Toshiba Expands Its TXZ+ M4K Motor Control Microcontroller Range, Offering Up to 1MB of Code Flash

Toshiba has announced eight new entries in its M4K group of TXZ+ 32-bit microcontrollers, targeting motor control projects with increased flash memory — up to 1MB, model-dependent, from the current maximum of 256kB.

Building on the company's existing TXZ+ M4K parts, which include a programmable motor driver for synchronous control of up to three motors, the new parts include a single Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller core running at up to 160MHz and a choice of 512kB or 1MB of code flash memory alongside 32kB of data flash — a big increase from the current models' 256kB code flash upper limit.

The parts also include 64kB of static RAM (SRAM), a 32-bit "advanced encoder", a vector acceleration engine dubbed the A-VE+, and three high-speed high-resolution 12-bit analog to digital converters (ADCs). There are three or four UART buses, model-depending, two I2C/EI2C buses, two TSPI buses, three operational amplifiers, a voltage detection circuit, 30- or 32-channel direct memory access (DMA), and 51- or 87-pin input/output connectivity with 20 or 32 external interrupt pins depending on model.

The 1MB variants come with an added feature for safe over-the-air updates, too: the flash memory can be split into two 512kB areas where one is read while new instructions are programmed into the other in parallel, something not possible with the 512kB and smaller parts. All models include flash longevity rated up to 100,000 erase-rewrite cycles.

The upgrade to the M4K line has not, however, been carried through to the M4M range — similar microcontrollers also targeting motor control applications but that offer a CAN bus controller. That, Toshiba promises, will be addressed in a future M4M line update — though, at the time of writing, no launch date had been provided.

More information on the new parts is available on the Toshiba website; pricing is available on application.