Renesas launches new 32-bit RX13T product group with higher efficiency and lower BOM cost

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a global supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced the launch of the RX13T product group of 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) that can perform efficient inverter control of compact motors for fans or pumps in consumer electronics and industrial applications, replacing the switch-type control commonly used in traditional motors. These include factory equipment that focuses on energy efficiency, such as drainage and water supply pumps and cooling fans for data servers; and battery-powered home appliances that require long operating time, such as power tools and vacuum cleaners.

The new RX13T product group integrates rich functions optimized for single-motor inverter control, reduces the number of chip peripheral components, and provides low-pin-count packaging, bringing higher efficiency and lower BOM cost to motor control.

The RX13T MCUs are the first MCUs to run at 32MHz and feature a floating-point unit (FPU) (Note 1), and they inherit the powerful features of the RX Family, such as the inverter control timer (MTU3), 12-bit A/D converter, programmable gain amplifier (PGA), and data flash memory, enabling brushless DC motor control on a single chip.

“The 32-bit RX Family has a rich lineup and has been focused on motor control since its introduction 10 years ago,” said Sakae Ito, Vice President of the IoT Platform Business Division at Renesas Electronics. “The RX13T demonstrates Renesas’ ongoing commitment to helping customers around the world achieve energy and cost benefits in every type of motor control solution. As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the RX, we are committed to delivering continued product innovation to serve our customers and partners who are developing solutions using the RX Family.”

The RX13T product group is the first product in the RX family to adopt the compact 32-pin LQFP package and 48-pin LFQFP package. In addition, smaller 32-pin 5mm x 5mm and 48-pin 7mm x 7mm QFN package versions are also planned. It is highly compatible with existing products such as RX23T and RX24T in terms of inverter timer and pin assignment, allowing users to easily reuse existing hardware and software design resources.

Renesas has equipped the RX13T CPU card as part of the development environment, supporting the 24V motor control evaluation kit (with motor). With the emulator function, users do not need an additional on-chip debugging emulator, and can quickly start the evaluation by simply connecting the CPU card to the PC via a USB cable. In addition, motor control sample code for sensorless vector control is provided, and the Renesas Motor Workbench 2.0 motor control development support tool is supported to help developers quickly evaluate and develop motor control applications.

Key features of the RX13T product group:

RXv1 CPU core, 32 MHz operating frequency, performance up to 98.56 CoreMark (Note 2).

The on-chip FPU eliminates the need for overflow handling when performing fixed-point arithmetic operations and helps improve software code readability.

Supports a wide power supply voltage from 2.7V to 5.5V; support for 5V operating voltage can greatly improve noise immunity performance.

Contains the MTU3 timer module for inverter control. The timer counter clock runs at the same frequency as the high-speed clock of the CPU, making it easy to generate complementary PWM outputs with dead time required for inverter control.

A dedicated channel sample and hold function (for three channels) allows simultaneous sampling of three-phase current values, eliminating the need for error correction and reducing software burden.

With 128KB or 64KB on-chip code flash, 12KB on-chip SRAM, 4KB on-chip data flash, no external EEPROM is required.

Rich on-chip peripheral functions such as three-channel PGA, three-channel comparator and high-speed on-chip resonator (HOCO, with an accuracy of ±1.0%) to reduce peripheral component requirements.

Supports operating temperature range of -40°C to 85°C and -40°C to 105°C. Meets the growing demand for high temperature environment operation in industrial and consumer electronics fields.