TEXAS Instruments has announced new ultra-low-power FRAM microcontrollers which will not lose data if power is lost.
The new MSP430 FRAM MCUs with LCD are intended for use in industrial automation and metering applications. The Compute Through Power Loss (CTPL) technology allows contextual save and restore, so MCUs like the MSP430FR6972 can instantaneously wake up with full system-state restoration after an application unexpectedly loses power.
The new MSP430FR6972 MCU with TI’s CTPL technology also includes integrated smart analogue and digital peripherals to reduce system cost, power and size. These features include a low-power segment LCD controller, a 12-bit differential analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) with internal window comparator, and a 256-bit AES accelerator.
The ultra-low-power MSP430FR6972 MCU with 64 KB of non-volatile FRAM highlight TI’s leading ULPBench scores for 16-bit MCUs and can be used for data logging to enable applications such as a wireless motor condition monitor. This system can be paired with TI’s bq25570 energy harvesting IC and SimpleLink multi-standard CC2650 wireless MCU to operate from a coin cell battery for decades.
According to TI, the non-volatile FRAM-based MCUs:
Reduce manufacturing costs by decreasing programming times on an assembly line
Allows flexible memory use across data and application code thanks to unified FRAM capabilities, allowing flexible updates in the field
Feature unbeatable write speeds, combined with 10 billion times more write-cycle endurance compared to traditional non-volatile memory solution, making it excellent for data-logging applications
Further simplifies code development because it does not require pre-erasure of segments and can be accessed at the bit-level, enabling constant on-the-fly data logging with zero extra power