At the same time, extensive measures were taken to lower system power consumption with these new members of the RL78 Family. In addition to only 66 µA/MHz current consumption in active mode and 0.57 µA with RTC + LVD active, the RL78/G1A MCUs support a new low-power mode called the snooze mode. The snooze mode supports A/D conversion and serial communication while the CPU is in standby mode. This can significantly extend the operating time of battery-powered devices.
Built-in safety mechanisms – such as a flash memory cyclic redundancy check (CRC) function, RAM parity error checking, clock fail and frequency detection circuit, A/D test function and illegal memory access detection – support compliance with safety standards such as the IEC60730.
Renesas Electronics’ low-cost E1 on-chip debugging emulator and the IECUBE full-spec emulator are available as hardware development tools. For flash programming, Renesas Electronics offers the PG-FP5 programmer or factory programming. Powerful support for system designers of application software is provided by the IAR Embedded Workbench integrated development environment (IDE) and optimized C++ compiler.
Samples of Renesas Electronics’ new RL78/G1A Group of MCUs are scheduled for availability during the first quarter of 2012.