Nuvoton recently announced the M463 CAN FD/USB HS series and M467 Ethernet/Crypto series of microcontrollers.

This series of products is adopted in various applications and is a key component in IoT gateways, industrial control, communications, data centers, smart grid control, white goods motor control, small TFT LCDs, and TinyML (machine learning) products.

Nuvoton claims the M463 is suitable for gaming applications, emphasizing that it supports widely used real-time operating systems (RTOS) and GUI libraries, and provides sample code for use cases.

Although the M463 and M467 share many functional similarities, such as the Arm Cortex-M4F, they each have specialized functions suited to different purposes.

The M463 focuses on CAN FD (Controller Area Network Flexible Data Rate) applications for sensor and control data, while the M467 has enhanced on-chip support for network communications and robust hardware encryption requirements.

■ NuMicro M463, CAN Solution

The NuMicro M463 CAN FD/USB HS series 32-bit microcontrollers are based on the Arm Cortex-M4F core with a DSP instruction set and a single-precision (4-byte) floating point unit (FPU).

It provides up to 256KB of flash memory and up to 128KB of SRAM, and includes hardware-based parity checking.

It supports numerous digital and analog peripherals on-chip, and provides △two CAN FD buses to reduce BOM cost △USB high-speed OTG △up to 24 channels of 16-bit PWM △UART △SPI/I2S △Quad-SPI △I²C △analog comparator △up to 16 channels of 12-bit SAR ADC.

The M463 core operates at up to 200 MHz, has a wide operating voltage range from 1.7 V to 3.6 V, and an operating temperature range from -40 °C to 125 °C. Active power consumption is 135μA/MHz at 25°C/3.3V, and it has several low-power modes and power-saving features, including wake-up capability for various external inputs.

NuMicro M467, Security and Network Connectivity

The NuMicro M467 Ethernet/Crypto series is a 32-bit microcontroller based on the Arm Cortex-M4F core, supporting a DSP instruction set, a single-precision (4-byte) floating-point unit (FPU), and Ethernet 10/100 MAC.

It provides up to 1024KB of flash memory with a dual-bank architecture and up to 512KB of SRAM including Firmware Over-The-Air (FOTA) updates and hardware-based parity checks.

The chip provides analog peripherals including four analog comparators, three 12-bit SAR ADCs (up to 28 channels), and two 12-bit DACs.
The M467 Ethernet/Crypto series supports: △Ethernet 10/100 MAC △Hardware crypto engine △Hardware key storage △True Random Number Generator (TRNG) △Programmable audio PLL △4 CAN FD buses △USB HS OTG △USB FS OTG △Up to 24 channels of 16-bit PWM △10 UARTs △4 SPI/I2S interfaces △2 Quad-SPI △5 I²C buses △4 Quadrature Encoder Interfaces (QEI).

The M467 series operates at up to 200 MHz, features an operating voltage range of 1.7 V to 3.6 V, and an operating temperature range of -40 °C to 105 °C. During operation, it consumes only 175 μA/MHz at 25°C/3.3 V with peripherals turned off.

It has several low-power modes and power-saving features built in, including wake-up capabilities for various external inputs, and it also includes an Ethernet Media Access Controller (EMAC).

■ Protecting code, data, and users

Essential security features for the product include: Execute-Only Memory (XOM) functionality to prevent confidential code from being copied; hardware secure boot; hardware key storage; hardware AES-256 encryption acceleration; pseudo-random number generator (PRNG); and true random number generator (TRNG).

In addition to AES-256, the M467 series provides ECC-571, SHA-512, HMAC-512, RSA-4096, and SM2 accelerators, adding a wider range of hardware encryption acceleration.

■ Flexible packaging possibilities

They are available in a variety of LQFP and QFN package sizes, differing primarily by the number of dedicated I/O pins. The M463 has 48 to 128 pins, while the M467 has 64 to 176 pins. Variants are also available with exposed thermal pads (EPADs) for specific cooling requirements.

This allows users to select the package type that best suits their design needs or scale up or down with minimal effort. Except for the number of I/O pins and dimensions, virtually all other features remain the same for each packaging type.

Nuvoton provides the NuMaker-M467HJ evaluation board for the M467, the NuMaker-M463KG evaluation board for the M463, and the Nuvoton Nu-Link debugger. Third-party IDEs that support these two products include Keil MDK, IAR EWARM, and Eclipse IDE with the GNU GCC compiler.

It supports real-time operating systems (RTOS) such as Mbed OS, Amazon FreeRTOS, and Zephyr, and supported GUI libraries include emWin and LVGL.

Sample code includes TinyML applications for keyword recognition, license plate recognition, image classification, visual wake word (person detection), and gesture detection. Sample code for an electric bike dashboard HMI/GUI and data upload to the Internet/cloud via TLS are also provided in the emWin Appwizard.