NEC Electronics today announced the availability of its new 78K0/Lx3 series of 8-bit microcontrollers (MCUs), which include liquid crystal display (LCD) controllers/drivers on-chip, and deliver extremely low power consumption levels. The devices are ideal for consumer electronics with LCD readouts and strict power consumption requirements, such as home health appliances including scales, blood pressure monitors, and blood glucose meters; HVAC and industrial systems including utility meters; and household appliances such as coffee makers and rice cookers. The Lx3 devices have a newly optimized circuit design that cuts standby power consumption by approximately 50 percent, down to just 2.3 microamperes (µA). An 16-bit A/D converter offers a 64-fold improvement in resolution over the previous generation of devices. Additionally, an increase in the number of common signal ports from four to eight now enables support for up to 288 display segments, up from 160 for the previous Lx2 devices.
The improvement in features helps support manufacturers of LCD applications create higher resolution products, or alternately, create the same resolution with fewer segment ports. The new MCUs are available in 76 configurations, with 8 kilobytes (KB) to 60 KB of embedded flash memory, in pin counts ranging from 48 to 80. Samples of the 78K0/Lx3 devices will be available from March 2007. Pricing varies according to device specifications.
