The ST62 Family: legendary noise immunity at sub-Dollar prices

SGS-THOMSON Microelectronics has added seven new devices to its popular ST62 Family of low-cost, 8-bit Microcontrollers. These devices extend the product range to sub-Dollar SOP16 levels, while offering on-chip 8-bit multi-channel Analog to Digital Conversion. The ST62 Family now makes its legendary noise immunity available to even the lowest cost entry-level applications, thus opening up a substantial market segment to the benefits of Microcontroller solutions. Total system cost has never been lower.

All ST62 Family devices are available in One-Time-Programmable OTP versions for maximum flexibility and last minute programmability, as well as in ROM and EPROM versions. SGS-THOMSON's leadership in non-volatile memory technology allows it to offer yet another world first, by combining EEPROM and OTP on the same chip for optimized cost-effectiveness. OTP devices may be programmed directly in-circuit after board assembly for cost-effective production planning.

ST62 Family devices are particularly suitable for use in industrial, automotive and consumer products, where costs and board area must be minimized, such as ignition controls, window lift controllers, smoke and CO alarms, intelligent light dimmers and keyless entry systems. The core processor is optimized for cost-effective control applications and offers enhanced ESD protection, legendary noise immunity, freedom from latch-up, a code efficient instruction set and a six-level hardware stack. Five vectored interrupts are provided, including a non-maskable interrupt.

For every low to mid-range 8-bit MCU application there is now a member of the ST62 Family that closely matches the requirements, this means that the user only pays for the features which are actually needed in his product. ST62 family devices offer the lowest system costs by reducing to a bare minimum the need for external components.

ST62 Family devices operate from a wide supply voltage range: this allows them to be powered straight from battery supplies, or directly from the mains with a minimum of external components and without the need for voltage regulators. WAIT and STOP modes are available to reduce quiescent power consumption to negligible levels.

The ST6200, ST6201, ST6203, ST6208, ST6209, ST6253 and ST6263 devices, which are aimed at the most cost-sensitive applications, are housed in 16 or 20-pin SO and DIL packages and offer 1K to 2K bytes of program memory. All new devices contain the ST62 core processor, 64 bytes of data RAM, an 8-bit timer with 7-bit programmable prescaler and multi-functional individually programmable I/O ports, some featuring high-current buffers capable of driving LEDs or TRIACs directly.

Designing with the ST62 Family is fast and easy, thanks to a comprehensive range of low-cost development tools and Starter Kits, which conform fully with European Community "Electro Magnetic Compatibility" directives. The currently promoted ST6-Realizer®, a unique Windows®-based graphical software development system, is as easy to master as it is powerful: with the ST6-Realizer®, generating self-documenting ST62 application code is fast and painless. A fuzzy logic software development system is also available, in addition to the more conventional hardware and software support products, such as assembly language suites, low-cost hardware emulator, OTP/EPROM programmers and gang programmers.

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