BANGALORE, INDIA: Texas Instruments Inc. has announced a breakthrough generation of ultra-low power MSP430 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 and integrated peripherals such as radio frequency (RF), USB, encryption and LCD interfaces.

With as low as 160 µA/MHz (microamp per megahertz) active power consumption and 1.5 µA in standby, MSP430F5xx 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.  For more information, please visit: www.ti.com/5xx.

Shailesh Thakurdesai, Business Development Manager, Texas Instruments India, says: "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".

Over 50 percent more performance for ultra-low power
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 (microamp per megahertz).

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.