Recently, product developers and engineers are having a hard time developing new models every year as the product form factor is getting smaller, the board area is getting smaller, and the number of functions to be implemented is increasing. In response, TI has introduced the world's smallest ultra-small MCU chip and presented a solution to developers who are concerned about the size issue.

Texas Instruments (TI) today announced it is expanding its Arm® Cortex®-M0+ based MSPM0 MCU portfolio with the launch of the world’s smallest MCU.

At a press conference to launch a new product held at the TI Korea office in Samseong-dong, Seoul, TI unveiled the MSPM0C1104 MCU, which is as small as 1.38㎟, “the size of a pepper powder.” Wafer Chip Scale Package (WCSP) technology helps optimize board space while maintaining performance when designing applications such as medical wearables and personal electronics.
At the meeting that day, Director Huh Jeong-hyeok said, "Based on the pin-to-pin characteristics, if the functions to be installed in the product are defined by developing it with high specifications in the early stages of development, it can be easily replaced with a lower MCU with lower unit price and specifications in the final mass production." He added, "The feedback on development tool compatibility and pin-to-pin characteristics is quite good."

TI's new MCUs feature 16KB of memory, a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter with three channels, six general-purpose input/output pins (GPIO), and support for standard communication interfaces such as universal asynchronous receiver and transmitter (UART), serial peripheral interface (SPI) and integrated circuit (I2C).

Director Huh also emphasized, “TI is a company with a long history in analog peripherals, so its ADC performance is considerably higher than that of other companies.” Small MCUs are vulnerable to noise, so robustness is a major issue, and TI has accumulated a lot of know-how in designing small MCUs by producing various MCUs in-house. Director Heo emphasized the company's technological capabilities that encompass the entire process, including packaging, chip internal circuit design, and testing technology.

It is particularly cost-effective, starting at just 16 cents ($0.16) per unit in 1,000-piece quantities, and includes a variety of smaller packages that can reduce board space and component costs.

This reduction in chip size can provide benefits in product operating time through improvements in battery size, and is expected to be utilized in various small applications such as stylus pens, earbuds, and electric toothbrushes.

TI also announced that it is releasing small chips in common packages, such as WSON 8-pin 4㎟, SQFN 20-pin 9㎟, SOT-23-THN (DDF) 8-pin 8.12㎟, and SOT-23-TNH (DYY) 16-pin 8.40㎟, providing various small packaging options depending on the production environment.

Director Heo said, "By utilizing Zerocode Studio, even companies that lack firmware-related development capabilities can develop simple functions such as passing sensing data to the main MCU using a zerocode base."