1999-03-01 , S/IC-2060/45
Product News From Philips Semiconductors

New low-power 51LPC family offered in low-pin count packages

Philips Semiconductors today announced the first device in a family of low power, cost-effective microcontrollers based on the industry-standard  80C51 architecture. The new family targets designs that require low power consumption and a low overall system cost, including emerging Internet applications. The 51LPC family is being introduced along with the  LINK-51 evaluation kit, which includes emWare's Internet-capable software.

Philips Semiconductors has combined features such as brownout detection, analog functions and an innovative on-chip RC oscillator to reduce the need for external components. By incorporating these features with an improved  80C51 architecture, the family offers engineers a new choice when designing low-cost, low-power applications.

"Philips Semiconductors is committed to the development of products based on the popular  80C51 architecture," said Geoff Lees, director of marketing for Philips Semiconductors Microcontroller Business Line. "Our customers are demanding microcontrollers with a higher level of feature integration without the price penalty. The 51LPC family addresses these critical requirements."

"We're forecasting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8 percent for the 8-bit MCU market over the next five years. The low end of the 8-bit MCU market is a vital entry point to the entire microcomponent food chain, broadening the base of products and customers using semiconductors for high-volume, non-traditional applications," said Tom Starnes, director and principal analyst, embedded microcomponents worldwide, GartnerGroup's Dataquest.

The  87LPC764 has 4K bytes of OTP program memory and 128 bytes of SRAM that make it suitable for use with high-level programming languages. The device features an MCU core, which is fully compatible with the industry-standard  80C51 core, but has a 2X-speed mode where the system clock is divided by 6 instead of 12. At 20 MHz, the 51LPC family has throughput equivalent to an  80C51 device running at 40 MHz, minimizing EMI and power consumption. Additionally, the  87LPC764 contributes to lower system cost and saves board space by incorporating an on-chip power-on-reset, an oscillator, two comparators and a watchdog timer.

The  87LPC764's have five user-programmable modes that tune the device's performance and power consumption to meet the needs of a variety of applications. One of the modes can use the internal RC oscillator for a clock source for speeds up to 6 MHz. By doing this, two pins are released for use as additional I/Os, increasing the total I/O pin count to 18. For high-performance applications the  87LPC764 can execute nearly 60 percent of its instructions in just 300 nanoseconds or can be programmed to use as little as 16 µA at a frequency of 32KHz. The device has a wide voltage range (from 2.7 volts to 6.0 volts) and a power-down mode with typical current consumption as low as 1 µA, a necessity for battery-powered applications.

Philips Semiconductors' 51LPC microcontroller family serves a broad market and many different applications such as security systems, remote controls or sensor applications. For example, the  87LPC764's on-chip comparator and low power consumption are ideal for a smoke detector application.

A broad range of existing  80C51 assemblers, compilers and emulators supports the 51LPC family of devices. Philips Semiconductors and emWare, Inc. have created the  LINK-51, an internet-enabled evaluation kit. The  LINK-51 comes with a demonstration board and a fully operational demonstration version of emWare's EMIT™ 3.0 Lite (Embedded Micro Internetworking Technology) gateway software. The  87LPC764 devices in the kit are programmed with the emMicro™ firmware that enables the user to control the device through the EMIT emGateway™ via a standard web browser. Philips Semiconductors is a founding member of emWare's Embed the Internet Alliance, created to support open standards for embedded device networking.

The  87LPC764 is available in 20-pin SOIC and PDIP packages and will be priced at US$1.15 in 10,000 piece quantities from Philips Semiconductors' distributors. Samples are available now and volume production will begin in April 1999.  The LINK-51 evaluation kit has a suggested retail price of US$79.95 and will also be available from Philips Semiconductors' distributors in April.

Philips Semiconductors is the world's leading supplier of the most popular 8-bit architecture, the  80C51, offering more than 100 derivatives. Cahners In-Stat Group, a high-technology market research firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, reported Philips Semiconductors'  80C51 sales of US$ 416 million in 1997, a 42 percent share of the  80C51 8-bit microcontroller market. Philips Semiconductors has recently extended this successful architecture into 16-bit performance with its XA. Now customers can preserve their software, development tools and technology investment in the  80C51 while capitalizing on the 16-bit performance requirements in a market expected to double in the next two years.

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the eighth largest semiconductor supplier in the world (according to Dataquest's preliminary 1998 ranking by sales). Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video, and mobile technology position the company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia and wireless communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by systems labs.