Toshiba: Toshiba Electronic Devices and Storage Corporation (Toshiba) has begun mass production of its TXZ+ Family Entry-Class M4L Group microcontrollers, which are designed for next-generation home appliances, consumer products, and industrial equipment.
According to BERNAMA News Agency, Toshiba's new compact microcontrollers are built around an Arm Cortex-M4 core with a floating-point unit (FPU). These are tailored for single-motor control applications, incorporating dedicated motor-control hardware, security functions, and functional safety features on a single chip.
The company cited the growing demand for energy-efficient, compact designs and Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled products as a key factor driving the need for motor-control microcontrollers. These microcontrollers are designed to deliver greater development efficiency, system reliability, and high-precision control.
Operating at frequencies of up to 80 megahertz (MHz) and supporting a supply voltage range of 2.7 volts (V) to 5.5V, the microcontrollers are compatible with existing 3V- and 5V-based systems. They come in four package types with 44 to 64 pins and memory configurations of 128 kilobytes (KB) and 256KB.
The 256KB variants are equipped with dual-bank flash memory for seamless firmware updates, supporting firmware over-the-air updates. Meanwhile, the 128KB models feature 64KB of data flash memory for log storage and configuration management.
To bolster system security and reliability, the microcontrollers include chip protection, secure access memory, non-rewritable flash protection, and functional safety measures. They also feature communication interfaces, such as a universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter, a serial peripheral interface, an inter-integrated circuit, and a serial memory interface.
Toshiba also announced plans to support customers with product documentation, sample software, driver software, evaluation boards, and development environments in collaboration with Arm ecosystem partners to expedite product development and deployment.