Renesas mcus optimised for smart metering applications

The mcus have been developed using two advanced MONOS flash processors in a bid to provide compatible devices with a range of different features, optimised for smart metering applications. According to Renesas, the compatibility enables system designers to choose the optimum mcus with particular characteristics required for a new design, while allowing the reused of much of the same software for each applications. The RX210 is designed to provide up to 50MHz flash operation at 3.3V, while offering up to 20MHz performance down to 1.62V, including flash programming and erasure at this low voltage. This, says Renesas, facilitates the design of applications that require both battery backup and read while power off. The RX210 currently integrates up to 512Kb of on chip Flash, 8Kb of on chip data flash supporting 100k w/e cycles and programming and erasing in the background. According to Renesas, with up to 64Kb of on chip SRAM, future versions will integrate up to 1Mb of on chip flash memory. The RX630 offers 100MHz flash performance with an integrated floating point unit and is available in a range of package and memory options. The RX630 supports from 64 to 176 pin packages and up to 2Mb of flash, 32Kb of dataflash and 128Kb of on chip SRAM. Some members of the RX630 family provide pin compatibility with the RX210 family. The devices are designed to provide a number of on chip software and hardware safety features, such as dual WDTs – one with integrated dedicated oscillator – a CRC function for checking the integrity of the flash memory and systems to detect both a clock failure and a clock running at the wrong frequency.