Dual-bus MCUs accelerate communications

ARM7-based microcontroller has dual high-speed buses for simultaneous communications operations.

NXP Semiconductors has announced the industry's first ARM7-based microcontroller (MCU) series with dual high-speed buses for simultaneous communications operations.

The NXP LPC2300 and LPC2400 are the only ARM7 MCUs with two ARM high-speed buses (AHB) enabling simultaneous operation of high-bandwidth peripherals such as Ethernet, USB On-The-Go (OTG), USB Host, CAN, SDRAM and on-chip Flash.

The NXP LPC2400 is also the only ARM7 MCU with two-port USB Host capability permitting new advances for multiple communications applications.

"The explosive growth of Ethernet in the industrial networking and infotainment markets has created tremendous demand for high-performance 32bit MCUs with Ethernet and other high-bandwidth communications peripherals", said Geoff Lees, General Manager, Microcontroller Product Line, NXP Semiconductors.

"NXP is the first to fulfill this need with the only ARM7-based microcontroller series that can perform multiple high-speed communications operations simultaneously".

"The NXP LPC2300 and LPC2400 will allow designers more freedom for innovation in industrial networking environments".

The dual AHB buses and three independent direct memory access engines allow multiple high-bandwidth peripherals to operate at the same time without overwhelming the bus and improve the worst case by over 50%.

This makes the NXP LPC2300 and LPC2400 ideal for a wide range of high-performance communications applications such as industrial networking, infotainment, consumer and medical devices, and point-of-sale equipment.

The NXP LPC2300 and LPC2400 are also the first ARM7 MCUs with a real-time clock (RTC) with 2Kbyte of battery-backed SRAM, which allows the RTC to continue running even when the chip's power is shut down.

The large array of peripherals available on both the NXP LPC2300 and LPC2400 include two AHB buses, Ethernet, two CAN controllers, four UARTs, SPI, SSP, three I2C buses, I2S, RTC, ADC/DAC and SD/MMC Card interface.

The NXP LPC2400 also includes USB OTG integrated with two-port host capability, and external interfaces to SDRAM and NOR Flash.

These two microcontrollers further strengthen NXP's comprehensive portfolio of best-in-class ARM-based microcontrollers, making it the most comprehensive collection in the industry.

The NXP LPC2300 microcontroller is available immediately.

The NXP LPC2400 microcontroller will be available in November 2006.

The LPC2300 will be shown at the ARM Developers' Conference in Santa Clara, California, from 3rd to 5th October 2006, on Booth 612.

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