Designed for automotive and video applications, Toshiba has announced the arrival of their new ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers.

Fully qualified in accordance with relevant automotive standards, the M3 family is made up of five microcontrollers that claim to combine low power and high performance. Being specifically designed to support audio & visual connectivity as well as control in automotive applications, it is clear to see how the ARM Cortex-M3 is gradually becoming a popular choice by most developers.

The TMPM321F10, TMPM322F10, TMPM323F10 and TMPM324F10 devices are able to support in-vehicle audio playback from iPods or MP3 players and are ideal for use with external USB devices & SD cards. Together with audio decoding, the fifth member of the family, the TMPM327C3D is able to handle visual I/O applications - such as the display of images from a vehicles rear view camera as it implements an analogue CVBS decoder.

Operating at frequencies of up to 144 MHz the TMPM327C3D, is available with 1.5MBytes or 3 Mbytes of integrated eDRAM, allowing it to support individual display resolutions from typically WQVGA to WVGA without the need for external RAM.

Toshiba's new M3 devices have on offer: 1Mbyte of NANO Flash memory, 64 Kbytes of on-board RAM, a 10-bit analogue-to-digital converter and timers.

Options for integrated connectivity include, USB 2.0, synchronous & serial bus interfaces, CAN functionality, a serial bus interface offering I2C operation and general purpose serial I/O.

Useful links
Toshiba Electronics Europe [www.toshiba-components.com]

TMPA912CMAXBG

The TMPA912CMAXBG is the latest addition to Toshiba's family of low-power, scalable ARM-based microcontrollers.

Based on the 32-bit ARM926EJ-S core, the TMPA912CMAXBG caters for embedded systems that on one hand require integrated display control & graphic processing capabilities, but on the other can forgo memory, performance & additional functionality offered by earlier flavours of the Toshiba ARM9 family.

Capable of running at a maximum of 150MHz (-20° to +85°C) or 200MHz (0° to +70°C) the new micro provides 32Kbs of embedded RAM, a memory controller supporting SDR, DDR SDRAM & addressing of up to 2.5Gbytes of liner access space & a 8-channel DMA.

Targeted at Man-Machine Interface (MMI) applications the chip includes an integrated LCD controller, a touch screen interface, a CMOS camera interface & a LCD data processor accelerator. With the LCD controller providing support for TFT & STN display sizes of up to 1024 x 768 pixels & the LCD accelerator supporting resolutions to WVGA in addition to providing image scaling, filtering & blending functions, the majority of embedded display needs can be catered for with this device.

On the connectivity side, the TMPA912CMAXBG provides: SPI, UART, I2C, I2S & a high speed USB (480Mbps) device controller. Other on-board peripherals include: a six-channel 10-bit ADC, six-channel 16-bit timer, a watchdog timer, real-time clock, SSP (SPI/MicroWire mode) & a power management circuit (PMC).

The micro is fully pin compatible with other member of the family, which not only helps to protect investments, but provides scope to upgrade the higher end devices with the minimum amount of system design, should the need arise.

To assist with embedded system development, the TMPA912CMAXBG is supported by a starter kit & reference platform in addition to extensive software tools that include graphics libraries & embedded operating systems.

Looking for a scalable, low-powered ARM-based device to quickly add MMI functionality to your embedded design? Toshiba could well have the answer.

Useful links
Toshiba Electronics Europe [www.toshiba-components.com]