What Are Hybrid MCUs?
As embedded systems become more complex, designers need greater processing power and enhanced flexibility to handle larger volumes of data, support higher-display resolutions and manage multitasking. Hybrid microcontrollers (MCUs) fill the gap between traditional MCUs and multicore microprocessors (MPUs) to unleash higher performance, expand memory and storage and future-proof designs while consuming low power.
We offer hybrid MCUs as Systems-on-Chips (SoCs), Systems in Packages (SiPs) with embedded DRAM and Systems on Modules (SOMs). They are supported by our MPLAB® X IDE and MPLAB Harmony development environments to enable development for RTOS and bare-metal software, Linux® OS and Microchip mainline distributions.
Hybrid MCU Solutions
Click on the interactive block diagrams below to learn more about how hybrid MCU SoCs, SiPs and SOMs can reduce your costs and time to market. You can switch easily from one solution to another, maximizing reuse from hardware sub-system and software when moving from prototyping to production.
Choosing Between MCUs and Hybrid MCUs
When choosing between hybrid MCUs or MCUs, consider the deterministic/real-time response, low-power, data management footprint/display resolution and the Operating System (OS) requirements.
For instance, a regular MCU could fall short in the following scenarios:
- Handling multitasking and more complex algorithms
- Processing with significant data storage (tens to hundreds of MB) while managing networking and security
- Improving your GUI rendition for a display resolution larger than VGA
However, a hybrid MCU can handle these use cases. Consult the diagram below for more information about choosing between hybrid MCUs and MCUs.
Low Power Consumption
Unlike MPUs or Flash-less MCUs that have their electricals specified at Junction Temperature (Tj), hybrid MCUs remain specified under Ambient Temperature (Ta) like typical MCUs. Transitioning from an MCU-based design to a hybrid MCU will, therefore, be smoother from a temperature perspective since hybrid MCUs support extended temperature to Ta = 105°C.
We ran a power consumption analysis using real use case scenarios and summarized the results in the tables below, which highlight the low-power benefits of hybrid MCUs.
Migration Considerations When Transitioning From MCUs to Hybrid MCUs
Design Resources
|
Title
|
|
|---|---|
| Differences between MCUs and MPUs |
|
Title
|
|
|---|---|
| Differences between MCUs and MPUs |
|
Title
|
Title
|
|---|---|
| Differences between MCUs and MPUs | Differences between MCUs and MPUs |
|
Title
|
|
|---|---|
| Differences between MCUs and MPUs |
|
Title
|
|
|---|---|
| Differences between MCUs and MPUs |
|
Title
|
|
|---|---|
| Differences between MCUs and MPUs |
Self-Paced Training
Visit our Developer Help website to find training modules on working with our hybrid MCUs.
Design Partners
Get in touch with one of our design partners if you would like assistance with implementing one of our hybrid MCUs in your next design.