Products of the Week: GaN Power-Supply ICs, Secure MCUs with HSM

Arm Cortex-M7 MCU Family Brings Hardware Security Inside

A new family of 32-bit MCUs from Microchip Technology integrates a 300-MHz Arm Cortex-M7 CPU and a hardware security module (HSM), promising designers an easier path to integrate security into their industrial and consumer devices.

The new family of PIC32CZ CA MCUs spans the PIC32CZ CA90 with the integrated HSM and the PIC32CZ CA80 without it. The on-chip HSM provides advanced security for industrial and consumer electronics. It functions as a secure subsystem with a separate MCU inside that runs firmware and security features such as hardware-based secure boot, key storage, cryptographic acceleration, and true random-number generator. When additional security is necessary, factory provisioning is possible with the CA90 MCU.

Flexibility is the name of the game with the new family of 32-bit MCUs, since they can be configured with a wide range of connectivity features and memory capacities to fit many different requirements.

The MCUs support a wide range of connectivity features, including USART/UART, I²C, SPI, CAN FD, High-Speed USB, and Gigabit Ethernet. The Ethernet option encompasses Audio Video Bridging (AVB) and the Precision Time Protocol (PTP). The new MCUs are scalable with 2, 4, or 8 MB of on-board flash, 1-MB SRAM, and error-correction-code (ECC) memory to reduce the risk of data corruption.

The CA80 is priced at $14.80 each and the CA90 at $15.54 each when ordered in quantities of 10,000.