Freescale Delivers First Automotive Instrumentation Cluster MCU with On-Chip TFT Display Drive.Latest Member of 16-bit S12XHZ Family Designed to Reduce the Cost of Implementing Thin-Film Transistor Displays in Mainstream Automobiles MILAN Milan, prince and king of Serbia Milan (Milan Obrenović) (mĭl`än ōbrĕ`nəvĭch), 1854–1901, prince (1868–82) and king (1882–89) of Serbia; grandnephew of Miloš Obrenović. , Italy -- Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :FSL) (NYSE:FSL.B) has introduced a 16-bit microcontroller (MCU) designed for the next wave in automotive instrumentation clusters. The MC9S12XHZ512 MCU is the industry's first instrumentation cluster MCU featuring an integrated thin-film transistor (TFT) display drive. With its on-chip TFT driver, the S12XHZ512 device enables instrumentation cluster designers to reduce the complexity of their designs and implement high-quality graphic displays on low-end automotive dashboards in a timely, cost-effective manner. TFT displays - standard fare in laptops, cell phones and other mobile appliances - are gaining momentum in the mainstream automotive market as the technology becomes more cost-effective. Freescale's latest MCU addresses the instrumentation cluster market, and TFT applications in particular, by offering optimal integration and application-specific features. The S12XHZ512 MCU is the latest addition to Freescale's S12HZ family. The S12HZ family is based on Freescale's high-volume S12 architecture and boasts 15 members, ranging from ultra-low-cost 32KB ROM versions to devices with up to 256KB of flash memory. Featuring the enhanced S12X core, the S12XHZ512 provides a high-performance, backward-compatible extension to the established S12HZ. The S12XHZ512 is upwardly code compatible with the HCS HCS - Heterogeneous Computer System A distributed system project. 12 family, enabling developers with previous systems based on the HCS12 to reuse design tools for their new S12XHZ512-based applications. The S12XHZ512 MCU handles application-critical intelligent control functions and is designed to drive the display in a car dashboard. In addition to supporting TFT displays, the device can drive analog gauges, liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and light-emitting diode (LED) displays. Key S12XHZ512 features for instrumentation cluster designers include 512KB of on-chip flash memory (twice that of its S12HZ predecessor), an LCD driver and stepper motor drivers for gauges. "The S12XHZ512 comes at a perfect time for our instrumentation cluster customers," said Mike McCourt, vice president and general manager of Freescale's microcontroller division. "Once limited to high-end vehicles, TFT displays are growing more prevalent in low-end to mid-range vehicles, which the S12XHZ family targets. The MCU's integrated XGATE coprocessor provides an enabling technology for TFT displays by driving the system cost reductions necessary to accelerate adoption of next-generation displays in the mainstream automotive market." Advanced XGATE coprocessor The S12XHZ512 MCU takes S12HZ family integration a step further by incorporating Freescale's advanced XGATE coprocessor module. With its RISC RISC in full Reduced Instruction Set Computing Computer architecture that uses a limited number of instructions. RISC became popular in microprocessors in the 1980s. architecture and C-language programmability, the on-chip XGATE module functions like a dedicated coprocessor for the main CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. . Introduced on the S12X architecture in 2004, the XGATE coprocessor addresses the design challenge of achieving higher MCU performance without the cost and complexity of adding separate processors. The versatile, cost-effective XGATE module can drive a 30,000-pixel TFT display directly, without the need for an external graphics driver IC. With the addition of a low-cost 100K-gate FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) A type of gate array that is programmed in the field rather than in a semiconductor fab. Containing up to hundreds of thousands of gates, there are a variety of FPGA architectures on the market. , the XGATE can drive an even larger quarter video graphics array “320x240” redirects here. For the Croatian festival, see 320x240 (festival). The Quarter Video Graphics Array (also known as Quarter VGA or QVGA) is a popular term for a computer display with 320 × 240 resolution. (QVGA). In both application examples, designers can achieve an estimated system cost savings of $2-$4, when compared to using standard microcontrollers without an integrated TFT driver. Freescale initially designed XGATE to offload the growing communications burden associated with driving multiple control-area networks (CAN) and local interconnect networks (LIN) from the main CPU. XGATE's ease-of-use and flexibility have sparked its use in many other applications, such as driving sophisticated pulse-width modulation (PWM), direct memory access (DMA) activity and serial port buffering. Running at twice the speed of the main CPU and without any CPU processing overhead, the XGATE coprocessor is engineered to boost system performance by an additional 80 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) The execution speed of a computer. For example, .5 MIPS is 500,000 instructions per second; 100 MIPS is a hundred million instructions per second. at peak operation. MC9S12XHZ512 features The MC9S12XHZ512 offers the standard features of the existing members of the HZ-family, such as 6-stepper drives with patented stall detection capability and a 32x4 LCD display drive. Other key features include: * 512KB flash memory * 40MHz enhanced 16-bit HCS12 CPU core * XGATE coprocessor module with programmable DMA controller, real-time interrupt handler and virtual peripheral controller * Up to 12KB RAM and 2KB EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM) A rewritable memory chip that holds its content without power. Although EEPROMs spawned flash memory, EEPROMs are byte addressable at the write level, whereas flash chips must erase a block of bytes before rewriting. * Advanced interrupt and timer features * 16-channel analog-to-digital converter (ADC (1) See A/D converter. (2) (Apple Display Connector) A peripheral connector from Apple that combines digital video display, USB and power in one cable. ) * Two 1Mbps CAN 2.0 A,B software-compatible modules * Two asynchronous serial communications interfaces (SCI (Scalable Coherent Interface) An IEEE standard for a high-speed bus that uses wire or fiber-optic cable. It can transfer data up to 1GBytes/sec. (hardware) SCI - 1. Scalable Coherent Interface. 2. UART. ) and a serial peripheral interface (communications, hardware) Serial Peripheral Interface - (SPI) A serial interface in which a master device supplies clock pulses to exchanges data serially with a slave over two data wires (Master-Slave and Slave-Master). (SPI) * 6-channel pulse width modulation See PWM. (PWM) * On-chip single-wire background debug mode (BDM) with trace buffer * 112-pin LQFP and 80-pin QFP package options * Qualified temperature ranges of -40 C to 125 C MC9S12XHZ512 availability The MC9S12XHZ512 MCU and MC9S12XHZ512EVB evaluation board are available now in sample quantities. For more product information, visit http://www.freescale.com/files/pr/hz512.html. About Freescale Semiconductor Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (NYSE:FSL) (NYSE:FSL.B) is a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets. Freescale became a publicly traded company publicly traded company A company whose shares of common stock are held by the public and are available for purchase by investors. The shares of publicly traded firms are bought and sold on the organized exchanges or in the over-the-counter market. in July 2004. The company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing or sales operations in more than 30 countries. Freescale, a member of the S&P 500[R], is one of the world's largest semiconductor companies with 2005 sales of $5.8 billion (USD USD In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the U.S. Dollar. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. ). www.freescale.com. Reader Inquiry Response: Freescale Semiconductor P.O. Box 17927 Denver, CO 80217 USA Freescale[TM] and the Freescale logo are trademarks of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. [c] Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. 2006. |
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