Freescale announces industry’s fastest MCUs built on ARM Cortex-M family

AUSTIN, USA: Freescale Semiconductor is redefining the boundaries of microcontroller (MCU) performance with its new Kinetis X series – the world’s fastest MCUs built on an ARM Cortex-M core.

The X series extends the high end of Freescale’s Kinetis 32-bit MCU portfolio with devices that provide an optimal combination of performance, memory and integrated peripherals, all backed by a vast ecosystem of development support. The Kinetis X series is ideal for designers who need additional horsepower and memory for their applications, but would prefer to retain the cost-effectiveness, ease of use and power consumption of an MCU rather than transitioning to a microprocessor solution.

The new Kinetis X series shares the same powerful ARM Cortex-M4 core (with DSP and floating point instructions) used for other Kinetis devices, but with an increased operating frequency up to 200 MHz – the fastest of any Cortex-M-class MCU. Kinetis X series internal memories include 1-4 Mbyte of flash and 0.5 Mbyte of SRAM, with multiple off-chip memory options also available for expansion headroom.

In addition, the X series offers an advanced suite of connectivity, security and HMI peripherals, all accompanied by Freescale’s bundled software enablement. This powerful combination of processing performance, feature integration and extensive support makes the Kinetis X series optimal for a broad range of applications, including automation, point of sale, medical instrumentation, test and measurement and systems that incorporate a human-machine interface (HMI).

“Our customers’ processing needs are evolving at a dramatic rate as they build products that are more powerful, connected and interactive than ever before,” said Geoff Lees, VP of Freescale's Industrial and Multi-Market MCU business. “The Kinetis X series provides a level of performance, memory and feature integration not previously seen in this class of MCUs and gives our customers the design flexibility they need to stay at the forefront of their markets.”