MCUs feature integrated LCD driver

These MCUs are suitable for battery-operated handheld medical diagnostic instruments, building utility meters for gas, water and electricity as well as applications in factory automation.

The microcontroller series includes 80-pin 78K0R/LF3, 100-pin 78K0R/LG3 and 128-pin 78K0R/LH3, and features an extremely low standby current consumption of just 1.2 microamps when the LCD function is activated and the CPU is stopped.

This 90 per cent reduction of current consumption compared to previous products was made possible by an adjustable internal LCD reference voltage and a capacitive voltage splitting that - unlike conventional systems with LCD resistive network - does not produce any unnecessary cross current.

In addition to the 78K0R CPU core from NEC Electronics and the LCD controller/driver circuit, the devices are also equipped with 12-bit A/D and 12-bit D/A converters, various operational amplifiers and up to 128 kbytes Flash memory, as well as 7 kbytes of RAM.

A supply voltage between 1.8 and 5.5V is required for normal operation and also for Flash memory programming.

Due to the high level of integration, the power consumption and number of components required is greatly reduced.

This reduction of PCB layout area also reduces the costs of the peripheral logic.

Data sheets with main specifications are available from Gleichmann Electronics.

Samples will be available at the end of April 2009 and, according to NEC Electronics, mass production is scheduled to start in October 2009.