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Product category: Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Texas Instruments (April 2001-March 2006) | Subject: MSP430F1232, F1222, F1132 and F1122
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 21 February 2002

Direct transfer controller
speeds MCU performance

Texas Instruments has added four new devices to its popular line of MSP430 16bit RISC MCUs which can provide up to 50 times more processing performance

Texas Instruments has added four new devices to its popular line of MSP430 16bit RISC MCUs which can provide up to 50 times more processing performance while maintaining the family's trademark ultra-low-power consumption. The new Flash MCUs feature increased signal processing power, an integrated 10bit ADC and a small form factor optimising these new devices for cost sensitive embedded applications such as security systems, smoke detectors and smart tags.

The MSP430F1232, F1222, F1132 and F1122 MCUs feature an innovative direct transfer controller (DTC) module that provides direct data transfer between the integrated high-performance ADC and on-chip memory.

The independent DTC enables the CPU to perform digital signal processing operations up to 50 times faster than conventional MCUs without sacrificing the ultralow power consumption.

With the aid of the DTC, the CPU is freed to process real-time tasks simultaneously with continuous ADC sampling to achieve higher overall performance, or it can enter low-power modes to save power in battery-operated applications.

The MSP430F1xx2 devices operate with input voltages ranging from 1.8 to 3.6V and provide complete SoC solutions.

Integrated features include up to 8Kbyte of reprogrammable Flash memory, 256byte of RAM, a multichannel pulsewidth modulator (PWM) timer, a watchdog timer and onboard brownout protection.

A high-speed universal synchronous-asynchronous receiver-transmitter (USART) in the MSP430F12x2 devices can be used in either UART or serial peripheral interface (SPI) mode.

The new MCUs are the first to include a high-performance 10bit ADC.

Rated at more than 200Ksample/s, the eight-channel ADC can be configured and optimised to meet the unique needs of customer applications.

The built-in ADC features include a programmable sample and hold, an oscillator, a temperature sensor, a precision reference and low-battery detection.

The introduction of a high-performance data converter module on the smaller form-factor MSP430 parts gives customers even more options to chose from for their portable design needs.

TI's family of MSP430 MCUs, whose tools sales have increased by twenty fold in the last year, are optimised for applications such as utility metering, portable instrumentation and intelligent sensing, which require low cost, ultra-low power and high performance.

The new additions to the MSP430 family are targeted at mid-level applications that require both economy and the performance of a hardware ADC.

'As one of TI's fastest growing products, the new MSP430 MCUs reflect TI's focus on supplying products that our customers have requested', said Frank Forster, Product Marketing Manager MSP430 for TI in Europe.

'We know that low power, high performance and analogue integration are key customer careabouts, and these new parts are the perfect fit for many of our customers' portable applications'.

The MSP-FET430P120 development tool, which is currently available, is a complete integrated development environment and includes two samples of the MSP430F1232 MCU.

The tool supports embedded real-time JTAG emulation significantly reducing design cycle time.

Devices can be programmed either stand alone or in system.

All four of the new MCUs are scheduled for volume production in March 2002.

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