New Arm Cortex M4 Microcontrollers with Enhanced Communication Functions for Industrial Networking and Information Management Devices

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation has introduced 20 new microcontrollers in the M4N group suitable for office equipment, building and factory automation, and industrial networking and information management devices. These new devices in the TXZ+ Family Advanced Class offer various interface and communications options and include an Arm Cortex-M4 core with FPU and 32KB data flash memory with a maximum 100K write cycle endurance. Moreover, these microcontrollers have enhanced communications functions integrated as a serial memory interface that supports Quad/Octal SPI, an audio interface (I2S), and an external bus interface, in addition to UART, FUART, TSPI, and I2C, which are supported by a built-in 3-unit DMAC. 

These microcontrollers support a variety of sensing applications with a high-speed, high-precision 12-bit analog/digital converter that allows individual sample hold times to be set for each AD input channel with up to 24 channels. These devices can allocate independent DMA and RAM for each peripheral circuit, and use a bus matrix circuit configuration that ensures efficient data transfers by the bus master. Moreover, the self-diagnosis functions incorporated in these devices for ROM, RAM, ADC, and Clock help customers to achieve IEC60730 Class B functional safety certification.

Features

• Arm Cortex-M4 core with FPU, operating at up to 200MHz 

• Wide range of memory options and package line-up 

• Various built-in interfaces and communication channels suitable for high-speed data processing required for AV equipment, MFPs, and Factory Automations

• Built-in high-speed oscillator, equipped with oscillation accuracy +/-1% (operating temperature -40 to 85℃)

• By improving the oscillation accuracy, the number of parts can be reduced by eliminating the need for an external oscillator

• Both code flash and data flash are rewritable up to 100,000 times

• By high-level resilience to repeated data write and erase, it is possible to eliminate the need for external memory.

Applications

• Industrial networking and information management devices requiring Ethernet, USB and CAN connectivity

• Communication equipment for building & factory automation

• IoT home appliances

• Home security

• Smart meters