Renesas RX231 32-bit microcontrollers

Renesas Electronics has announced the RX231 group of 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs). The series is suitable for applications that require high processing performance in environments with low current supply capacity, such as industrial sensors, healthcare devices, wearable devices and building automation devices.

The series provides a combination of power-efficient MCU technology and a high-performance RXv2 CPU core with powerful DSP/FPU operation capabilities. It minimises current consumption and handles tasks involving heavy calculation loads — such as digital filtering and floating-point operations — considerably fast, according to the company. This makes it possible to reduce the power loss for the system as a whole during processing.

Running the Renesas IIR digital filter is claimed to consume 10% less power and take half as long as was the case with earlier Renesas products. Current consumption during standby is only 0.8 μA, approximately half the level of previous generations. Power efficiency is approximately doubled during intermittent operation, in which operating and standby states alternate. This allows extended operation on battery power.