Pushing performance

In a move which boosts processing power whilst reducing power consumption, Texas Instruments has extended its MSP430 microcontroller range. The company believes the new range will be more likely to find applications in the industrial and medical sectors The MSP430F5xx range will be manufactured on a 0.18µm process, compared to 0.35µm for previous ranges. According to Frank Forster, microcontroller business development manager Europe, this not only allows power and performance to be improved, it also allows for a range of peripherals to be integrated on chip. Peripherals on the road map include USB interfaces, rf connectivity, encryption and lcd interfaces. “There’s a general trend in the microcontroller market towards lower power consumption,” he noted. “The family will draw 160µA/MHz,” he claimed, “and designers will be able to access five low power modes.” The most important of these, Forster contended, is mode 3 in which the device can be run with an external 32kHz crystal, but will still react to interrupts and maintain memory status. Here, power consumption is reduced to 1.5µA. Wake up time is said to be less than 5µs. The 5xx range sees processing power doubled to 25MHz, with a similar increase in flash – to a maximum of 256k – and ram, to 16k. Working from supplies in the range from 1.8 to 3.3V, the F5xx range will be supplied in a choice of 80 and 100pin tqfps, but other packaging options are being considered, according to Forster. The F5438 is sampling now, with the remaining five devices in the range sampling in August. Production is anticipated for early 2009.