

The ZiLOG Z8 Encore! F08 and F04 devices feature 1KB of linear register SRAM, a 9-bit UART port with integrated IrDA encoder/decoder, two 16-bit counter timers and a 5 channel 10-bit A/D converter.

The new devices are packaged in SOIC and SSOP packages with 20 or 28 pins. The Z8 Encore! Z8F08 (8KB) will sell for $2.26 to $3.04 each in 1,000s (depending on configuration). The Z8F04 (4KB) costs $1.51 to $2.21 each in 1000s (depending on configuration).


About MicroController Pros Corporation

µCPros provides consultancy and outsourcing services in:

Electronic System Design
µCPros' engineers have in-depth microcontroller, mixed signal and analog know-how to deliver a turn-key electronic system designs according to your specifications.

Management and Marketing Consulting
µCPros' develops: business plans; marketing strategies; pay for performance marketing programs; global product and business marketing plans; tactical and strategic marketing plans. We perform: Internet search engine optimization; market research and competitive analysis; marketing and communications (MarCom) activities; and public relations activities.

Training
µCPros develops and conducts corporate courses for: technical product trainings; business trainings; marketing and sales trainings; technical writing trainings; and microcontroller software and hardware development trainings.

Technical Writing & Translation
µCPros writes for you: technical reports; technical specifications; user manuals; datasheets; application notes and product articles. We translate to/from English, German and Filipino.


copyright 2003 by
MicroController Pros Corporation
Marketing, Training, System Design, Technical Writing
visit our web http://www.ucpros.com

 

[Home] [Search] [MicroControllerShop] [Publications] [Embedded News Digest] [Resources] [Contents] [Contact Us]

Email us with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2002-2008 MicroController Pros Corporation
Last modified: 12/16/08