LONDON — NXP BV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) has said its Cortex-M0 based microcontroller will be available from distributors in December. Cortex-M0 is a 12,000 gate-count core stripped down for low power consumption developed by ARM Holdings plc (Canbridge, England) under the codename Swift.
The LPC1100 will target battery applications, e-metering, consumer peripherals, remote sensors, and virtually all 16-bit applications. NXP has claimed that its LPC1100 is the lowest priced 32-bit microcontroller in the market and easier to use than existing 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers.
The recommended pricing in 10,000 piece quantities for 33-pin packaged devices is between $0.65 and $0.95 flash memory sizes of between 8-kbytes and 32-kbytes. In addition, 48-pin LPQFP and PLCC44 packages will be available for socketed applications.
The NXP LPC1100 family of microcontrollers features a 50-MHz Cortex-M0 processor with 32 vectored interrupts and 4 priority levels; multiple UARTS and one or two SPI serial interfaces; a 12-MHz internal RC oscillator, 10 to 50-MHz phase-locked loop; 8-channel 10-bit ADC and the devices operate from a single 1.8 to 3.6-volt power supply.
The NXP Cortex-M0 microcontroller offers over 45-DMIPs of performance compared to the sub-DMIP performance typical of 8-bit MCUs and 3 - 5 DMIPS for 16-bit MCUs. At 50-MHz current consumption is less than 10-mA NXP said.
The company also claimed that the LPC1100 range requires 40 to 50 less code for most common microcontroller tasks, than 8- or 16-bit microcontrollers. However, NXP did not make comparison with Cortex-M3 based microcontrollers which it can also supply.
"The Cortex-M0 processor core and system architecture take full advantage of today's optimized low-power design tools, techniques, and the latest low-power, high-density silicon flash process," said Geoff Lees, vice president and general manager of the microcontroller product line at NXP, in a statement.
The LPC1100 family is supported by development tools from IAR, Keil, Hitex, Code Red and others. NXP said it would supply a development tool platform for under $30.
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