NEC Electronics America Announces Availability of New 5-CAN Gateway Microcontroller with Floating-Point Unit for High-End Automotive Applications

SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 29 -- NEC Electronics America, Inc. today announced the availability of its new 32-bit microcontroller (MCU), the V850E/CG2(TM), designed especially for high-end automotive applications. The V850E/CG2 offers five full-controller area network (F-CAN) interfaces with 128 CAN message buffers and an on-chip floating-point unit (FPU) to provide excellent performance even for the most demanding gateway solutions. The V850E/CG2 MCU complements NEC Electronics' existing gateway controller roadmap in the high-performance area and will be used in 2005 and beyond in various high-end automobiles.

Gateways are required to exchange information between the various in-car networks, for example, to provide the engine temperature to the climate control system. Today's cars feature up to five CAN networks plus application-specific bus systems such as local interconnect network (LIN), media-oriented system transport (MOST) and FlexRay/TTP (time-triggered protocol). The resulting complexity of the network requires dedicated gateway microcontrollers tailored to high-performance routing tasks.

Online diagnostics as well as applications demanding floating-point representation such as physical sensor data or automatically generated code are supported by the on-chip FPU. To support applications requiring large memory sizes, the V850E/CG2 MCU does not use embedded read-only memory (ROM); instead, the controller provides a high-speed 32-bit bus interface with five-chip selects for the connection of up to 16 megabytes (MB) of address space per chip select. Eight kilobytes (KB) of on-chip instruction cache secure high performance even with external code execution. External controllers, for example, for MOST or TTP/FlexRay, can also be connected, thus allowing the gateway to extend to multimedia and safety-critical systems.

Based on NEC Electronics' high-performance 32-bit V850(TM) CPU core, the new gateway controller also features 32 KB of random-access memory (RAM) and a 40-megahertz (MHz) clock speed. Furthermore, the V850E/CG2 MCU offers two timers, six 10-bit A/D converters, three clocked serial interfaces (CSIs) and two LIN UARTs. Various power-saving modes make it suitable in applications where low current consumption is necessary. Supply voltage is 3.3 volts (V).

Packaging, Pricing and Availability

The V850E/CG2 microcontroller is packaged in a 144-pin QFP. Pricing is US$10 in volume quantity. Samples and tools are currently available. Pricing and availability are subject to change.

About NEC Electronics America, Inc.

NEC Electronics America, Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Electronics Corporation, a leading provider of semiconductor products encompassing advanced technology solutions for the broadband and communications markets; system solutions for the mobile, PC, automotive and digital consumer markets; and platform solutions for a wide range of customer applications. NEC Electronics America offers solutions ranging from standard products to system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions, customized products for next-generation designs, a local manufacturing facility in Roseville, California, and the global manufacturing capabilities of its parent company. NEC Electronics America is also the North American sales and marketing channel for NEC AM-LCD and PDP modules. More information about the products offered by NEC Electronics America, Inc. can be found at http://www.necelam.com/ .