June 10, 2008
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Texas Instruments today announces a breakthrough generation of ultra-low power MSP-430 microcontrollers (MCU),
offering the industry's lowest power consumption for devices that can provide up to 25 MHz peak performance,
increased Flash and RAM memory.
With as low as 160 uA/MHz active power consumption and 1.5 uA in standby, MSP-430F5xx MCUs enable longer
battery life and the ability to use smaller batteries for portable applications, or no batteries at all
for energy harvesting systems that run off of solar power, vibration energy or human body temperature.
TI customer, Jim Vogeley, CEO, AdaptivEnergy, explains that their product, the Joule-ThiefTM energy
harvester, "collects and stores electrical energy from tiny mechanical vibrations and then uses this harvested
energy to power a small, low-power MSP430 MCU."
He added "the MCU helps enable a compact RF sensor design to implement ambient intelligence that can detect and report
critical conditions in factories, automobiles, offices, homes and other environments, all without wiring or
batteries."
Increased memory and integrated peripherals like RF, USB, encryption and LCD interfaces allow designers to
add functionally needed to advance fields like personal medical, home automation, human interface control,
automated meter reading (AMR), portable instrumentation, sensors, consumer electronics and security.
Development tools, collateral, third-party support, training and university programs facilitate ease of use and
shorten time to market. "The conflicting demands of increased performance, functionality and energy efficiency
are the biggest challenges facing the industry today," notes Max Baron, principal analyst, In-Stat.
He added "as designers strive to do more with less, the new MSP430F5xx MCU generation will help reduce the power
consumed by existing applications while enabling new designs requiring very low power."
A true 32-bit real-time clock with an alarm requires just 1.5 uA of standby current, enabling batteries
to operate without servicing for 20 years or longer. Extended battery life is critical for customers in
the electric, gas and water metering infrastructure industry that save significant time and money by
replacing batteries used in their metering systems less frequently.
A new, cutting-edge power management module (PMM) offers flexibility to choose the optimum core
voltage dynamically for lowest power vs. performance requirements while enabling accurate power on
reset and supply voltage supervision with monitoring.
A unified clock system (UCS) offers a selection of clocks to achieve the right mix of power and precision,
including an option for operation without a crystal.
Intelligent, high-performance digital and analog peripherals consume no power when not in operation, and
future F5xx devices will include peripherals such as RF, USB, encryption and LCD interfaces. A new high-resolution
timer will offer advanced processing capabilities to enable applications like voice-activated home security
systems.
Up to one megabyte of linear memory mapping enables robust user interfaces, as well as applications for ZigBee®
and other low-power RF sensor networks. F54xx devices offer up to 16 kilobytes of RAM and up to 256 KB Flash,
doubling Flash and RAM available on previous MSP430F2xx, F1xx and F4xx devices.
The new devices offer read/erase/write capability down to 1.8 volts. For applications based on two AAA
batteries, Flash write is possible down to the battery end of life voltage of 0.9 V for each battery.
With more than 50 percent more processing performance and double the Flash and RAM memory of previous 1xx,
2xx or 4xx generations, F5xx devices help systems perform demanding tasks while operating from very limited
power sources.
Designers can tap into peak execution performance of up to 25 MHz while consuming as low as 160uA/MHz. A
wake up time of less than 5 microseconds with full status retention from both standby and sleep modes provides
full performance on demand and instant reaction to events like external interrupts. Multi-channel direct
memory access (DMA) permits data exchange with peripherals while the core remains in low-power modes.
The industry's highest code density among comparable devices maximizes performance while minimizing memory
and power requirements.
The MSP430F5xx generation is 100 percent instruction set-compatible with earlier-generation MSP-430 devices,
making upgrades easy and allowing choices from the entire portfolio for applications. Supporting tools,
extensive training, third party and university support, and comprehensive documentation, code examples and
libraries help designers get to market quickly.
The MSP-430-F-5438-IPZ devices are sampling now and MSP430F5437IPN, F5436IPZ, F5435IPN, F5419IPZ and F5418IPN
will be released in August 2008, with additional F5xx introductions scheduled for the coming months.
Package options include both 80 and 100-pin thin quad flatpacks, the latter with additional general-purpose
I/Os.
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