Sharp expands BlueStreak microcontroller line.

Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas has announced the mass production shipment of its BlueStreak family of ARM-based 16/32-bit general-purpose microcontrollers (MCUs).

The four new MCUs combine high integration with an ARM7TDMI-S core to meet the needs of engineers designing applications in industrial control, white goods, smart appliances, marine applications, smart toys, PDAs and smart phones.

With this line, Sharp provides four unique microcontrollers with the performance of 32-bit ARM7TDMI-S cores, yet requiring only 16-bit designed circuit boards and memory devices, saving in system design costs. The 16-bit external addressing makes these microcontrollers ideal for use in 16-bit applications that require higher performance at the price of a standard 16-bit microcontroller. In addition, the parts offer high functionality including the capability to drive color or grayscale LCD displays and support CAN 2.0B connectivity.

"Our general-purpose 16/32-bit microcontrollers based on ARM7 technology provide system engineers with access to a wide range of cost-effective development tools and software operating systems, which streamline design tasks and dramatically shorten time-to-market," said Terry Thomas, Sharp's director of microcontroller and system-on-chip marketing. "As engineers' designs require more advanced ARM-based products, these general purpose 16/32 bit units provide flexible reuse and a clear migration path toward more advanced technology."

The four BlueStreak MCUs are designed to meet specific customer requirements for speed, support, performance, power consumption and functionality. Built on the ARM7TDMI-S architecture, the BlueStreak products offer extensive third-party support as well as a pathway from proprietary 8- and 16-bit MCU architectures to a more widely supported ARM architecture. In addition to these architectural advantages, the four specialized BlueStreak MCUs provide a wide range of functionality that simplifies system development and reduces time to market.

Two of the microcontrollers, LH75400 and LH75401, include support for CAN 2.0B. CAN is a robust protocol ideal for implementing command, control, and communications in electrically noisy environments, such as industrial control applications. The LH75400 includes CAN support with a grayscale LCD Controller and the LH75401 includes CAN support with a Color LCD Controller. For applications not utilizing CAN, Sharp offers the LH75410 with a Grayscale LCD Controller and the LH75411 with a Color LCD Controller.

The Color LCD Controllers on the LH75401 and LH75411 support a wide range of LCD displays (STN, CSTN, TFT, HR-TFT) including Sharp's Advanced TFT (AD-TFT) with up to 4096 colors. Other key features included within the family are an 8-input 10-bit Analog to Digital Converter with integrated touch screen controller, 32KB of on-chip SRAM, a Vectored Interrupt Controller to speed the serving of interrupts, three UARTs, Synchronous Serial Port, three 16-bit Counter/Timers with Capture, Compare and PWM logic, Watchdog Timer and Low Voltage Detector. All parts operate up to 50 MHz at 3.3 V over the industrial temperature range of -40 C to +85 C.

Customers designing with the LH75400, LH75401, LH75410, and LH75411 will be able to draw from an extensive array of software development tools available for the ARM7TDMI architecture. Leveraging Sharp's extensive third party relationships, engineers will have their choice of development environments ranging from a low-cost development platform to a high-end application development kit. Designers will be able to plug in their custom hardware, experiment with different kinds of memory and evaluate the chip's performance quickly without having to make their own boards. In addition, Sharp will offer software, documentation and application notes for the 16/32-bit BlueStreak line, enabling its customers to expedite their application development.