8bit microcontrollers run faster

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Jul 18, 2001

Steatite has introduced three new general-purpose 8bit microcontrollers featuring 21 bidirectional I/O lines and a powerful RISC-like instruction set.

Steatite has introduced three new general-purpose 8bit microcontrollers featuring 21 bidirectional I/O lines and a powerful RISC-like instruction set.

Further enhanced features include increased stack levels, low voltage reset, programmable timer prescaler, programmable frequency divider and buzzer driver pins.

The new devices, HT48R10A, HT48R30A and HT48R50A, feature program memory capacity of 1, 2 and 4Kbit, respectively.

The family of MCUs, developed by Holtek, replaces the HT48R11/HT48R12, HT48R31/HT48R32 and HT48R50/HT48R51 devices, retaining pin compatibility between the two generations.

Noise immunity and operating frequency are also increased in the new family, which now operates at up to 8MHz.

Hardware designers also have a greater choice of pull-up resistors when working with the new devices.

Further features include 64 x 8bit data memory RAM, watchdog timer, on-chip external crystal RC oscillator and internal RC oscillator.

Potential applications include remote controllers, fan or light controllers, washing machine controllers, scales, toys and many other types of subsystem controller.

Power saving features include a halt mode that supports continuous timer operation controlled by an external RTC oscillator input.

The previous generation MCUs could not implement a timer function during halt mode.

The 63-instruction set includes a 14bit table read instruction, four-level subrouting nesting and a powerful bit manipulation instruction.

All instructions are executed in a maximum of two machine cycles.

Packaging options include 24-pin skinny DIP and SOP packages for HT48R10A-1, 24 and 28-pin skinny DIP and SOP packages for HT48R30A-1, while 28-pin skinny DIP and 48-pin SSOP options are available for HT48R50A-1.

The family is supported by the HT-IDE2000 development system, which includes real time emulation, memory/register modification, hardware execution breakpoints and trace analysers as part of a powerful development and debug suite.