Microcontroller Roundup from Embedded World 2010

The skies above Nuremberg, Germany opened in March, and microcontroller vendors rained new products on Embedded World 2010. This year, power consumption and pricing were front and center in the new announcements. As has been the case for nearly two decades, 8-, 16-, and 32-bit processor architectures continue to compete in the fiercely competitive microcontroller arena. The following are some salient characteristics of the newly introduced microcontrollers from five established vendors.

Atmel announced its low-power ATtiny 10/20/40 microcontroller families optimized for touch sensing in the form of buttons, wheels, and sliders. These microcontrollers are based on the company’s proprietary, 8-bit tiny AVR® RISC processor architecture, which has developed a rabid following. Members of these microcontroller families include 1 to 4 Kbytes of on-chip Flash memory and 32 to 256 bytes of on-chip SRAM. Additionally, the devices in these families support SPI and TWI (with I2C-compatibility) communications. The operating voltage range is 1.8 to 5.5 V. Running at 1.8 V and 1 MHz and with peripherals switched off, the devices consume less than 200µA. Sleep mode consumes less than 100 nA. The smallest devices in this new microcontroller series sell for well under a buck in large quantities.

Energy Micro® introduced a new low-end microcontroller family dubbed “Tiny Gecko” with architecture compatible with the larger “Gecko” microcontroller family introduced late last year at ARM’s TechCon 3 conference. Both the Gecko and Tiny Gecko (TG) microcontrollers are based on ARM’s Cortex-M3 32-bit processor core, which Energy Micro calls the EFM®32. The new EFM32 Tiny Gecko microcontrollers offer the energy-efficient performance of the company’s bigger Gecko products combined with smaller Flash and RAM combinations and a choice of space-saving QFN20, QFN32, and OFN64 packaging. The Tiny Gecko microcontrollers provide Flash capacities of 4 to 32 Kbytes and RAM capacities of 1 to 4 Kbytes. The current consumption of these microcontrollers is extremely low; in active mode, it is typically 180 µA per MHz when executing code from Flash, 900 nA in deep sleep mode, and 20 nA in shut off mode. These parts will each cost just under a buck in extremely large quantities.

Infineon announced the XC82x and XC83x series of 8-bit microcontrollers, which combine the incredibly mature 8-bit 8051 processor with 2 to 8 Kbytes of on-chip Flash memory, 512 bytes of RAM, and peripherals that have been optimized to enable high-energy savings at very low implementation costs. One unusual feature of the Infineon XC800 microcontroller series is its availability in versions that can operate at 125°C for industrial applications. Additionally, 150°C versions will soon be offered for automotive applications. These devices are also intended to cost well under a buck a piece in extremely large quantities.

Microchip’s PIC12F182X and PIC16F182X microcontrollers put the company’s Enhanced mid-range processor core into 8-pin packages, bringing the total number of Enhanced 8-bit core PIC® microcontrollers to 16, available in packages ranging from 8 to 64 pins. These new microcontrollers feature extremely low active-current consumption – less than 50 µA/MHz.  Microchip’s Enhanced 8-bit architecture provides a 50 percent increase in performance over the company’s previous generation 8-bit PIC16 microcontrollers. Fourteen new instructions improve C-coding efficiency by as much as 40 percent and improve overall performance by as much as 50 percent. The PIC1XF182X microcontrollers include dual 12C/SPI interfaces, PWM outputs with independent time bases, and a data signal modulator that can handle several digital modulation schemes. The microcontrollers sell for much less than $1 each in large quantities.

Finally, Texas Instruments continues to stand by its ‘tween microcontroller series, the 16-bit MSP430™ family. The company announced a roadmap with more than 100 new devices in this family to be rolled out over the next several months. TI is shooting for the super low-end market, announcing that the MSP430G2001 will sell for $0.25 each in 100,000 quantities. What do you get for your quarter? You get the 16-bit MSP430 processor architecture, 512 bytes of Flash memory, 128 bytes of RAM, five low-power operating modes, and an operating voltage range of 1.8 to 3.6 V. Other members of the MSP320G2xxx family with more flash memory and more on-chip peripherals sell for less than 50 cents in quantities of 1,000, which tells you that TI has decided to be extremely aggressive in the low-end microcontroller market.