Renesas Technology America Inc. in San Jose, Calif., is offering the H8S/Tiny series of 16-bit microcontrollers for low-cost embedded system designs. The H8S/Tiny series has 24 devices in three product groups: the 64-pin devices in the H8S/20103 group and the 80-pin devices in the H8S/20203 and H8S/20223 groups. Applications include industrial control, white goods, and building automation equipment. The microcontrollers maintain compatibility with the H8/Tiny devices, which helps users upgrade. One peripheral function that the microcontrollers provides is an event link controller, which can boost real-time processing performance. For example, in a typical microcontroller device, real-time events or interrupts are handled by the CPU directly. In contrast, the event link controller allows H8S/Tiny devices to process interrupt requests and trigger multiple peripheral blocks in sequence without using the CPU, so more CPU cycles become available for application processing. The devices also have a data transfer controller (DTC) that can carry out data transfer operations with no CPU intervention. By using both of these functions, for example, plus a timer and a serial port, A/D conversion values can be periodically transferred to an external device via a serial interface without slowing down program execution. This approach maximizes overall performance or makes it possible to operate the microcontroller at a lower frequency to reduce current consumption. For more information, visit Renesas Technology online at www.renesas.com.