Renesas Electronics: From the low power RL78 microcontroller family comes the RL78/F12 for automotive

Key features of the RL78/F12 MCUs:

The new RL78/F12 MCUs from Renesas Electronics include functions that support internal Flash memory with capacities from 8 to 64 kilobytes (KB); packages from 20 to 64 pins; and the LIN (Local Interconnect Network) specification, which has become the standard in-car network.

• Low power consumption and high processing performance contribute to reduced power consumption in applications

Power consumption in these MCUs has been reduced to the industry's lowest levels with an operating current of 70 µA/MHz (at 32 MHz for basic operations) and standby current of 0.6 µA during normal operation (see Note 1), which is about 1/10 of previous Renesas products. At the same time, the MCUs also achieve a CPU performance of 41.6 DMIPS at 32 MHz (1.6 times the performance of earlier Renesas products).

The RL78/F12 products are manufactured in a 130 nm process which results in a reduction of about half the power consumption of the earlier Renesas 78K0R/Fx3 and R8C/3x products.
The RL78/F12 MCUs also contain a new low power mode (snooze mode), which allows A/D conversion and serial communication to be executed without waking up the main CPU. This snooze mode feature also will contribute to system-wide power consumption reductions.

• Support for low-voltage operation at 1.8 V, effective for applications such as keyless entry

The RL78/F12 MCUs can perform data flash write/erase operations and A/D conversions at 1.8 volts (V), and can therefore be highly effective in applications that operate at low voltages such as keyless entry.

• Support for high-temperature operation at ambient temperatures up to 150℃ contributes to integration of mechanical and electronic systems and use of end products at high temperatures

Although earlier Renesas products supported ambient temperatures (Ta) up to 125°C, the RL78/F12 MCUs support operation at ambient temperatures of up to 150°C, allowing their use in high-temperature environments such as the engine compartment and headlights.

• (4) Extensive set of diagnostic functions that support functional safety

As the amount of electric and electronic equipment included in cars increases, efforts to support functional safety standards are becoming increasingly important. The RL78/F12 MCUs contribute to system safety by detecting and preventing abnormal operations in the end product. They achieve this with protection functions such as a flash data error detection using a Flash memory CRC calculation function, RAM parity detection, illegal memory access detection, a RAM data and SFR inadvertent overwrite due to runaway code protection function, and an A/D converter self-test function. The CPU load is reduced by implementing this rich set of diagnostic functions in hardware and, compared to software processing, this approach also achieves faster detection. Renesas plans to provide a self-test program to detect CPU core faults, and currently provides functional safety with a rich set of diagnostic functions and core diagnostic software.

Lineup of first group of 32 products

Helps reduce system costs and size

Rich safety functions contribute to safety of the system

Product Specifications of the RL78/F12 MCU

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