Breadth of Product Family, Depth of Technical Support, Industry's Fastest Delivery Times Demonstrate TI's Commitment to Microcontrollers

The extension of TI's product family parallels the increasing use of MCUs in a broader range of everyday applications. Today, a typical person comes into contact with more than 40 different microcontrollers per day. And the growth of the microcontroller market is expected to continue. Dataquest predicts a 21.7 percent annual growth rate through the end of the century.

From the very beginning of its development program, TI's microcontrollers were designed to be highly reliable, durable, efficient and cost effective. For years, TI MCUs have been qualified for and are used in many cost-sensitive applications that require a high degree of functionality, such as engine control and anti-lock brake systems in automobiles. Over the last decade, new features and greater capabilities have been integrated into TI's microcontrollers. And with each new feature, the TMS370 family provides solutions to a wider range of applications. A major infusion of new capabilities into the TMS370 family took place in early 1996.

Greater functionality is now provided through a broader range of memory densities as well as new timers with greater sophistication, a wider selection of I/O options, additional analog-to-digital converter capabilities and more. With 135 devices, the TMS370 microcontroller family now represents one of the broadest 8-bit microcontroller product lines in the industry, serving the needs of all microcontroller market segments.

The microcontroller manufacturing process has received much attention from TI over the years, allowing the company to achieve a ROM-based MCU delivery lead-time of eight to 12 weeks, one of the shortest in the industry. To achieve this fast turn-around, the manufacturing and business processes have been streamlined, and production capacity has been expanded significantly. TI consistently exceeds customer expectations and its on-time delivery record, nearly 95 percent, is one of the best among semiconductor vendors.

An Advanced Architecture

The 135 different devices in the TMS370 family are based on a register-to-register architecture which enables higher system throughput by avoiding the bottlenecks found in accumulator-based architectures. A register-to-register architecture allows application developers to write efficient software, which in turn reduces the memory requirements of the system and slashes hardware costs. For instance, a simple addition operation on a TMS370 MCU requires one instruction and only three bytes of code space. In contrast, accumulator-based microcontrollers require three instructions and nine bytes of code space to perform the same operation.

The TMS370 product line is divided into 13 sub-families, each of which is configured with a different base of capabilities such as timers, serial ports, analog-to-digital converters, on-chip EEPROM, I/O configurations, memory options, types of packages and others features. Every device in the family can serve a different set of user requirements. The wide selection of peripherals integrated on-chip allows designers to closely match the requirements of the application with the capabilities of a particular TMS370 microcontroller. The developer can then optimize the system's design for low cost and high performance, which makes the end-product competitive in its marketplace.

Committed to Support

A comprehensive set of cost-effective PC-based development tools has been assembled by TI to simplify the embedding of microcontrollers into any application. An introductory starter kit for less than $100 provides an entry-level evaluation tool that includes an assembler/linker, software simulator for symbolic debugging and break point analysis, and an EPROM programming board. A design kit features additional functionality such as full-speed emulation of most TMS370 devices as well as a prototyping area for interfacing to the microcontroller.

A compact development tool (CDT) supports all devices in the TMS370 family and is capable of real-time, in-circuit emulation, program counter trace and EPROM/EEPROM programming. A high-end emulator workstation features real-time and single-step execution, symbolic debugging, extensive breakpoint analysis, trace and timing capabilities. The emulator workstation (XDS) has a windowing user interface that is driven by menus and function key commands.

Once a design project begins, TI supports the effort with a technical hotline staffed by microcontroller application experts. Technical training workshops give designers hands-on exposure to the TMS370 family, and an electronic bulletin board features the latest application information and specification updates. Product information is also available on the TI microcontroller home page on the world wide web ( http://www.ti.com/sc/micro).

The TMS370 family is supported by extensive technical documentation, including a user's guide, data book, application book and an easy-to-use selection guide. The TMS370 application book simplifies the designer's development task by including typical circuit designs and sample programs for frequently used routines. The sample programs are public domain software and available free of charge to all designers on TI's bulletin board service.

Future Microcontroller Generations

Higher levels of performance and greater integration will dominate future generations of TI microcontrollers. To meet these requirements, the TMS370C8 and TMS370C16 will be based on TI's PRISM process of ready-to-use functional modules. The TMS370C8 will offer upward compatibility from the TMS370 and provide two to four times the performance. The TMS370C16 will be a new family of 16-bit microcontrollers from Texas Instruments. TI is also developing the 32-bit RISC TMS470 family, which is based on the ARM Thumb architecture licensed from ARM Ltd.

FIGURE 1: 40 microcontrollers in a typical day

Morning
Alarm clocks	Coffee Makers	Washer/Dryers Irons
CD Players	Home Thermostats	AM/FM Radios
Exercise Equipment	Home Security Systems
Commuting
Anti-lock Brakes	Parking Meters	Keyless Door Locks
Car Stereos	Auto Security Systems	Automatic Toll Gate Systems
Vehicle Emissions Control	Heat & AC Systems	Traffic Monitoring Systems
Trip Computers	Engine Control Systems
Working
Telephones	Computers	Computer Scanners
Calculators	Computer Keyboards	Automatic Parking Gates
Computer Tape Drives	Electronic Daytimers	Cruise ControlPrinters
Evening
Televisions	Microwaves	Credit Card Readers
Video Games	VCRs	Smart Credit Cards
Store Security Systems	Camcorders

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