MCU Families Have Lots Of Life Yet

Nov. 17, 2005

The HC08 and Coldfire microcontroller (MCU) dynasties from Freescale continue with the MC9S08Q 8-bit family and the 32-bit MCF532x and MCF537x MCUs. The MC9SO8Q targets low-power applications requiring a wide range of peripherals and a small footprint.

William G. Wong

The HC08 and Coldfire microcontroller (MCU) dynasties from Freescale continue with the MC9S08Q 8-bit family and the 32-bit MCF532x and MCF537x MCUs.

The MC9SO8Q targets low-power applications requiring a wide range of peripherals and a small footprint. It includes a high-resolution analog-to-digital converter and an on-chip clock.

The 32-bit Coldfire family targets connectivity, control, and security applications. It includes hardware encryption support and a range of communication options. The MCF532x includes an LCD controller for user-interface applications. The MCF537x targets networking applications like Voice over IP (VoIP).

Development tools include the Metrowerks CodeWarrior IDE. Low-cost development kits come with applicationcode limited C compilers. Full development kits also are available. The Coldfire kit includes uClinux support.

Freescale Semiconductor
www.freescale.com

See Figure 1
See Figure 2

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

You can send press releases for new products for possible coverage on the website. I am also interested in receiving contributed articles for publishing on our website. Use our template and send to me along with a signed release form.

Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.