Extended family

A major extension of TI's comprehensive TMS370 8-bit microcontroller family now gives designers a variety of optimized choices for a growing number of embedded industrial and consumer applications.

The 135 released family members now feature higher functionality through a wider selection of memory sizes and types, multiple and more sophisticated timers, analog circuitry and other peripherals integrated on-chip.

New memory and peripherals

The TMS370 8-bit family now offers devices with:

2K to 48K bytes of read only memory (ROM) on-chip
Random access memory (RAM) from 128 bytes to 3.5 Kbytes
Wide selection of nonvolatile EPROM or EEPROM memory sizes
Single or multiple timers, including a programmable acquisition and control timer, which acts as a timer co-processor to offload some of the timing tasks from the device's CPU
Four-, eight- or 15-channel analog-to-digital converters
I/O ranges from 22 to 55 pins
One-time programmable (OTP) devices for 11 of the 13 sub-families

Service through manufacturing strength

Texas Instruments is able to offer more TMS370 microcontroller family members through its commitment to additional manufacturing capacity and efficiencies of its manufacturing processes. As a result, TI has also achieved one of the shortest lead times among major microcontroller manufacturers, less than half that of several other major suppliers. The company is dedicated to supplying the needs of microcontroller suppliers to provide low-cost ROM-based devices through distribution.

Unparalleled development support

Texas Instruments provides full support for the TMS370 family with a variety of development tools, beginning with a $99 PC-based starter kit. This cost-effective introduction to TMS370 development features a software simulator for debugging and break-point analysis in addition to a programming board. Development tools with increasing capabilities include a design kit for full-speed emulation and symbolic debugging, a compact development tool (CDT) capable of real-time, in-circuit emulation and an emulation workstation that provides breakpoint, trace and timing capa-bilities for complex system debug. All development tools support symbolic debugging in either assembly language or C source code.

Pricing and availability

The TMS370 8-bit microcontrollers are available today from TI and authorized distributors. The devices come in a variety of standard ceramic or plastic packages, including dual in-line packages (DIPs), leaded chip carriers (LCCs) and shrink dual in-line packages (SDIPs). Suggested resale pricing in quantities of 10,000 begins at less than $2 each.

June 1996, vol. 13, no. 4

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