MCUs Embrace New Demand for Ultra-Low Power Innovation

摘要

After years of steadily cutting the current consumption of microcontrollers (MCUs), semiconductor makers are now setting their sights on a new goal -putting more pop into their ultra-low-power performance. Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) and STMicroelectron-ics recently rolled out MCUs featuring "best-in-the-industry" efficiency. Equally important, the new breed of MCUs offers searing performance based on ARM Cortex cores. ST's ultra-low power STM32L4 family, for example, now features two MCUs with 80-MHz ARM Cortex-M4 cores, digital signal processing (DSP) and a floating point unit. TI's MSP432 features a 32-bit, 48-MHz ARM Cortex M4F. The giant electronics manufacturer calls it "the world's lowest-power Cortex-M MCU. Period."