"The MPC500 family has had great success in applications from helicopter controls to global positioning systems," said Franz Fink, general manager of Motorola's 32-Bit Embedded Controller Division. "As the long-standing leader in Flash MCUs and single-chip 32-bit embedded solutions, Motorola is committed to continual innovation while expanding this product family to help customers improve existing systems and enable completely new applications."

"Thirty-two-bit MCUs are gaining in popularity in a number of control and performance intensive applications in the automotive, aerospace, robotics and industrial market," said Tony Massimini, chief of technology for Semico Research Corp. "Building on its success in the automotive industry, Motorola is meeting a real market need with the MPC500 family by providing cost competitive, Flash-based 32-Bit MCUs for other demanding markets in which systems require real-time control and complex calculations."

Since its introduction with the award-winning MPC555**, the MPC500 family has rapidly gained acceptance throughout North America, Europe and Japan as the leading microcontroller architecture in automotive and industrial applications. Each member of the growing MPC500 family features a 32-bit RISC core, compliant with the PowerPC instruction set architecture, as well as a floating-point unit. The MPC500 devices offer a variety of memory size options and I/O peripherals, including time processor units, CAN interface modules and queued analog-to-digital converters, among others. Code compression is available on the 562, 564 and 566 devices, which extends the amount of available program space by allowing program code to be compressed by as much as 50 percent.

On-Chip Flash Memory

The flagship devices of the MPC500 family, the MPC565 and MPC566, are the industry's first MCUs to offer 1Mbyte of embedded Flash memory, which gives designers the flexibility of in-circuit and in-application programmability and re-programmability. The 1Mbyte of internal Flash is divided into 2 blocks of 512 Kbytes. Because the memory is configured into two separate blocks, program code can be executed from one block of Flash while programming into the other. With the code compression offered on the 566, up to 2 Mbytes of program code can be compressed to fit into the 1Mbyte of embedded Flash.

Multiple Time Processor Units

With its multiple on-chip time processor units (TPU), the MPC500 family has the ability to coordinate many inputs and outputs from sensors, actuators and motors simultaneously. The TPU has a dedicated micro-engine that operates independently of the CPU, thus freeing the CPU to execute other instructions. In robotics, for example, one MPC565 is capable of coordinating many motors controlling a robotic arm, which can number close to 25 in some cases. Another example is the ability of the MPC565 to control multiple functions in printing presses. One MPC565 MCU is engineered to be able to control the operation of the rollers, paper tension and ink mix as compared to alternative scenarios where more than one MCU may be needed.

In addition to the industrial control applications described above, the MPC500 family is also used in a variety of Global Positioning Systems (GPS), ranging from high-velocity, fast acceleration aircraft applications to low-speed, high precision agriculture applications. In avionics, the MPC500 family is a popular choice for demanding aircraft applications that must process navigation data signals transmitted from satellites, as well as receive and produce differential GPS corrections. In agriculture, the MPC500 family is emerging as the embedded intelligence behind various precision-farming applications. Also called site-specific management, precision farming is the practice of tailoring crop and soil management to meet the conditions at specified locations on the field. The MPC500 devices are used in these GPS applications to map the field and deliver precise applications of fertilizers, water and other nutrients to the crops.

Integrated Floating Point Unit

One feature giving the MPC500 family such broad appeal is the integrated Floating Point Unit (FPU), which allows the MPC500 devices to easily handle applications requiring complex, real-time control. The FPU maintains the precision of the results of complex mathematical calculations, making it a popular choice in advanced applications such as those described above.

     Additional Features of the MPC500 Family
     Features include:

     -- 40 MHz or 56 MHz core compliant with the PowerPC instruction set
        architecture

     -- 26 to 56 Kbytes of SRAM

     -- Queued Serial Multi-Channel Modules (QSMCM) -- for Universal
        Asynchronous Receiver and Transmitter and Serial Peripheral Interface
        (SPI) functionality to support off-chip serial communications

     -- Two A-to-D converter modules with up to 40 analog input channels

     -- Two to three Controller Area Network (CAN) Modules -- Enabling the MCU
        to service multiple CAN networks

     -- Modular I/O System including 22 timing channels with additional
        functionality for applications including Pulse Width Modulation

     -- Support for Real Time Operating Systems

     -- Rigorous Environmental Testing, which makes this MCU family ideally
        suited for harsh environments with wide temperature ranges from
        -40 degrees C to +125 degrees C, high humidity, and sudden changes in
        environmental conditions

     -- JTAG and Background Debug Module

Tools and Support

As with all Motorola microcontroller products, a comprehensive suite of hardware and software development tools is available for the MPC500 family to help simplify and shorten customers' development cycles. Development support is available from Motorola through Metrowerks as well as from leading independent tool developers providing processor probes, logic analyzers, debuggers, simulation development environments, and C and C++ compilers.

Other resources Motorola offers customers to help ease design efforts, shorten time-to-market and lower overall development costs include: a large library of MCU application notes; searchable technical MCU Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and answers on-line; and downloadable software examples from Motorola's web site.

Price and Availability

All devices are available for production orders through Motorola and authorized distributors. Suggested unit list prices in 10,000-piece quantities for standard temperature at 40 MHz are (in USD for the 388-pin plastic ball-grid array package):

     $20.61 for the MPC561
     $23.87 for the MPC562
     $35.62 for the MPC563
     $39.18 for the MPC564
     $50.91 for the MPC565
     $56.00 for the MPC566

About Motorola

As the world's #1 producer of embedded processors, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector creates DigitalDNA(TM) system-on-chip solutions for a connected world. Our strong focus on wireless communications and networking enables customers to develop smarter, simpler, faster and synchronized products for the person, work team, home and automobile. Motorola's worldwide semiconductor sales were $4.9 billion (USD) in 2001. http://www.motorola.com/semiconductors

Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT - news) is a global leader in providing integrated communications and embedded electronic solutions. Sales in 2001 were $30 billion. http://www.motorola.com/