Renesas Electronics Europe offers two compatible microcontroller (MCU) families designed to provide flexible and scalable solutions for the next generation of smart meters. Both RX210 and RX630 MCUs are based on Renesas’ powerful 32-bit RX CPU core. They are available at distributor Rutronik as of now.
The new RX210 and RX630 families of MCUs use two advanced MONOS flash processors to provide compatible devices with a range of different features optimised for smart metering applications. This allows the system designers to choose the optimum MCUs with particular characteristics required for a new design, while allowing the reuse of much of the same software for each application.
The RX210 provides up to 50MHz flash operation at 3.3V, while offering up to 20MHz performance down to 1.62V, including flash programming and erasure at this low voltage. This facilitates the design of applications that require both battery backup and read while power off. The RX210 currently integrates up to 512Kb of on chip Flash, 8Kb of on-chip data flash supporting 100k w/e cycles and programming and erasing in the background. With up to 64Kb of on-chip SRAM, future versions will integrate up to 1Mb of on-chip flash memory. The MCU integrates a wide range of features designed for metering including a full Real Time Clock Calendar (RTCC), with automatic calibration, alarm and tamper logging features. It also has a 1µs 12-bit ADC with triple sample and holds, with automatic control by timer available.
The RX630 offers 100MHz flash performance with an integrated floating point unit and is available in a wide range of package and memory options. It supports from 64- to 176-pin packages and up to 2Mb of flash, 32Kb of dataflash and 128Kb of on-chip SRAM. Some members of the RX630 family provide pin compatibility with the RX210 family. The RX630 offers several of the same features as the RX210, plus many more. It includes up to 13 serial interfaces, 4 additional I2C interfaces and 3 SPI interfaces, as well as a 21 channel 12-bit ADC, and an 8 channel 10-bit ADC. A key feature for metering is the addition support for a battery domain, Vbat, and a full RTC with alarm, calibration and tamper logging. Versions of the RX630 are also available with the option of CAN and USB interfaces, making them ideal for many industrial metering applications.
Both the RX210 and RX630 are supported by the same range of tools, including a full C compiler package, low-cost evaluation boards and the E1 in-circuit debugger. The RX630 is also supported by the E20 high-performance in-circuit debugger.
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