Freescale Kinetis MCU portfolio continues to gain momentum

AUSTIN, USA: With unprecedented customer demand and a continually expanding product offering, Freescale Semiconductor’s Kinetis MCU portfolio built on the ARM Cortex-M4 core continues to generate tremendous momentum, with tens of thousands of samples and tools now in customers’ hands.

Later this month, Freescale plans to begin sampling the sixth Kinetis MCU family – the K50 family for medical applications – and release details about the Kinetis K70 MCU family, featuring a floating point unit (FPU), tamper detection and graphic LCD capabilities.

Since its industry-first introduction at the Freescale Technology Forum in June 2010, the Kinetis MCU portfolio has quickly established itself as a significant contender in the competitive market for ARM-based devices.

In less than a year, Freescale has brought to market an extensive portfolio of pin-, peripheral- and software-compatible Kinetis MCU families with cutting-edge low power and mixed-signal innovation. The portfolio includes numerous human-machine interface (HMI), connectivity, safety and security peripherals, as well as the support of an expansive Freescale and third-party ecosystem.

“The market traction for our Kinetis portfolio has been outstanding,” said Geoff Lees, vice president of Freescale’s Industrial and Multi-Market MCU business. “Demand has been high for product training, silicon and development tools, and we look forward to supporting customers with planned mass production in the third quarter of this year.”

"With the well-defined peripheral set and a scalable portfolio of MCUs built on the ARM Cortex-M4 core, the Kinetis family is very attractive for many three-phase metering and networked metering applications," said Xanhuai Li, deputy general manager of the metering division and R&D director of Wasion Group, the world’s leading polyphase multifunction meter solution provider. "We’re delighted to work with Freescale and plan to continue using Kinetis MCUs as a platform solution for various future products."

"For our revolutionary Wi-Fi-enabled next-generation netTALK DUO Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone adapter, we were seeking an MCU-based solution that would satisfy the demanding performance requirements of VoIP telephony as well as the evolving expectations of our customers for new features & services," said Anastasios ‘Takis’ Kyriakides, chairman and CEO of netTALK.com Inc., a leading competitive local exchange carrier and supplier of VoIP telephony services.

"The combination of the DSP-enabled ARM Cortex-M4 core and Freescale's overall system solution gives us the performance headroom we need, while the rich on-chip feature integration provides design flexibility and BOM cost reduction. All of these factors helped us create a truly stellar product in the new netTALK DUO."

"Kinetis MCUs were the natural choice for our next-generation building automation systems due to the unique blend of MCU peripherals and development tools,” said Sandro Scavazzon, R&D manager of Adelco Elettronica, a supplier of building automation and control systems. "The on-chip FlexMemory functionality and bundled MQX™ real-time operating system has enabled us to optimize our hardware and software design and, in turn, deliver a more differentiated end product to the market in a shorter timeframe."