Microcontrollers

Microcontrollers are key electronic devices used everywhere from washing machines to motor engine management units. There are numerous versions of microcontrollers or MCU and their key groupings are SRAM and Flash memory, clock speed, instruction execution speed, security, peripherals, and connectivity.

Other key parameters include its software development tool's maturity, availability, and examples. Currently, the market is dominated by ARM microcontrollers. Companies like ST.com, NXP.com, NordicSemi.com, Raspberry Pi Pico, Analog.com, and TI.com are typical examples.

Examples of MCU ARM cores include Cortex M0, M3, M4, M7, M23, M33, M55 AND M85. Cortex M0, M33 are for battery and Bluetooth applications, while M7, M5, and M85 are for processing-intensive applications like i.MX RT1170 clocking on 1 GHz from NXP.

RISC-V microcontrollers are a new open source core example from GigaDevices family GD32, which is designed more for cost-sensitive applications. Microchip RISC devices have a reduced set of instructions, where 1 clock is one instruction, leading to an affordable cost.

MCU SRAM memory ranges from 32KB to 4MB, while chip flash memory can be in a similar range from 512KB to 4/5 MB. There are various communication interface peripherals such as USB, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, USART, and I2S. Usually, they come with an ACDC converter from 8 bits to 16 bits, from 100KS to 4MS, and can also have 8 to 16 channels.

Some MCUs have DAC converters from 8 to 12 Bits, 2 to 4 channels, with a speed up to 100KS. We also need to mention various timers: 16 Bit and 32 Bit with capture compare units and PVM drivers.