July saw the launch of Infineon Technologies' XC2300 microcontroller family.

Specifically targeted at the automotive market the XC2300 MCU provides 32-bit performance & a comprehensive peripheral set, designed to meet the future safety needs of the market.

The CPU boasts an 80 million instructions per second (MIPS) core running at 80 MHZ. On board there is between 128KB -1.6MB of flash memory, depending on which flavour you choose, all capable of being run at less than 60 mA at maximum performance (80 Hz). This not only provides low power consumption benefits, but reduces overall system costs since there will only be the need for tiny voltage regulators.

The USIC (universal serial interface channel) can be harnessed in a number of ways, as a UART (Universal Asynchronous Receive Transmit), LIN (Local Interconnect Network), buffered SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), IIC (Inter-IC) Bus, or IIS (Inter-IC-Sound) interface, offering a number of possibilities to developers.

High performance can also be seen through the two parallel A/D converters, offering up to 24 channels, optional data pre-processing & 1.2 µs conversion time. The A/D converters also have built-in safety features to detect broken connection in addition to the ability to synchronise the two converters to redundantly sample incoming signals.

Introducing this range allows Infineon to present a complete chip solution for airbag systems & complex power-steering applications to automotive manufacturers. The range also carries the potential to be certified against the new SIL3 (Safety Integrity Level) standard (IEC 61508). This standard for safety systems is presently being discussed by the automotive industry & is set to roll-out across Europe in the beginning of 2008.
The XC2300 family is supported by the full suite of development tools, including evaluation boards, debuggers, compilers & documentation.

For more information please visit Infineon­ [www.infineon.com]