Renesas Electronics America has included two new products in its R8C microcontroller (MCU) series called the R8C/36T-A and the R8C/38T-A. Both MCUs are equipped with a touch-sensor control unit (TSCU),which contains 36 touch channels and has a program memory of 128 KB.
The TSCU hardware block cab support about 36 individual electrodes and can scan all the touch channels within 10 ms. The TSCU has enhanced sensitivity to touch and rejects electrical disturbances caused by automated random and majority-vote method of measurements
In addition to the above enhancements, two new hardware blocks are included in the MCU series. The Event Link Controller (ELC) block can link the events between peripheral devices to activate the operation without CPU interference. The second block, Cyclic Redundancy Check unit, is responsible for checking errors in in-built memory and communication data for IEC 60730 safety standards. The advantages provided by these blocks are low power consumption, smaller program code size and fewer process interruptions.
Ritesh Tyagi, Director of MCU solutions Marketing, Consumer and Industrial business unit, started that the company strives to meet the demand for touch-key applications and the new products further add value to the current product line up. He added that the combination of advanced ELC and TSCU block will allow designers to create more efficient and reliable user interfaces.
Gartner has ranked Renesas as the number one global supplier of MCUs. The new MCUs are available for sampling purposes and will be introduced in the market during the fourth quarter of 2011.
Source: http://www.am.renesas.com/