Freescale intros Kinetis KL02, world’s smallest ARM powered MCU

embedded world 2013, GERMANY: As the Internet of Things (IoT) expands to include greater numbers of small, intelligent, battery-operated devices, the MCUs that enable these devices must deliver performance, energy efficiency and connectivity in progressively smaller footprints.

Freescale Semiconductor is addressing the miniaturization trend with its new Kinetis KL02 MCU–the world’s smallest ARM Powered MCU. The KL02 holds great potential for ultra-small-form-factor products in applications such as portable consumer devices, remote sensing nodes, wearable devices and ingestible healthcare sensing.

Measuring just 1.9 x 2.0 mm, the Kinetis KL02 MCU is 25 percent smaller than the industry’s next-smallest ARM® MCU. Within this miniscule device, Freescale has included the latest 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0+ processor, cutting-edge low-power functionality and a range of analog and communication peripherals.

This enables system designers to dramatically reduce the size of their boards and products while retaining the all-important performance, feature integration and power consumption characteristics of their end devices. In addition, space-constrained applications that previously couldn’t incorporate an MCU now can be upgraded to become smart applications, adding a new tier of devices to the IoT ecosystem.

“Freescale has been a pioneer in many aspects of the ARM Powered MCU market with our Kinetis portfolio,” said Geoff Lees, senior VP and GM of Freescale’s Microcontroller business. “We were the first to market with MCUs based on the ARM Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M0+ processors, we set new standards for entry-level MCU energy efficiency, and we’ve now created the world’s smallest ARM Powered MCU, helping advance the Internet of Things era.”

“The Internet of Things will soon be a vast and diverse ecosystem of smart connected devices and screens that embed intelligence into many new areas of our lives. This could range from tiny sensors helping to monitor crops and deliver irrigation, to microcontrollers that enable entire buildings to be more energy efficient. Our mobile devices could be soon controlling and managing this data and making our lives easier to manage," said Richard York, director, Embedded Processor Products, ARM.

“The Kinetis KL02 CSP MCU brings the best ARM and Freescale technologies to applications at the very edge of the IoT and opens up exciting possibilities for a new tier of ultra-small, smart, power-efficient devices.”