NXP introduces integrated LCD support to ARM7 microcontroller family
LPC2478 and LPC2470 microcontrollers support concurrent operations of high-bandwidth peripherals with significant power savings
NXP, the independent semiconductor company founded by Philips, today announced its new LPC2478 microcontroller – the industry’s only ARM7™ Flash-based MCU offering integrated LCD support – as well as a Flashless version, the LPC2470. The new microcontrollers feature two ARM® high-speed buses (AHB) for the concurrent operation of multiple high-bandwidth peripherals, including LCD, 10/100 Ethernet, USB host/OTG/device, and two CAN channels. Offering significant savings in cost, area and power consumption, the new NXP microcontrollers are ideal for a wide range of industrial, consumer, retail and medical systems using LCD panels and requiring network or Internet connectivity.
“LCD panels with small displays are now ubiquitous in our daily lives – from mobile phones and portable media players to car entertainment, GPS and point-of-sale systems. LCD screens are also increasingly common in a wide range of industrial and medical equipment that need to support high-speed communications functions,” said Geoff Lees, general manager, microcontroller product line, NXP Semiconductors. “Our newest microcontrollers, the LPC2478 and LPC2470, offer an innovative, cost-effective, low-power solution for LCD applications and are an important addition to NXP’s extensive portfolio of ARM-based MCUs.”
The NXP LPC2478 and LPC2470 microcontrollers can support most static LCD displays – up to 1024 x 768 pixels, 15 gray-scale monochromes and up to 24 bits per pixel true color TFT panels. For embedded system designers, the LCD implementation allows code execution on-chip and minimizes bus contention with frame data retrieval from external memory. In addition, the new microcontrollers provide 512KB, fast 128-bit wide embedded Flash with built-in error correction, for maximum reliability. The LPC2478 and LPC2470 require only single voltage (3.3V) power supply and offer a unique real-time clock (RTC) with 2KB of battery backed-up SRAM, allowing the device to consume only small amounts of current in power-down while quickly waking up with an external interrupt or at user-determined intervals.
The large array of peripherals supported by the NXP LPC2478 and LPC2470 microcontrollers in addition to the LCD interface include Ethernet, USB host/OTG/device, two CAN channels, four UARTs, three I2C buses, two-input and two-output I2S, SPI, SSP, RTC, ADC/DAC, SD/MMC card interface, external interfaces to SRAM, SDRAM and NOR Flash.
Availability
The NXP LPC2478 and LPC2470 microcontrollers will be available in Q4 2007, with development tools demonstrated at Embedded World 2007 in Nuremberg, Germany (Booth #12-442). Both devices will be available in 208 TFBGA and LQFP packages. Further information on NXP’s extensive portfolio of ARM-based microcontrollers is available at: http://www.nxp.com/microcontrollers.
About NXP
NXP is a top 10 semiconductor company founded by Philips more than 50 years ago. Headquartered in Europe, the company has 37,000 employees working in 26 countries across the world. NXP creates semiconductors, system solutions and software that deliver better sensory experiences in mobile phones, personal media players, TVs, set-top boxes, identification applications, cars and a wide range of other electronic devices. News from NXP is located at www.nxp.com.