Motorola’s Microprocessor Products Group in Austin, Texas, reckons that its new 68332, unveiled yesterday, is the first 32 bit microcontroller ever. Based on the 68020 microprocessor, the 68332 is described as integrating the functionality of an entire circuit board on a single chip – and General Motors Corp says it plans to use the part for managing a variety of automotive control functions in its next-generation automobiles. As a result of Motorola’s chip-making joint venture with Toshiba Corp, it is likely that the part will also find favour with many of the big Japanese automakers. The 68332 is the first member of the company’s planned 68300 family of 32-bit embedded control devices, and the company looks for it to find application in toys, white goods, medical equipment and robots as well as cars. The launch of the part indicates an acceleration in demand for more power in embedded control applications – until a couple of years ago, most manufacturers were satisfied with 8-bit microcontrollers, and Texas Instruments’ biggest-selling part by volume was a 4-bit microcontroller. Samples started going out last October and the part is being now evaluated by more than 200 of the world’s largest companies, and future versions are being developed. The 332 consists of five modules – 68020-based processing core, a second processing unit for timing, a synchronous and asynchronous communications controller, system integration module to reduce external logic components and provides on-chip system debug capability, and 2Kb of fast static RAM. Samples are $125 with volume set for fourth quarter. Separately, Motorola Computer Systems added the Delta Series 3000 Model 3200 network servers, based on 25MHz and 16.7MHz versions of the 68030. The slower one is from $7,500 and the faster from $19,800.
