Fujitsu Expands FM3 Family of 32-bit MCUs with ARM Cortex-M3 Core

52 New Devices focus on Home Appliance, Factory & Office Automation, Medical and Digital Consumer Device applications

Langen, Germany, 11th May 2011 — Fujitsu Semiconductor Europe has extended its comprehensive portfolio of general-purpose, 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs), introducing 52 new products designed for home appliances, factory & office automation, medical devices and digital consumer products.

The new MCUs are part of the Fujitsu FM3 family of microcontrollers announced last November. The Fujitsu FM3 devices, which are built around the ARM® Cortex™-M3 global-standard core, incorporate a wide variety of peripheral features refined during Fujitsu’s years of experience developing its own 32-bit RISC (FR) microcontrollers.

The 52 new devices are part of the Basic Line series MB9A310 and MB9A110. Coupled with the devices previously released in the High-Performance Line, the entire FM3 family now includes a total of 96 MCUs to meet a wide range of system design needs.

The FM3 family offers superior design freedom along with excellent cost-performance for applications such as home appliances, audio/video equipment, portable electrical goods, factory equipment, medical products, and office automation products.

"The MB9A310 and MB9A110 series achieve an excellent balance between cost-performance and low power consumption," said Wolf Fronauer, Marketing Manager, Fujitsu Semiconductor Europe.” He continued, "Each member of the series has been designed for fast-growing application segments, such as the inverter control used in major home appliances, and the system and motor control in factory automation and similar devices. By employing products from the FM3 series, system designers achieve high processing performance and streamlined software development, along with a greater selection of devices."

Key Features of the New FM3 MCUs

The new MCUs in the FM3 Basic Line series expand pin, memory and interface options. The 52 new devices provide flash memory from 64 to 512 KB and increase the range of package options from 64- to 112-pin versions.

A USB 2.0 host/function macro enables full speed USB master and slave implementations such as memory stick access, firmware update via USB or PC connections.

The FM3 family can operate on a wide range of power supply voltages, from 2.7 to 5.5 V and is well-suited for the conventional 5 V power-supply voltage needs of major home appliances and office automation devices.

Due to the optimised balance between CPU performance and power consumption, the new devices consume less power than the High-Performance Line products and other existing microcontrollers, at identical clock ratios.

The MCUs feature a high-speed, high-reliability NOR flash memory, which is designed for 100,000 write cycles and can retain data for up to 20 years. The high-speed CPUs and flash memory provided in the Basic Line have no wait-cycle penalty up to the maximum CPU clock speed of 40 MHz and achieve maximum performance in this category.

Peripheral Macros for High-precision Motor Control

In addition to maintaining the existing peripheral functions from the FR microcontroller family in the new versions, Fujitsu also implemented a wide variety of peripheral macros to meet the needs for high-precision motor control.

For example, the FM3 devices are equipped with three high-precision and high-speed independent 12-bit A/D converters (+/-2 LSB 1.0 μs conversion), enabling fine-tuned motor control. The true potential of this design is demonstrated when the FM3 MCUs are employed in high-precision, high-speed servo motors, such as factory automation applications. Furthermore, quadrature decoder units for hardware supported rotator position sensing reduce the CPU workload.

Availability

The MB9AF31xx family is available now in 112-pin BGA; 100-, 80- and 64-pin LQFP; and 100-pin QFP packages.

More Information on Fujitsu's FM3

About Fujitsu Semiconductor Europe

Fujitsu Semiconductor Europe is a major supplier of semiconductor products. The company provides advanced systems solutions to the automotive, digital TV, mobile telephony, networking and industrial markets. Engineers from design centres dedicated to microcontrollers, graphics controllers, mixed-signal, wireless, multimedia ICs, ASIC products and software development, work closely with Fujitsu Semiconductor’s marketing and sales teams throughout EMEA to help satisfy customers' systems development requirements. This solutions approach is supported by a broad range of advanced semiconductor devices, IP, building blocks and software.

For more information, please see: : Website Fujitsu Semiconductor Europe