March 26, 2014, Seoul, Korea – Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL, Country Manager for Korea: Yeon-Ho Hwang) announced the innovative expansion of its Kinetis Mini portfolio with the introduction of the Kinetis KL03 MCU, the world's smallest and most energy-efficient 32-bit MCU based on ARM® technology. Building on the previous generation Kinetis KL02 device, the Kinetis KL03 MCU adds new features, advanced integration, and greater ease of use, while the package has been made even smaller, measuring just 1.6 x 2.0 mm². The new features of the Kinetis KL03 device enable customers to achieve lower power consumption in smaller dimensions and reduce product design time and costs.

Utilizing an advanced wafer-level chip-scale package, the Kinetis KL03 MCU is more than 15% smaller than the previous generation Freescale KL02 device and 35% smaller than competing third-party 32-bit ARM MCUs. The new SoC is suitable for space-constrained designs, including a wide range of applications in consumer, medical, and industrial markets. This device is ideal for the Internet of Things (IoT), a rapidly growing market requiring increasingly higher intelligence and smaller specifications at the edge node.

Rajeev Kumar, Global Marketing and Business Development Director for Freescale's Microcontrollers division, stated, "If size is no longer a barrier to introducing microcontrollers into edge node devices, it will be possible to redefine the possibilities of the Internet of Things," adding, "We view MCU miniaturization as a key growth driver for the advancement of IoT." “With the innovative specifications of the new Kinetics KL03, system designers for edge node products now have the technology needed to develop a completely new product category with the power to literally change the world,” he said.

The Kinetis KL03 MCU combines the power efficiency of the Kinetis L Series, based on the ARM® Cortex®-M0+ core, with enhanced low-power features including a register file, SRTC, low-power UART, and additional low-power restart pins.

In addition, the new product offers improved ease of use compared to the previous generation. The added ROM-based bootloader enables factory programming and online system firmware upgrades without adding circuitry to the board, thereby reducing programming costs for customers. The internal high-precision voltage reference (Vref) supplies an embedded 1.2V reference to the ADC, providing improved analog performance and enabling various use cases for applications requiring high ADC accuracy.

The Kinetis KL03 MCU is code-compatible with 900+ Cortex-M products. Additionally, the FRDM-KL03Z Freescale Freedom development platform, the Processor Expert development system, Solution Advisor guides, and comprehensive Freescale and third-party demand-based support for ARM-linked systems enable development targeting the new MCU. Customers can apply this immediately using the FRDM-KL03Z board.

Initial samples of the Kinetis KL03 MCU are currently available for purchase, and mass production is scheduled for June 2014.