New Industry Products

NEC Electronics Expands All Flash Lineup With Six New Microcontrollers for Inverter Control

February 05, 2007 by Jeff Shepard

NEC Electronics announced the availability of six new microcontrollers (MCUs) for inverter control systems, designed for advanced motor control applications in products such as air conditioners, refrigerators and washing machines. The company claims that the new devices feature high performance with advanced control functions for more precise motor control, as well as integration of formerly discrete components to help lower costs. The new offering includes four 100-pin V850E/IG3 MCUs and two 80-pin V850E/IF3 MCUs.

Compared to the company’s previous generation of inverter control MCUs, the devices feature a four-fold increase in resolution of the A/D converter that detects motor rotation (4,096 discrete values, 12 bits) and an approximately six-fold increase in gain ratio – to 13 steps – of the operational amplifier (op amp) that adjusts the level of motor status signals. The comparator that protects a system from motor faults can detect overvoltages, and also measure undervoltage with respect to a reference level. Components that normally would have to be connected externally – including a voltage-generating regulator IC, a reset IC to initialize the microcontroller when it is powered on and a low-voltage indicator (LVI) circuit to detect low voltage – are integrated on chip. With their enhanced performance and high integration, these new devices allow designers to achieve more precise inverter control, at lower costs and with fewer parts.

Samples of the V850E/IG3 are available now. Pricing varies according to device specifications. For example, NEC Electronics’ V850E/IG3 device with 256KB flash memory is priced at $10 for 1,000-lot quantities. Volume production is scheduled to begin in the second quarter of 2007. Monthly production is expected to reach approximately 500,000 units within one year.