Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL, www.freescale.co.kr ) introduces the Kinetis X series, the world's fastest microcontroller (MCU) based on the ARM® Cortex™-M core.

The X Series expands the high-end segment of Freescale Kinetis' 32-bit MCU portfolio by offering an optimal combination of performance, memory, and integrated peripherals, along with an extensive development support environment. The Kinetis X Series is the optimal solution for designers who desire greater horsepower and memory for their applications while maintaining the cost-effectiveness, ease of use, and power consumption of an MCU without switching to a microprocessor solution.

The new Kinetis X Series delivers performance equivalent to the ARM Cortex-M4 cores (using DSP and floating-point instructions) used in other Kinetis devices, featuring enhanced operating frequencies of up to 200 MHz, the fastest among all Cortex-M-class MCUs. The Kinetis X Series internal memory includes 1 to 4 Mbytes of Flash and 0.5 Mbytes of SRAM, and is expandable with multiple off-chip memory options. Additionally, the X Series expands connectivity, security, and HMI peripherals by combining them with Freescale's software support. The Kinetis X Series combines processing performance, functional integration, and comprehensive support, making it suitable for a wide range of applications such as automation, POS, medical devices, test and measurement, and systems equipped with HMI (Human-Machine Interface).

"As customers build products that are far more powerful, connected, and interactive than ever before, the processing performance they require is growing at a much faster pace. The Kinetis X Series delivers the most powerful performance, memory, and feature integration in this MCU class, providing the design flexibility customers need to stay ahead of the market," said Geoff Lees, Vice President of Freescale's Industrial and Mixed Markets MCU Business Unit.

high-performance processing engine
The Kinetis X Series MCU maximizes system performance through several hardware acceleration techniques that remove constraints on memory access and peripheral support from the core. Specifically, it maximizes CPU efficiency with a large data cache and on-chip instructions, enables single-cycle access to scratchpad data with tightly coupled 32KB SRAM, and reduces the workload on the CPU for supporting peripherals and memory with a 64-channel DMA controller. The X Series also includes a 64-bit AXI bus, the first of its kind to be featured in a Cortex-M class MCU, which improves simultaneous data transfer performance from multiple bus masters.

Excellent memory scalability
The Kinetis X Series MCU provides a cost-effective and scalable solution with 1 to 4 Mbytes of embedded flash memory and 0.5 Mbytes of ECC-supported SRAM. This level of memory integration is the highest among all MCUs and provides enough performance margin to accommodate even very demanding system requirements. A version without Flash is also available.

If additional expansion is desired, the system can be expanded using almost any type of external memory (NOR and NAND flash, serial flash, SRAM, low-power DDR2 and DDR3, etc.). High-performance Execute in Place (XIP) is possible on NOR or Quad-SPI serial flash.

A New Dimension of Integration: Equipped with Key Features
Today, as embedded systems supporting connectivity, HMI, and security are common, MCUs must be able to securely acquire, process, and display many system parameters in real time. Kinetis X Series MCUs address these requirements with Ethernet, high-speed USB OTG (On-The-Go), CAN, IIS, serial communication interfaces, cryptographic acceleration, and tamper detection devices.

For applications requiring a GUI (Graphical User Interface), a choice can be made between a low-power segment LCD or a graphic LCD controller. Extensive on-chip SRAM supports graphic LCD panels with resolutions up to WQVGA without an external frame buffer. If necessary, it can be easily scaled to higher resolution panels using inexpensive external 8-bit DRAM. To support faster development of embedded GUIs, Freescale provides the Portable Embedded GUI (PEG) WindowBuilder set and a free, low-resource eGUI LCD driver.

Easy and fast development support
Freescale and its partners provide a wide range of software and development tools for Kinetis devices to support easy and rapid application development. All Kinetis MCUs feature integrated TCP/IP and USB stacks, come with a powerful built-in software and toolset including Freescale's fully functional, free MQX™ real-time operating system, and support for low-cost/free graphic LCDs and encryption plugins. In addition, the Kinetis MCU comes with the Eclipse™-based CodeWarrior 10 IDE (Integrated Development Environment) including Processor Expert, providing a visual automation framework to shorten the development time for complex embedded applications. Along with the Kinetis Tower System Module, Freescale consistently supports rapid evaluation and hardware prototyping through an ever-growing range of Tower System peripheral modules, including Wi-Fi, sensing, and precision analog. The Kinetis MCU is also supported by a wide range of ARM-linked systems, including IAR systems, Keil, and Green Hills development tools.

In addition, Freescale plans to introduce a software development platform before the semiconductor is released. Through this approach, customers can significantly shorten software development cycles, meet the duration of marketability for applications, and develop next-generation products with lower resource and investment requirements.

Supply situation
Freescale plans to supply Kinetis X Series alpha samples and development tools to select customers in the second quarter of 2012, and mass production will begin in the first quarter of 2013. Further details can be found at www.freescale.com/kinetis/xseries .