TI doubles memory in MSP430 MCUs

USA: Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) has announced MSP430F66xx microcontrollers with embedded 512K Flash and 64K RAM.

These larger memory resources enable MSP430 devices to easily manage wireless protocols, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and ZigBee, making it a companion microcontroller for TI’s broad portfolio of wireless connectivity applications including the SimpleLink family.

The MSP430F66xx microcontrollers can also better support over-the-air firmware updates, graphical software libraries and more complex computing algorithms. Further easing system design, the new MSP430 family offers advanced analog integration, providing an embedded signal chain to enhance analog performance for sensor interfaces, eliminate external components and enable features such as text to speech capabilities.

The combination of larger memory, integrated analog, 160-segment LCD driver and USB allows for smaller form factors and reduced system cost along with the ultra-low-power performance of the MSP portfolio.  Additionally, the new MSP430F66xx devices are a code and pin compatible extension of MSP430F663x microcontrollers, which offer 256K Flash and 16k RAM, for a simple design migration path and maximum flexibility.

MSP430F66xx microcontrollers are supported by a variety of software resources.  This includes MSP430 Driver Library, which provides a full set of peripheral drivers, as well as the MSP430 USB Developers Package that delivers a complete USB software stack and code examples for rapid application development.

In addition to TI’s software resources, Micrium RTOS µC/OS-II support is available enabling fail-safe, mission critical systems in real-time environments as well as a variety of wired and wireless protocol stacks such as the Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) enabling Continua Certified telehealth applications. Target boards, including the MSP-TS430PZ100C and MSP-TS430PZ100USB, are available at TI’s eStore with an experimenter board featuring audio capabilities coming later this year.

Additional features and benefits of MSP430F66xx microcontrollers
* Code and pin compatible for easy scalability across the F5xx/F6xx series while maintaining peripherals with no trade-offs for performance versus power.

* Supports broad range of wireless connectivity protocols, including Bluetooth, Bluetooth low energy, near field communications (NFC), sub-1 GHz, ZigBee including SEP 2.0 architecture and Wi-Fi connectivity.

* Increased memory plus analog signal chain, including 12-bit analog-to-digital (ADC) and digital-to-analog converters (DAC), for the recording and outputting of 8ksps of audio enabling basic text to speech functions

* Ultra-low standby power as low as 2uA with RAM retention enabled for 3us fast wake-up offering optimized power and performance efficiency

* Compatible with the Code Composer Studio integrated development environment for fast application development and debugging

* For non-LCD applications, MSP430F56xx microcontrollers offer pin and code compatibility with the 256k MSP430F563x microcontrollers.
             
MSP430F56xx and MSP430F66xx microcontrollers are priced from $4.25 in volume units. Samples are immediately available.