The cost of using 16- and 32-bit microcontrollers for low-power applications has been tumbling in recent months.
Texas Instruments has a variant of its 16-bit MSP430 microcontroller with a 15p ($0.25) price tag, and other suppliers are following TI down the cost curve.
“We have not compromised on low-power performance, it still has 0.1µA RAM retention,” TI marketing manager VC Kumar told EW.
To reduce the price, changes have been made in design, production processing and test, said Kumar.
For example, the on-chip variable oscillator is no longer calibrated, and the tolerances have been widened on some analogue blocks.
The MSP430G2xx devices are code-compatible across the MSP430 MCU platform so enable straight-forward code migration and upgrades to higher-performance devices to suit the application.
The plan is to introduce more than 100 MCUs over the next 15 months.
STMicroelectronics has introduced a 32-bit microcontroller in its STM32 range which will make the Cortex-M3-based devices more cost-competitive with the Cortex-M0-based entry-level MCUs. Dubbed the Value Line, the 24MHz MCUs will cost less than $1.
“Our Value Line with Cortex-M3 is our response to Cortex-M0,” said ST spokesman Alexander Czajor.
Energy Micro has introduced a version of its low-power Geko microcontroller with a 60p price tag. Dubbed the Tiny Geko microcontrollers, they are slimmed-down versions of the original device with smaller flash and RAM combinations in QFN20, QFN32 and QFN64 packages.
“The original Geko comes with 32-128kbyte of flash and does not really compete with the low-end 8-bit market. Tiny Geko does compete with the 8-bit market,” Geir Førre, CEO of Energy Micro, told EW.
Tiny Gekos are archetecturally the same as Gekos, though some peripherals – timers and UARTs – have been dropped, said Førre. Only 4-32kbyte flash and 1-4kbyte RAM is available.
Førre said the bottom-end part will sell for 99 cents (65p) in quantities of 100,000.
The two ranges overlap, with several Tiny Gekos having the same flash and RAM as devices in the Geko range. If customers do not need the deleted peripherals and swap to the Tiny Geko range they will save approximately 30%, said Førre.
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