Infineon introduces the XMC4000, a family of 32-bit MCU products for industrial applications

     Infineon Technologies has introduced a new family of XMC4000 32-bit microcontrollers using ARM® Cortex™-M4 processors. Infineon has used more than 30 years of experience in developing application-optimized peripherals with excellent real-time capabilities to design the XMC4000 product family, which combines the benefits of a widely adopted kernel architecture. The XMC4000 product family addresses three major trends in industrial applications. It helps improve energy efficiency, supports multiple communication standards, and reduces software complexity during development. The XMC4000 family of products targets applications such as electric drives, solar inverters and manufacturing and building automation.

     Peter Bauer, CEO of Infineon Technologies AG, said: "Energy conservation plays an important role when it comes to meeting the rapidly growing energy needs of the world's growing population. With our market-leading power semiconductor devices and today's launch of the XMC4000, a new family of ARM-based microcontrollers, Infineon is creating the conditions for improved energy efficiency in many industrial applications."

     XMC stands for "Cross-Market Microcontroller". The name means the configurable XMC4000 product family is suitable for a wide range of industrial applications. The product family fills the performance gap between the 16-bit XE166 family and the 32-bit TriCore™ family. The XMC4000 family has been carefully designed to enable the development of scalable and compatible solutions with a high degree of software reuse. The XMC4000 product family consists of five series: XMC4100, XMC4200, XMC4400, XMC4500 and XMC4700. The differences between these families are mainly reflected in kernel frequency, memory capacity, peripheral functions, and the amount of I/O.

     The XMC4000 family of devices is equipped with a powerful CPU subsystem, DSP capabilities, a floating-point arithmetic unit, a fast Flash with 22 nanosecond read time and error check (ECC), large capacity SRAM, and extended peripherals. Extensive peripherals include a new timer module, up to four parallel 12-bit analog-to-digital converters (sampling rate 70 nanoseconds, conversion time 500 nanoseconds), up to two 12-bit analog-to-digital converters, up to four high-resolution PWM channels (150 ps), an integrated ∑-Δ demodulator module and a touch key module. The XMC4000 family of devices includes an IEEE 1588-compliant Ethernet MAC (Ethernet Media Access Control with timestamp), USB 2.0, CAN, and SD/MMC interfaces. And up to six universal serial communication channels - with software configurable as UART, SPI, Quad SPI, IIC, IIS or LIN for powerful communication capabilities. In addition, the XMC4000 family of devices is equipped with a fast external bus interface that supports synchronous standards such as SDRAM or Burst Flash, as well as asynchronous standards such as SRAM, NAND Flash and NOR Flash.

     The integrated development environment DAVE™ 3 enables designers to quickly and easily develop application-oriented software. This Eclipse-based development environment with the free GNU compiler, debugger, and data display program can be extended with third-party tools. DAVE 3 also supports automatic code generation based on predefined software components (so-called "DAVE Apps"). DAVE Apps can be configured in a user-friendly manner through a graphical user interface. As a result, DAVE 3 ensures that developers of a wide range of industrial applications take full advantage of the XMC4000 microcontroller, thus greatly reducing the programming workload. The generated code can be compiled, debugged, or displayed directly with DAVE 3, or imported into third-party tools for further processing. Infineon works with more than 20 partners. These partners provide additional practical development tools, software solutions, training and consulting services for the XMC4000 family.

     Dr. Stephan Zizala, Senior Director of the Microcontroller Business at Infineon Technologies AG's Industrial and Diversified Electronics Markets Division, said: "Our XMC4000 family combines optimized peripherals with the benefits of the ARM architecture, which is widely used in industrial applications. Our industrial electronics customers benefit from our years of application experience. Based on this experience, we have achieved convincing innovations: flexible timers, fast analog-to-digital converters, fast and durable Flash and extended temperature ranges up to 125 °C. The DAVE development environment, which is freely available, allows developers to quickly and easily familiarize themselves with the XMC4000 family of products."

     Infineon introduced the first 32-bit XMC4000 family of devices, belonging to the XMC4500 family. These microcontrollers feature a 120-MHz CPU, up to 1MB of embedded flash memory, 160KB of RAM, and a wide range of peripherals and interface features. The peripherals include four fast parallel 12-bit analog-to-digital converter modules, two 12-bit analog-to-digital converters, four ∑-Δ demodulator modules and six capture/comparison units (CCU4 and CCU8), two positioning interface modules, and a module with eight touch buttons. Communication features include Ethernet, USB, and SD/MMC interfaces. In addition, the XMC4000 family of devices is equipped with three CAN modules, six universal serial communication channels and an external bus interface for communication. Available packages include LQFP-144, LQFP-100, and LFBGA-100.

     Samples of the XMC4500 series and DAVE 3 will be available from March 2012. Production of the XMC4500 series will begin in May 2012. To provide development support, Infineon offers a modular design kit. With this kit, the base design board can be connected to up to 3 other application boards, depending on the specific application requirements. Samples of the XMC4400 series, XMC4200 Series and XMC4100 series are expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2012. The unit price of the XMC4000 family of microcontrollers ranges from €1 to €7, depending on the product and package chosen.