With an average modern automobile containing 50-100 MCUs—many of which stay powered up even when the engine is off—it’s imperative that they be as low power as possible, especially when they’re powered down. Drawing less than 200 μA/MHz RL78 MCUs fit this profile nicely.
Renesas has a long history in the automotive market, going back at least as far as the NEC V850 and 78K0. Since 2004 they’ve been a premier member of the AUTOSAR Consortium, supplying Microcontroller Abstraction Layer (MCAL) drivers linking vendor software with Renesas automotive solutions. There are numerous Renesas automotive MCU solutions, including multiple variations of the 78K0, M16C, R8C, R32C, V850, RH850, and more recently the RL78/Fx family.
The RL78 family is suitable for use in a variety of body control system applications, making it possible to reduce power consumption, cut software development man-hours, and lower the overall system cost. The RL78 family inherits the advanced peripheral functions of the earlier 78K0R and R8C families, making it possible for customers to effectively utilize existing software resources.
The RL78/F12 was the first RL78 automotive product, targeting body control applications such as remote keyless entry, power windows, automatic air conditioning, and lighting modules. The 32 MHz devices (24 MHz for K grade) contain numerous safety features, including WDT, TRAP instruction, illegal memory access detection, frequency detection, flash memory CRC operations, RAM parity error detection, RAM guarding, SFR guarding, and A/D converter testing. RL78/F12s are in full production.
Now in limited production are new RL78/F13 and RL78/F14 MCUs. RL78F13s increase the RL78/F12’s maximum flash memory size from 64 KB to 128 KB (20-80 pins); the RL78/F14 takes this to256 KB (30-100 pins), with a 512 KB (48-144 pins) product in development that includes a second CAN channel. Both chips add advanced IP for LIN and CAN communication and are intended for cost sensitive automotive applications such as DC- & BLDC motor control, HVAC, lighting, and many kinds of body ECUs.
While incorporating the RL78/F12’s safety features the RL78/F13 and RL78/F14 add five more:
For use in dedicated automotive body ECUs RL78/Fx MCUs are a logical, low-power choice. For more information check out the RL78/F12 Hardware User’s Manual.