K70 MCU Enhances HMI Applications with Integrated Graphics LCD Controller and Advanced GUI Software Development Platform

December 21, 2011, Seoul, Korea – Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL, www.freescale.co.kr ) today announced an ARM(R) Cortex™-M4-based microcontroller (MCU) designed for single-chip graphic LCD applications. The high-performance Kinetis K70 family targets applications requiring sophisticated graphic LCD user interfaces, advanced connectivity, and security features without incurring the high costs and power consumption of multi-chip designs.
The K70 is supported by the Freescale PEG (Portable Embedded Graphic) user interface graphics development suite, a comprehensive visual layout and design tool that accelerates the design process by enabling developers to create rich GUIs in a simple PC-based environment.
As more and more designers take advantage of the aesthetics, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of this product family, graphic LCD interfaces are rapidly replacing existing LED and segment LCD displays. The Kinetis K70 product family is an ideal solution for graphic LCD displays equipped with an integrated graphic LCD controller, 1MB flash memory, and 128KB SRAM, enabling the development of 8-bit QVGA resolution LCD panels without the cost and complexity of external program and frame buffer memory. If necessary, external memory can be used to support displays with up to 24-bit SVGA resolution. Using 120/150 MHz ARM Cortex-M4 cores, hardware floating-point units, and a crossbar architecture in the K70 family can also provide performance margins to manage the performance demands of graphics processing while managing the real-time control, communication, and connectivity functions typically required for HMI applications.
"While our current portfolio already offers many design options, the K70 is the most feature-rich Kinetis family to date, adding a new dimension of performance, memory, and integration. The next logically sound step to evolve Kinetis capabilities was graphic LCD performance. This allows developers to quickly and affordably add more aesthetically pleasing and feature-rich user interfaces to their designs," said Geoff Lees, Vice President of Freescale's Industrial and Mixed Market MCU business unit.
Powerful graphic LCD implementation
Designers can use Freescale’s PEG development suite to rapidly create GUIs with high color depth and multi-layers while working closely with real-time operating systems for their applications. Furthermore, existing PEG applications can be migrated from other architectures to the Kinetis K70 suite. WindowsBuilder™, a PEG design tool, allows users to create PC screen controls and GUI layouts that are identical to what will appear in the final product using a simple drag-and-drop interface. The resulting C++ source code is automatically generated and can be immediately compiled and linked to the final application, minimizing development costs and shortening time-to-market.
Freescale also provides free eGUI graphics drivers for smaller resource Kinetis MCUs and 'smart' LCD displays. eGUI, a powerful object style driver that includes touchscreen support and font and bitmap conversion utilities, requires only a small amount of memory and can operate independently or on Freescale's free MQX real-time operating system.
All Kinetis MCUs are supported in Freescale’s CodeWarrior 10.x IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which includes the Process Expert automatic code generator, as well as in scalable ARM-linked systems including tools from IAR Systems, Keil, Atollic, and Segger. Several newly released Freescale Tower System Modules, including the new TWR-LCD-RGB peripheral module, provide a platform for rapid evaluation and hardware prototyping.
New feature options
The 120/150 MHz MCU adds several new features to the existing K10, K20, and K60 families while maintaining pin and software compatibility.
 Fast CPU Performance: Enhanced computing processing speeds with up to 150MHz CPU speed and improved cache performance, providing high-level CoreMark results on Cortex M microcontrollers.
 Floating-point Unit – Reduces computation time and increases system accuracy, expanding various data-intensive applications such as motor drives, audio processing, and digital filtering.
 Dedicated Motor Control Peripherals – High-speed 16-bit ADC with fault control and programmable delay blocks, and multiple timers support driving stepper, BLDC, and PMAC motors using algorithms (with or without sensors).
 High-speed USB Host/Device/OTG (On-The-Go) - Supports a data transfer rate of 480 Mbps using an external ULPI transceiver
 DRAM and NAND Flash Controllers - Capable of connecting DDR, DDR2, and low-power DDR memory, as well as current and future ECC NAND memory up to 32-bit.
Supply situation and prices
Engineering samples of the Kinetis K70 120 MHz MCU with 1MB flash memory are currently available for purchase in 256 MAPBGA packages. The recommended resale price for the K70 120 MHz MCU with 1MB flash memory starts at $10.09 (USD) per 10,000 units. Additional products in this family will be available starting in early 2012, with mass production scheduled for May. The Tower System TWR-K70F120M module is currently available for order, while the TWR-K60F120M and TWR-LCD-RGB modules are scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2012. More details can be found at www.freescale.com/kinetis .