Hua Hong and iMQ Partner on Chinese Smart Meters and White Goods
Hua Hong Semiconductor Limited and iMQ Technology Inc. announced that their jointly-developed MCUs for inverter appliances and smart meters have passed validation testing with the end customer, and commenced the mass production. These two products adopt high-performance microcontroller as the MCU core, Hua Hong's low leakage power embedded flash technology, as well as iMQ's high precision, high anti-interference and high reliability circuit. The two parties joined forces to promote their products and speed up the entry into the Chinese white home-appliance and smart meter market, to create the "energy-saving and eco-friendly" green home.
The jointly-developed MCUs for inverter appliances and smart meters boast the most prominent feature -- 'the high-performance, low-power microcontroller core which supports up to 9 kinds of diverse system modes, and iMQ's high-precision 10-bit ADC, high-precision embedded oscillator and complete range of communication I/O ports. iMQ's design and Hua Hong's low power leakage embedded flash process technology is the combination that gives the MCU not only a capacity of up to 64KB, a flash memory of 100,000 writing cycles but also significantly reduced power consumption - saving over 60% compared to the previous generation of products, to meet the requirement of low-power consumption smart appliances.
In order to achieve the required high performance of the inverter appliances such as air conditioners in terms of precise voltage detection control system, anti-interference and noise cancellation, iMQ specially designed for Hua Hong's process a new generation of high-precision ADC and embedded oscillator circuits, strengthening the interference protection of the single-chip's integrated circuits, which eventually passed high standard product reliability testing with excellent result. This MCU is an important breakthrough in new generation of high-end microcontrollers and will take the lead in expanding their share of Chinese white home-appliance and smart meter market.
Dr. Cheng Fu, Hua Hong's Executive Vice President remarked: "This is a powerful and win-win cooperation of complementary partners -- Hua Hong and iMQ, it marks a milestone for both parties. The mass production of these two MCUs for air conditioners and smart meters not only marks Hua Hong's high reliability, cost-effective embedded flash processes' another successful entry into the realm of international high-quality products, but also further strengthens Hua Hong's leading position in embedded flash technology. Embedded flash technology is one of Hua Hong's strategic directions of development. In future, Hua Hong will continue to reinforce the development of this technology platform, to provide our customers with highly competitive high-quality products."
Dr. Herman Lee, iMQ's President said: "The first time we have developed in Hua Hong's eFlash process passed the high standard home appliance and smart meter product validation, it is a great affirmation and encouragement for iMQ which is positioned to provide high-performance, high-reliability microcontroller design services. With this successful start of three party cooperation, iMQ will continue to expand the design on Hua Hong's low-leakage embedded flash platform of all kinds of high-standard circuits and come up with a greater variety of IP combinations and more complete and efficient design services to expand the MCU appliances in white household appliance, smart meter and other high-end industrial applications."
