Renesas Electronics Corporation has announced a new addition to the RX 32-bit MCU Family, the RX660 group of microcontrollers (MCUs). To illustrate, the family supports operating voltages of up to 5V. Because of that, the product offers superior noise tolerance for home appliances and industrial equipment exposed to high electromagnetic interference.

The RX660 is the first in Renesas’ higher-end RX general-purpose MCU devices to support 5V. In addition, it is also the first in the RX Family to feature a built-in CAN FD controller that enables fast data communication. The high operating voltages of the new RX660 MCUs eliminate the need for external noise-suppression components required for many 3V MCUs today. This allows customer to reduce development time and component cost, improving system quality.

Simplifies Product Design

Recently, the scale of software has grown as functional safety and security have become a critical part of electronic systems. As the number of product models has also increased, more products come equipped with real-time operating systems. This simplifies software maintenance. Furthermore, more products require to accommodate future functional enhancements using over-the-air (OTA) updates.

To meet these needs, Renesas developed the RX660 using its RXv3 core (6.00 CoreMark/MHz). Coming with a maximum operating frequency of 120MHz, it offers high performance and excellent power efficiency. The devices feature large-capacity ROM of up to 1MB and RAM of up to 128KB. They are available in many package options (48-pin to 144-pin).

Particularly, the effective pin count for general-purpose I/O pins is 10 percent higher than the earlier RX210, which is also 5V compatible. For example, the 144-pin version of the RX660 has an effective pin count of 134, 11 more than on the RX210. With this increase in I/O count, more sensors can connect to an MCU for a given package, making it simpler to upgrade existing systems.

“Noise suppression is essential for home appliances and industrial products since ambient electromagnetic waves in the surrounding environment can cause system malfunctions or reduce performance,” said Sakae Ito, Vice President of the IoT Platform Business Division at Renesas. “We introduced the new RX660 MCUs in response to strong demand from customers who need to design products with high power supply voltages. We are happy to assist our customers to make their product design process simpler.”

Suits Industrial Equipment, Too

“At Daikin, we have been using Renesas’ RX MCUs in our main air conditioner products for over 10 years, and we welcome the new RX660 MCUs with superior noise tolerance,” said Eisuke Yamada, Group Leader of Procurement Strategy Department, Global Procurement Division at Daikin Industries, Ltd. “The RX MCUs offer excellent CPU performance, flash memory that boosts real-time operation and scalable development with pin-compatible devices. These advantages are everything we consider essential in MCU products.”

CAN is becoming widely popular in industrial equipment and robotics. However, the increasing volume of data communication due to the use of many sensors is causing insufficient bandwidth and higher costs for requiring multiple buses.

The RX660 is the first group in the RX Family to integrate a CAN FD controller that supports fast, high-volume data transfer. CAN FD allows security signals in large volume to be transmitted in a single frame, making it possible to build stronger security into devices.

Two development boards are available for the RX660 group for both prototyping and detailed evaluation. Furthermore, Target Board for RX660 is an inexpensive prototyping board that enables users to easily transform their ideas into working hardware and software.

For that reason, the Renesas Starter Kit for RX660 suits detailed evaluation. In addition, allows users to make use of the full functionality of the RX660 when developing applications.

Winning Combinations

Renesas has combined the RX660 with a variety of analog and power management devices for power conversion systems to create the “On-line Type UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) Winning Combination.” The solution efficiently integrates all the key power conversion components including inverters, buck regulators, battery boost regulators, and PFC in a single chip. Moreover, it offers the ability to remotely monitor activities via Bluetooth.

Renesas offers more than 300 Winning Combinations with a wide range of products from the Renesas portfolio to enable customers to speed up the design process and bring their products to market more quickly.