16-Bit RISC MCUs Deliver High MIPS/Watt For Portables

The MSP430 family of 16-bit RISC microcontrollers with integrated peripherals is said to offer lower active and standby power consumption than other 8- or 16-bit MCU on the market, thereby signficantly extending the battery life of portable systems. And with a performance rating of 4 MIPS, the new µCs can deliver 1200 MIPS/watt.The MSP430 MCUs are available with an on-chip A/D converter with 14-bit resolution to augment the chips' 16-bit RISC core. There's also an LCD driver, internal oscillator, UART serial peripheral interface, timers, and on-chip JTAG. The combination of core, peripherals, and varying complements of memory makes the MCUs suitable for applications such as utility metering, industrial metering, high-precision portable measurement, and home measurement devices such as smoke detectors and thermostats. The MCUs will be useful for remote meter reading applications as utilities are deregulated.The microcontrollers are supported by a full development toolset. Tools include a Windows-based software simulator, evaluation boards with assembler and linker, a C compiler with highly efficient in-circuit emulation, UV-EPROM devices, a programming adapter or gang programmer for OTP devices, and a JTAG toolset for debugging.Typical members of the large MSP430 family are the MSP430C313 and MSP430323 MCUs. The former, housed in a 56-pin SSOP, has 8 kbytes of ROM, 256 bytes of RAM, a 92-segment LCD driver, a timer/port module for slope A/D conversions, a 15-bit watchdog timer, an 8-bit general-purpose timer, and an 8-bit timer/counter capable of providing serial communications. In addition to these features, MSP430323 has an A/D converter and an 84- rather than 92-segment LCD driver. It comes in 64-pin QFPs and TQFPs and 68-pin PLCCs.