NEC 78K0 family

The 78K families are 8- and 16-bit microcontroller families manufactured by Renesas Electronics (formerly NEC Electronics). At the end of 2006 the "78K0R" family with 16-bit microcontrollers was introduced. Following the merger of NEC into Renesas Electronics, the 16-bit RL78 completely replaces the 78K0 family and the Renesas R8C.

Family overview

78K0S

The smallest microcontroller in the world compared to the standard SOT-23 housing

The smaller controllers within the 8-bit family with a reduced instruction set compared to the 78K0

• Here, for example, some products of the K Series for standard applications , 78K0S / Kx1 + , are available, with 1 to 8 KByte Flash, 128 or 256 Byte RAM , 1 register bank with 8 or 16 bit registers AX, BC, DE and HL, Package sizes from 10 to 30 pin

The world's smallest chip housing for a microcontroller also comes from this family, as a BGA housing with external dimensions of only around 1.9 mm × 2.2 mm, it offers space for 16 balls (pins) and, among other things, an integrated 4 kilobyte flash, 128 Byte RAM, 4 channel 10 bit AD converter, one 8 bit and one 16 bit timer, up to 14 I / O lines and on-chip oscillators. The product designation is 78K0S / KY1 + or µPD78F9212.

78K0

the most popular NEC 8 bit family. 4 register banks each with 8 or 16 bit registers AX, BC, DE and HL, multiplication and division unit in the core (8 × 8 or 16/8, sometimes also with 16 × 16 or 32/16).

Some products are

• 78K0 / Kx2 and 78K0 / Kx2-L in the "K Series" for standard applications , with 4 to 128 Kbytes of Flash, 384 bytes to 7 Kbytes of RAM, housing sizes from 16 to 80 pins.

• 78K0 / Fx2 in the "F Series" with and without CAN, especially for automotive applications , with 32 to 128 KByte Flash, 2 byte to 7 KByte RAM, case sizes from 44 to 80 pins.

• 78K0 / Ix2 in the "I Series" especially for motor and light controls, with 4 to 32 KByte Flash, 384 Byte to 2 KByte RAM, housing sizes from 16 to 64 pins.

• 78K0 / Lx3 in the "L Series" with integrated LCD controller. LCD displays with up to 8 times multiplex with 36 I / O, i.e. up to 288 elements (or e.g. 4 × 40 elements), can be controlled. 8 to 60 KByte flash, 512 byte to 2 KByte RAM, housing sizes from 48 to 80 pins. The older version 78K0 / Lx2 is also offered. In contrast to the 78K0 / Lx3, these internally consist of 2 dies, here LCD displays can only be controlled up to four times multiplex with a maximum of 40 I / O. 16 to 128 KByte flash, 756 byte to 7 KByte RAM, housing sizes from 64 to 100 pins.

• There are also some ASSPs ( application-specific standard products ) for e.g. B. Motor Control, special automotive applications or USB (Function)

78K0R

the youngest member of the family with 16 bit. Special features include the integrated DMA controller , a three-stage command pipeline and, for some products, an external memory interface. The register set is the same as in the 78K0 family, i.e. four banks with eight 8-bit or four 16-bit registers each.

Some products are

• 78K0R / Kx3 and 78K0R / Kx3-L in the "K Series", with 16 to 512 KByte Flash, 1 to 30 KByte RAM, case sizes from 44 to 144 pins.

• 78K0R / Kx3-C in the "KC Series" with special support for audio with 96 or 128 KByte Flash, 6 or 8 KByte RAM, housing sizes of 60 or 80 pins

• 78K0R / Fx3 in the "F Series" with CAN, especially for automotive applications , with 24 to 256 KByte Flash, 1.5 to 16 KByte RAM, housing sizes from 30 to 100 pins

• 78K0R / Ix3 in the "I Series" especially for motor and light controls, with 16 to 64 KByte Flash, 1 to 3 KByte RAM, housing sizes from 30 to 64 pins

• 78K0R / Lx3 in the "L Series" with integrated LCD controller, with 64 to 128 KByte Flash, 4 to 7 KByte RAM, housing sizes from 80 to 128 pins

Memory allocation

The memory division is designed according to the Von Neumann architecture , i. H. Program and data memories are addressed via a common bus.

With the 8-bit controllers of the 78K0 series, a flash area of ​​up to 60 KB can be addressed linearly, with the modules with more than 60 KB flash, the areas larger than 32 KB are divided into so-called banks of 16 KB each.

The 16-bit controllers of the 78K0R family can address all of their memory linearly.

Interrupt handling

The microcontrollers have fully vectorized interrupt processing for each interrupt source with an assignable priority level.

The oscillator

The microcontrollers of the 78K family all have an 8 MHz oscillator on the chip. In addition, there is an energy-saving 240 kHz ring oscillator for the watchdog on the chip. However, this ring oscillator cannot supply the CPU or other peripherals with a clock.

Internal peripherals

The equipment with internal peripherals differs from derivative to derivative, but basically consists of the following function blocks:

• Timer , in 8- and / or 16-bit width

• A / D converter

• PWM

• Standard communication interfaces UART (partly also LIN compatible), SPI and I²C

• USB function (slave) for a maximum of 12 Mbit / s (full-speed USB)

• CAN 2.0B

• Watchdog timer

• LCD controllers and drivers for matrix LCDs

These peripheral functions are addressed via special function registers and can trigger different interrupts depending on the function.

Program development

In order to be able to use the microcontroller in an application, the developer must first develop a program. The program development can be done using assembler or a high-level language , e.g. B. C happen. In industry today, mostly only C is used, because the program code is easier to maintain later with it.

• Programming in C

C compilers for program generation are available from NEC Electronics and IAR .

• Troubleshooting - Emulator

The NEC emulator, the IE Cube, can be used for debugging. The chips cannot be programmed with the IE cube.

• Debugging - Debugger

For inexpensive debugging, many 78K derivatives also have an on-chip debugger from NEC, the older MiniCube (different for the different families) or the new MiniCube2 (one model for all families including the 32-bit V850 controller) . The chips can also be programmed with the MiniCube and MiniCube2. Even third-party offer debug solutions for the 78K families (z. B. Lauterbach TRACE32 or iSYSTEM)

• programming

This process is also known as burning . This means that information (e.g. a compiled program, also called firmware) is saved on the internal flash memory or OTP memory of the component. The 78K microcontrollers offer a serial programming interface for this purpose, which can also be used to transfer the machine code if the chip has already been built into the circuit. This process can then be carried out with a programming device or, in the case of newer derivatives, with one of the debuggers listed above. A programming device is available from NEC Electronics under the designation 'PG-FP5'.

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  Minicube2

• 

  78K0R Evalboard 78K0R - Cool-It

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  78K0 minicube

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  78K0S Demoboard Low Pin Count - Do-It

Applications

The 78K microcontrollers from NEC Electronics can be used in many standard and special applications in industry, automotive technology, communication or medical technology. The main areas of application are in drive technology for driving and regulating motors, e.g. B. Brush motors (DC motors) or brushless motors (BLDC), in automotive electronics as intelligent sensors or actuators .

RL78

The RL78 is a further development of the CPU core from the 78K0 family. There are different designs for different areas of application, with a selection of peripheral elements such as B. serial I / O ports, different sizes of ROM and flash memory and RAM. The on-chip ROM and flash memories range from 1 KB to 512 KB and RAM from 128 bytes to 32 KB.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} NEC homepage for the 78K0S / Kx1, 78K0 / Kx2 and 78K0 / Kx2-L ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ NEC homepage for the 78K0 / Fx2 ( memento of the original from June 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ NEC homepage for the 78K0 / Ix2 ( memento of the original from June 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ NEC homepage for the 78K0 / Lx3 ( memento of the original from June 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ NEC homepage for the 78K0R / Kx3 and 78K0R / Kx3-L ( memento of the original from June 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ NEC homepage for the 78K0R / Kx3-C ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ NEC homepage for the 78K0R / Fx3 ( memento of the original from June 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ NEC homepage for the 78K0R / Ix3 ( memento of the original from June 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ↑ NEC homepage for the 78K0R / Lx3 ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Web links

• European homepage of Renesas Electronics 78K0 (English)
• IAR Embedded Workbench® for Renesas 78K (English)