Toshiba Begins Mass Production of TXZ+ M4L Microcontrollers for Smart Motor Control Applications

Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage Corporation ("Toshiba") has started mass production of TXZ+™ Family Entry‑Class M4L Group, compact microcontrollers featuring an Arm® Cortex®‑M4 core with a floating‑point unit (FPU) for next-generation home appliances, consumer products and industrial equipment.

Demand is growing for energy efficiency, compact designs, IoT connectivity, and enhanced maintainability in home appliances, consumer products and industrial equipment. This requires motor-control microcontrollers that add functions for improved development efficiency and system reliability alongside high-precision control.

Toshiba’s new products are compact microcontrollers specifically designed for single-motor control applications that integrate dedicated motor-control hardware^[1], security functions, and functional safety measures on a single chip. By offloading motor-control processing to dedicated hardware, they reduce the CPU load, enabling highly efficient and precise motor control.

The microcontrollers are built around an Arm® Cortex®‑M4 core with FPU and operate at frequencies up to 80MHz. They support a supply voltage range of 2.7V to 5.5V, delivering compatibility with existing 3V‑ and 5V‑based systems while bringing high design flexibility to new designs. They are available in four types of small packages with 44 to 64 pins and two different memory configurations, allowing selection according to application requirements. Integration of a high‑speed oscillator with ±1% accuracy^[2] and an overcurrent detection comparator for emergency motor shutdown reduces external components and helps minimise board area. In addition, a low‑power STOP2 mode supports battery‑powered applications.

The 256KB products^[3] adopt dual‑bank flash memory with two 128KB blocks, allowing one program to be executed while the other area is rewritten. This secures program updates without stopping system operation and facilitates implementation of firmware over-the-air updates. The 128KB products^[4] incorporate 64KB of data flash memory to support storage of log data and management of configuration information.

For security, the microcontrollers integrate chip protection (CPRO), secure access memory (SAM), and non‑rewritable flash protection (NRFP). These functions help prevent unauthorised access, control memory access, and protect critical areas, thereby improving system reliability across a wide range of applications, including IoT devices.

The microcontrollers also integrate general‑purpose communications interfaces, such as universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART), a serial peripheral interface (SPI), an inter‑integrated circuit^[5], and a serial memory interface (SMIF) for external memory connectivity. Functional safety measures include abnormality detection covering flash memory, RAM, analog‑to‑digital converters and clock systems. Toshiba also provides certified software compliant with UL 60730 Class B, a functional safety standard for household appliances, helping customers streamline their certification processes.

Toshiba supports evaluation and development with product documentation, sample software, and driver software for peripheral control. The company will also roll out evaluation boards and various development environments in collaboration with Arm^® ecosystem partners, supporting customers from initial adoption through mass production.

Toshiba will continue to expand its lineup of microcontrollers optimised for motor control applications and strengthen development support, contributing to the acceleration of customers’ product development.