Featuring a variety of memory capacities, miniaturized packages, and advanced processing capabilities.
Expanding the MSP430™ FRAM MCU Portfolio

Texas Instruments (TI) today announced the expansion of its ultra-low-power MSP430™ FRAM microcontroller (MCU) portfolio with two new low-power families suited for a wide range of sensing and measurement applications.

The MSP430FR5994 MCU offers 256KB of FRAM and 40x the performance of other low-power MCUs, providing developers with digital signal processing (DSP) capabilities along with an easy-to-use integrated low energy accelerator (LEA).

The MSP430FR2111 MCU, part of TI's expanded MCU value line portfolio, is an upgradeable option for existing 8-bit designs and is the industry's first to integrate a single FRAM memory in a compact 3x3mm QFN package.

With the launch of the new MCUs, we now offer a wide range of FRAM (ferroelectric random access memory) capacities, from 2KB to 256KB. FRAM is a non-volatile memory technology that offers exceptional flexibility and ultra-low power performance. Furthermore, the MSP430 FRAM ecosystem includes thousands of software libraries, application notes, and driver frameworks, simplifying development.

The MSP430FR5994 MCU saves power by spending more time in standby mode thanks to a newly integrated low-energy accelerator (LEA) for signal processing. LEA enables fast Fourier transform (FFT), finite impulse response (FIR), infinite impulse response (IIR) filters, and other mathematical functions approximately 40 times faster than with ARM® Cortex®-M0+ microcontrollers. It also integrates a single 256KB memory (FRAM) to store more application code, meeting the needs of applications requiring more RAM, and achieves write speeds 100 times faster than flash without buffering or pre-erase.

The LEA module provides an optimized DSP library with over 50 math functions and plug-and-play design, enabling developers to process complex math algorithms within five minutes of unboxing the MSP430FR5994 MCU LaunchPad™ development kit. Therefore, MSP430 MCU developers can now leverage the benefits of higher signal processing performance and FRAM technology in a variety of applications, including metering, building and factory automation equipment, and portable medical and fitness devices.