NordicSemi pushes BLE boundaries with dual Cortex-M33
31
Jul
2020
Nordic is pushing Cortex-M33 in its new “flagship” product, the nRF5340. With a dual core Cortex, it has all the latest bells and whistles of BlueTooth: all AoA and AoD roles in Bluetooth Direction Finding, Bluetooth Long Range and 2 Mbps. This makes yet another dull Covid-19 month a bit more spicy.
No change.
No change.
Microchip had another salvo of VAO (automotive grade) parts across the portfolio, from ATSAM to DSPIC33 and PIC16.
We are seeing a burst of activity on the AVR32 with the AVR32DA, a so-called “Functional Safety Ready” MCU with Peripheral Touch Controller (PTC). Don’t get fooled, it looks like it is a 8-bit MCU. Target markets include connected home security, building automation and sensor systems to automotive and industrial automation.
The core runs at 24 MHz and memory is up to 128 KB flash, 16 KB SRAM and 512 bytes of EEPROM, with 12-bit differential ADC, 10-bit DAC, analog comparators and zero cross detectors. The PTC enables capacitive touch interface designs supporting buttons, sliders, wheels, touchpads, smaller touch screens as well as gesture controls. The AVR32DA family supports up to 46 self-capacitance and 529 mutual capacitive touch channels with enhanced noise immunity, water tolerance, touch sensitivity and response time.
The AVR32DA family is available in volume production in 10,000 quantities starting at $0.87.
Nordic unveiled 2 new members of the nRF family, the nRF52805 and the nRF5340.
The nRF52805 covers the lower end of the product portfolio and only supports BLE, it is otherwise based on a similar feature set as the other nRF528xx siblings.
The nRF5340 sits at the opposite end of the spectrum and is labeled the “flagship”, packing 2 Cortex-M33 cores to support a superset of the most prominent nRF52 Series features including Bluetooth® Direction Finding, high-speed SPI, QSPI, USB, up to 105 °C operating temperature.
The application processor is optimized for performance and can be clocked at either 128 or 64 MHz, using voltage-frequency scaling. It has 1 MB Flash, 512 KB RAM, a floating-point unit (FPU), an 8 KB 2-way associative cache and DSP instruction capabilities. The network processor is clocked at 64 MHz and is optimized for low power and efficiency (101 CoreMark/mA). It has 256 KB Flash and 64 KB RAM.
The nRF5340 offers trusted execution, root-of-trust and secure key storage security features. Arm TrustZone provides trusted execution by implementing a division between secure and non-secure Flash, RAM, peripherals and GPIOs. The Arm CryptoCell-312 provides hardware-accelerated cryptography, and together with the key management unit (KMU) peripheral, root-of-trust and secure key storage are implemented.
The nRF5340 supports BLE, with all AoA and AoD roles in Bluetooth Direction Finding, in addition Bluetooth Long Range and 2 Mbps. Mesh protocols like Bluetooth mesh, Thread and Zigbee can be run concurrently with Bluetooth LE, enabling smartphones to provision, commission, configure and control mesh nodes. NFC, ANT, 802.15.4 and 2.4 GHz proprietary protocols are also supported.
No change.
NXP introduced 2 new packages for the i.MX RT600
No significant changes.
No changes.
Cypress added about 10 variant to the existing PSoC61/2, a dual core Cortex-M0+ (system)/ Cortex-M4 (application), with more speed and memory.
ST unveiled 36 new products across the board, mostly new pin/package and flash size combinations.
TI added 46 new part in the C2000 family, 148 in the MSP430 family, mostly variants of existing parts.
SiLabs new Geckos and Renesas groups rock it!
04
May
2020
SiliconLabs unveiled more Gecko Series 2 and they did not disappoint with sometimes 50% lower power consumption than Series 1 for BLE. The parts come with direction finding functionality too. Renesas was on a roll too with 3 new groups from motor control to high end 4MB of Flash parts.
Hope you are coping with the confinement.
No change.
Microchip had another salvo of VAO (automotive grade) parts across the portfolio, from ATSAM to DSPIC33 and PIC12.
NXP added the LPC5516JEV98, following the launch last month of the LPC551x to complement the existing general purpose Cortex-M33-based 40nm LPC552x.The 150MHz LPC551x/S1x MCU family offers from 256/96 to 64/48 kB of Flash/RAM with multiple connectivity options including CAN FD, highspeed USB with on-chip PHY, high-speed SPI, SDIO and FlexComm interfaces (configurable as either SPI/I2C/I2S,UART).
There were a number of new groups this month at Renesas, in particular in the RX family.
The RX13T Group embeds a 32 MHz RXv1 core with FPU and a few peripherals focused on inverter control of brushless DC motors. 8 parts were unveiled. Operating temperature range is -40°C to 105°C with 128kB Flash, 12KB SRAM and 4KB data flash.
The high end RX72 got a new group, the RX72N, running a 240MHz RXv3 with up to 4MB/1MB flash/SRAM and 182 general-purpose I/O ports with HMI functionality, security capability, 2-channel Ethernet, SD Host interface, USB 2.0 Full Speed, 3-channel CAN, QSPI, TFT LCD controller, 2D drawing engine, serial sound interface, CMOS camera interface, Encryption engines (AES, 3DES, RSA, ECC, SHA, TRNG), 2.7V to 3.6V and -40 to 85°C or 105°C parts. In total 36 parts are now available.
The RX66 got a similar RX66N group, using the same core but half the frequency (120MHz). It looks like a lower end RX72N with a similar peripheral set.
SiLabs has launched the BG22, a BLE wireless SoC solution, part of the Wireless Gecko Series 2 platform. The BG22 family provides best in class power consumption, in cases, 50% below the first generation. It uses a Cortex-M33 core at 76.8 MHz and targets Bluetooth mesh low-power nodes, smart door locks, personal healthcare and fitness devices. Asset tracking tags, beacons and indoor navigation also benefit from the SoCs’ Bluetooth Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD) capabilities and sub-one-meter location accuracy. Sister families include the MG22 (for Zigbee) and the FG22 for proprietary protocols in the 2.4 GHz band.
Cypress added about 20 variant to the existing PSoC62, a dual core Cortex-M0+ (system)/ Cortex-M4 (application).
ST unveiled 32 new products, mostly new pin/package and flash size combinations.
TI had 60 new parts. The MSP430F149 complements on the higher end (60kB Flash vs 32 or 48) the existing MSP430F14x. At the opposite, the MSP430F5304 only embeds 8 kB of Flash vs. 16/24/32 for the existing siblings.
Finally, TI launched the MSP430FR600x series for water meters, compliant with ISO4064, OIML R49 and EN4134. These interface directly with ultrasonic sensors.
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