Epson to Provide Low Power Microcontrollers with 16-bit On-Chip Flash Memory and Smart Card Interfaces

Seiko Epson Corporation (TSE: 6724, “Epson”) has developed and recently begun shipping samples of the S1C17M10, a new low-power, 16-bit microcontroller with on-chip Flash memory. The new product halves operating current while quadrupling operating speed for hand-held card reader tokens. Epson plans to produce 200,000 units per month when volume production beings in June 2016.

Epson’s original microcontrollers with 16-bit Flash memory have proved to be a popular choice for embedding in mobile devices owing to their exceptionally low power consumption. A growing number of financial institutions are providing their online banking customers with tokens to strengthen security, leading to a corresponding increase in demand for token microcontrollers. Epson’s microcontrollers enable manufacturers to reduce token size and extend token battery life.

The new S1C17M10 is Epson’s first microcontroller developed for card reader tokens. Card reader tokens issue passwords while communicating with a user’s smart card^*2. Although card reader tokens offer better security than other types of tokens, their power consumption is trending upward due to the need to control communications with the card.

To reduce power consumption, Epson provided the new microcontroller with an ISO 7816-3-compliant smart card interface function. The new microcontroller operates at voltages ranging from 1.8 V to 5.5 V, yet at every voltage current consumption is 0.6 µA (typical) in HALT mode with RTC ON, and 145 µA/MHz (typical) in RUN mode. The maximum operating frequency is 16.8 MHz. This enables the new microcontroller to operate at quadruple the speed of a comparable earlier product^*3 and on half the current, given the same conditions. It performs more complex software and transmission processing yet has a longer battery life. Epson better tailored the specifications to card reader tokens. Also built into the chip is an LCD driver that can directly drive the liquid crystal in a display with up to 1,280 dots. With support for up to two lines and 10 alphanumeric characters, the display can provide all the information needed. In addition, the microcontroller integrates on a single chip UART, SPI and I²C interfaces, 64 Kbytes of self-programmable Flash memory, and 4 Kbytes of RAM. Epson will ship the product in a 128-pin thin quad flat pack (TQFP15-128 pin). The product will also be available as a bare die to help users reduce the board area within their finished products.

Epson is committed to helping its customers improve the performance of their products with solutions that leverage Epson’s efficient, compact and precision technologies.

^*1 Devices that generate a one-time password

^*2 Cards the size of a credit card and with embedded integrated circuits

^*3 An Epson S1C17656 16-bit Flash microcontroller