OREANDA-NEWS. Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced that it has enhanced its current “TX Family” of ARMcore-based microcontrollers and started to develop  three series of microcontrollers, “TXZ0 series”, “TXZ3 series”, and “TXZ4 series”, as part of the “TXZ™ Family, ” a new family of flash microcontrollers that support low-power consumption and high-speed operation for IoT and M2M ecosystems. Sample shipments of “TXZ3 series” will start in the second quarter of 2016.

Toshiba has also started to develop microcontrollers with embedded non-volatile memory (NVM) that have high-level compatibility with analog circuits. Sample shipments will start in the fourth quarter of 2015.

Toshiba has developed products based on ARM Cortex-M processors since launching the “TX03 series” based on ARM Cortex-M3 core in 2009. In 2011, the company expanded its line-up with the launch of the “TX00 series,” based on ARM Cortex-M0 core, and the “TX04 series”, based on ARM Cortex-M4F core. Used in combination with peripheral circuits that take advantage of Toshiba’s original high precision analog technologies. Products in these series have been widely adopted in many applications, including motors, precision instruments, power meters, health care devices and OA equipment.

The “TXZ Family” now under development will meet market needs for low power consumption systems by integrating the ultra-low power design technologies adopted in Toshiba’s “TZ Series” of ApP Lite™ application processor family for IoT solutions into current “TX Family” microcontrollers.

The “TXZ Family” will be fabricated on a newly developed embedded flash memory process based on 65nm logic process. The products will reduce power consumption by 60% compared to functionally equivalent products.

The first product group will be the “TMPM3H”, part of the “TXZ3 series” based on ARM Cortex-M3 core. It offers 30 products characterized by small packages with pin counts of 100 pins or fewer, and a low flash memory capacity of 128KB with standard circuits. Toshiba expects the products to lower power consumption for entire systems, targeting 100uA/MHz or lower. Sample shipments will start in the second quarter of 2016.

Toshiba will continue to broaden the group line-up. It will launch a second product group of high-speed products based on the ARM Cortex-M4F core, and a third product group featuring ultra-low power consumption products, based the same core.

In its line-up of products that require high-level compatibility with analog circuits, suited for applications such as power management and motor control, Toshiba has started to develop products fabricated with a newly developed NVM embedded process that adopts single-poly multi-time programmable cells on its 130nm logic process technology. Sample shipments will start in the fourth quarter of 2015.

In reinforcing its microcontroller portfolio and meeting a wide variety of market needs, Toshiba aims to launch 300 products: 180 products by 2017 and a further 120 by 2018.