While the general-purpose microcontroller (MCU) isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, this month’s gallery of nine new application-specific MCUs demonstrates that building for hyper-specific solutions continues to be an active, diverse, and broad area of MCU design.
Microcontrollers (MCUs) geared toward specific industries and markets are not a new concept. Aside from general-purpose MCUs, there are MCUs designed for broad swaths of industry, such as automotive, industrial, and wireless MCUs. Over the last few years, we’ve seen an increase in further specialized MCU designs that come with tailored feature sets aimed at specific application needs. These application-specific MCUs provide developers of embedded systems with solutions that are just the right size: complete with feature sets, packaging, and/or performance levels that fit their system requirements.
This was originally primarily seen in 32-bit MCUs—and indeed, at least a couple such products pop up in this month’s gallery. But these days, even 8-bit MCUs are finding use in application-specific solutions (such as this month’s automotive offering from Microchip Technology). Meanwhile, 32-bit MCUs are incorporating AI capabilities along with IoT functionality. Overall, there has been a lot of movement and evolution in multiple directions in the world of MCUs built for hyper-specific needs. As many readers are aware and as this column will make plain, automotive MCUs are a very active sector within this category.
Application-specific MCUs are often most practical (and most widely deployed) in high-volume use cases like motor control, as many of the intended applications in the following gallery pages illustrate. You’ll find products built for wearable devices, designed for power delivery inside vehicle cabins, or geared toward low-power cellular applications. Our gallery features MCUs, system-on-chips (SoCs), and system-in-packages (SiPs) for everything from smart sensor networks, to high-quality audio, to digital signal control, to software-defined vehicles. The array of specific applications is, of course, endless, so naturally this gallery of nine products represents only a small sampling of recent releases from MCU manufacturers.
Ultra-Low-Power 32-Bit MCU for Wearable Devices
Analog Device’s MAX32660 is an ultra-low-power, cost-effective, highly-integrated 32-bit microcontroller designed for battery-powered devices and wireless sensors. It combines a flexible and versatile power management unit with the powerful Arm Cortex-M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU) in the industry’s smallest form factor: 1.6mm x 1.6mm, 16-bump WLP or 4mm x 4mm, 20-pin TQFN-EP, or 3mm x 3mm, 24-pin TQFN-EP. The MAX32660 enables designs with complex sensor processing without compromising battery life. It also offers legacy designs an easy and cost-optimal upgrade path from 8- or 16-bit microcontrollers.
- Internal oscillator operates up to 96MHz
- 256KB Flash memory
- 96KB SRAM, optionally preserved in lowest power backup mode
- 16KB Instruction Cache
- Memory Protection Unit (MPU)
- Low 1.1V VCORE supply voltage
- 3.6V GPIO operating range
- Wide operating temperature: -40°C to +105°C
- Power management maximizes uptime for battery applications
Highly Integrated In-Car Power Delivery
Infineon’s EZ-PD CCG7D is a dual-port USB-C power delivery (PD) solution that comes with an integrated buck-boost controller for charging applications in cars. Compliant with the latest USB Type-C and PD specifications and AEC Q-100-qualified, the CCG7D is designed for automotive applications that support Display Port (DP) in alternate mode. It’s particularly suited for applications such as head unit chargers, rear seat chargers, and rear seat entertainment systems.
- USB-PD: Supports two USB-PD ports; Supports USB-PD revision 3.1 including programmable power supply (PPS) mode; Extended data messaging
- Type-C: Configurable resistors RP and RD; VBUS provider NFET gate driver; Integrated 100-mW VCONN power supply and control
- 2x Buck-boost controller
- 2x Legacy/proprietary charging blocks
- System-level fault protection
- 32-bit MCU subsystem: 48-MHz Arm Cortex-M0 CPU, 128-KB Flash, 16-KB SRAM, 32-KB ROM
Automotive Interface MCU with Many Peripherals
The PIC18-Q84 family of 8-bit MCUs combine a wide range of Core Independent Peripherals (CIPs) with Controller Area Network Flexible Data Rate (CAN-FD) for automotive interface and smart sensor networks. The Q84 is the first 8-bit MCU with CAN-FD. With up to 128KB Flash memory and up to 48 pins, these cost-efficient MCUs bring new peripherals like the customizable Universal Timer (UTMR), and context-switching capability to the 12-bit ADC with computation for automating analog signal analysis for real-time system response. Microchip offers full functional safety packages for ISO 26262 and SGS TUV Saar ASIL B which includes the FMEDA, safety manual and diagnostic library for the Q84 families.
- 64MHz internal oscillator
- Up to 13KB data SRAM and 1K Data EEPROM
- 12-bit ADC with Computation and context switching, up to 43 channels
- Two 16-bit Universal Timers (UTMRs)
- Vectored Interrupt (VI) capability
- Windowed Watchdog Timer (WWDT)
- 32-bit Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) with SCAN
- JTAG boundary scan
- UART, SPI and I2C
Highly-Integrated SiP for Low-Power Cellular Applications
The nRF9160 is a compact, highly integrated System-in-Package (SiP) that makes the latest low-power LTE technology and advanced processing and security accessible and easy to use for a wide range of single-device, low-power cellular IoT designs. Incorporating an Arm Cortex-M33 application processor solely for applications, a full LTE modem, RF Front End (RFFE) and power management system, the nRF9160 is the most compact, complete and energy-efficient cellular IoT solution on the market.
- ARM Cortex -M33
- 243 EEMBC CoreMark score running from flash memory
- Data watchpoint and trace (DWT), embedded trace macrocell (ETM), and instrumentation trace macrocell (ITM)
- Serial wire debug (SWD)
- Trace port
- 1 MB flash
- 256kB low leakage RAM
- GPS receiver
- RF transceiver for global coverage
SoC for High-Quality Audio
Nuvoton’s I91535ADI is an audio system-on-chip (SoC) integrated with high-quality audio features and a microcontroller in a single chip. I91535ADI can run up to 49MHz with an embedded ARMCortex-M0 32-bit microcontroller core and a 64K-byte flash memory that has an additional 6KB boot loader flash and 20KB SRAM. The audio features include a microphone input ADC and stereo DAC with a headphone output driver. The I91535ADI also comes with a wide variety of peripherals, such as timers, a watchdog, peripheral direct memory access (PDMA), serial interfaces, and more.
- ARM Cortex-M0 processor running up to 49MHz
- 64KB Flash
- 20KB SRAM
- 6KB Flash for user program loader (LDROM)
- ISP and ICP
- 8x 16-bit PWM or 4x complementary paired PWM
- 2x UART, 2x SPI, 2x I2C
MCU with DSP Power
Based on the high-performance 100MHz 56800EF DSP core, NXP Semiconductors’ MC56F80xxx digital signal controller (DSC) has an integrated FPU and CORDIC/trigonometric math engine that provides high-performance, cost-effective solutions for digital power conversion and motor control applications. This device combines the flexible functionality of an MCU with the processing power of a DSP, and includes high-speed, high-accuracy peripherals like 8 channel eFlexPWM with 312 ps resolution, dual high-speed 12-bit ADCs, two operational amplifiers, a quadrature decoder and three analog comparators.
- Enhanced single-precision floating point math unit (eFPU)
- Coordinate rotation digital compute (CORDIC) engine
- JTAG/EOnCE debug controller
- 64kB Flash
- 8kB SRAM
- Intermodule crossbar (support flexible connection among peripherals or GPIOs)
- Event generator
- Enhanced DMA
- Memory resource protection
- LVI, POR and brownout reset
- CRC
- Internal and external watchdog
MCUs Optimized for Motor Control
Renesas’s RA4T1 group is optimized for motor control and inverter control functions, with small 32-pin QFN and LQFP package options. RA4T1 delivers up to 100MHz of CPU performance using an Arm Cortex-M33 core with a code flash memory ranging from 128KB to 256KB, 4KB of data flash memory, and 40KB of SRAM. This collection of devices offers a wide set of peripherals, including CAN-FD, I3C, and ADC.
- Arm Cortex-M33 Core
- Up to 256 KB code flash memory
- 4 KB data flash memory (100,000 program/erase (P/E) cycles)
- 40 KB SRAM
- Connectivity: Serial Communications Interface (SCI) × 2
- I3C bus interface (I3C)
- Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) × 2
- CAN with Flexible Data-rate (CANFD)
- 12-bit A/D Converter (ADC12)
MCUs for Software-Defined Vehicles
ST’s Stellar 32-bit MCU family meets the need for more powerful applications and centralized electronic control units (ECUs) at the domain or zone level. Stellar can run several critical real-time functions, support the aggregation and dispatching of growing data streams, ensure efficient energy management, and secure OTA software updates to manage vehicle lifecycles and deploy new and improved services. Stellar delivers enhanced motor control interfaces and an advanced generic timer module (GTM) to allow combining several power converters into a single control unit for the optimized management of vehicle dynamics. Specifications and datasheet URL below are for the Stellar SR6 G7 line.
- AEC-Q100 automotive qualification on going
- 32-bit Arm v8-R compliant CPU cores
- Two Cortex‑M4 multipurpose accelerators
- Four eDMA engines in lockstep configuration Memories
- Up to 20.5MB on-chip NVM non-volatile memory
- 640KB data NVM (512KB + 128KB dedicated to HSM)
- Up to 9280KB on-chip general-purpose SRAM
Automotive MCU with Dual 32-Bit CPUs
Texas Instruments’ Automotive C2000 TMS320F2800157-Q1 microcontroller has dual 32-bit C28x CPUs in Lockstep, enabling the device to achieve ASIL B functional safety device rating without much SW overhead. The real-time control subsystem is based on TI’s 32-bit C28x DSP core, which provides 120 MHz of signal-processing performance for floating- or fixed-point code running from either on-chip flash or SRAM. The C28x CPU is further boosted by the Trigonometric Math Unit (TMU) and VCRC (Cyclical Redundancy Check) extended instruction sets, speeding up common algorithms key to real-time control systems.
- 32-bit lockstep dual-TMS320C28x core at 120 MHz
- Dual security zones
- CAN-FD
- 256KB flash
- Watchdog timer
- Grade 0 and 1
- Hardware capability up to ASIL B and SIL 2 targeted
- Target market: automotive (examples: HVAC, on-board (OBC) & wireless charger)
PUBLISHED IN CIRCUIT CELLAR MAGAZINE • August 2023 #397 – Get a PDF of the issue
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Sam Wallace - became Circuit Cellar's Editor-In-Chief in August 2022.
His experience in writing, editing, and teaching will provide a great perspective on the selection, presentation, and clarity of editorial content. The Circuit Cellar audience will benefit from his strong academic background encompassing a Master of Fine Arts in Writing and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics with honors. His passion for learning and teaching is a great fit for Circuit Cellar's continuing mission of Inspiring the Evolution of Embedded Design.
