mcu News - Page 38 of 53 - CNX Software

July 18, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

LAPIS ML62Q1622 is a General Purpose 16-bit MCU with an LCD Driver

So this morning I received an email about some seminar & workshop about LAPIS microcontroller, including a free ML62Q1622 evaluation board. OK, good. But wait. Who is LAPIS? I have certainly never seen any projects with Lapis MCUs, and probably have never heard of them. It turns out OKI SEMICONDUCTOR Co.,Ltd. established in 2008 from a spin-off of Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd, changed the company name in to LAPIS Semiconductor Co.,Ltd in 2011. LAPIS is also part of ROHM Semiconductor group. Anyway, it was a good opportunity to find out more about ML62Q1622 micro-controller, and related evaluation boards & tools. Lapis Semi ML62Q1622 is part of ML62Q1600 group of 16-bit microcontrollers whose block diagram is shown above. ML62Q1622 MCU key features & specifications: CPU – 16-bit RISC CPU (CPU name: nX-U16/100) clocked @ up to 32 MHz Coprocessor for multiplication and division Program Memory – 64Kbyte Data Memory – […]

July 2, 2018July 2, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Microchip Unveils SAM L10 & SAM L11 Arm Cortex-M23 MCU Families with Arm TrustZone for Armv8-M

Microchip has recently announced new SAM L10 and SAM L11 Arm Cortex-M23 MCU families, with the SAM L11 family featuring Arm TrustZone for Armv8-M that provides hardware isolation between certified libraries, IP and application code. SAM L10 & SAM L11 MCU Families Key features: Arm Cortex M23 Core @ 32 MHz Up to 64 KB Flash and 16 KB SRAM picoPower Technology less than 25 μA/MHz in active mode less than 100 nA in sleep mode Fast wakeup time: 1.5 μS Flexible power saving features Enhanced Peripheral Touch Controller (PTC) with improved water tolerance, noise immunity and responsiveness Security (for SAM L11 only) Chip-level tamper resistance Arm TrustZone technology Secure boot Secure bootloader Crypto accelerators Secure key storage Op amp ADC and DAC Package – VQFN32, TQFP32, WLCSP32, VQFN24, SSOP24 Microchip SAM L10 MCU achieved a ULPMark score of 405, or over 200 percent better performance compared to the nearest […]

June 26, 2018June 26, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

SiFive Announces E20 and E21 RISC-V Cores for IoT and Wearables

SiFive has just announced the availability of their new E2 Core IP Series low-area, low-power microcontroller cores designed for use in embedded devices. Two standards cores are currently part of the new family: E21 providing mainstream performance for MCUs, sensor fusion, minion cores and smart IoT markets E20, the most power-efficient SiFive standard core designed for microcontrollers, IoT, analog mixed signal and finite state machine applications SiFive E20 MCU Core SiFive E20 Standard Core IP Key Features: RISC-V ISA – RV32IMC Machine Mode only 2-stage pipeline System Port for external memory accesses Core Local Interrupt Controller (CLIC) with 32 interrupts Advanced debug with 4 hardware breakpoints/watchpoints Performance – 1.1 DMIPS/MHz; 2.4 CoreMark/MHz Power / Clock / Area 28nm HPC – 0.58 mW; 725 MHz and up; 0.023 mm2 55nm LP – 1.3 mW; 250 MHz and up; 0.064 mm2 The company compares E20 core to Arm Cortex-M0+ core in the […]

May 19, 2018May 19, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Arduino Unveils its First FPGA Board with MKR Vidor 4000, Updates UNO WiFi Board with ATmega4809 MCU

Arduino has been busy with new boards announcements in the last week, as after introducing MKR WiFi 1010 and MKR NB 1500 IoT boards with respectively WiFi + Bluetooth, and NB-IoT + eMTC connectivity, the company has now unveiled two new boards. MKR Vidor 4000 is the very first official Arduino board with an FPGA, while UNO WiFi Rev2 is an upgrade of UNO WiFi board featuring the new Microchip ATmega4809 MCU and an U-blox wireless module instead of an ESP8266 chip. MKR Vidor 4000 Preliminary specifications: FPGA part FPGA – Intel Cyclone FPGA with 16K Logic Elements, 504Kbit of embedded RAM and 56 18×18 bit HW multipliers for high-speed DSP System Memory – 8 MB SDRAM Storage – 2 MB QSPI Flash (1MB for user applications) Micro HDMI connector MIPI camera connector mini PCIe connector with up to 25 user programmable pins MCU – Microchip SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ 32bit low […]

April 17, 2018April 17, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Microsoft Introduces Azure Sphere OS Linux Operating System for Certified Microcontrollers (MediaTek MT3620 for now)

Last year, Microsoft announced they were working with Mediatek on Project Sopris Secure WiFi MCU, based on Mediatek MT7687 MIPS microcontroller with 7 properties enhancing security (Hardware-based Root of Trust, failure reporting etc…). The company has now unveiled a complete secure IoT solution with Azure Sphere comprised of three main components: Azure Sphere certified secured MCUs which combine real-time and application cores with built-in Microsoft security technology and connectivity. The first compatible MCU will be Mediatek MT3620, which differs from MIPS based Project Sopris, as it features one Cortex A7 and two Cortex M4 cores as well as WiFi connectivity. Azure Sphere OS that provides four layers on top of the hardware: security monitor, custom Linux kernel, on-chip connectivity services to Azure Sphere Security Service, and app containers for computer (A7 core) or/and real-time I/Os (M4 cores). Azure Sphere Security Service, a secure cloud service for Azure Sphere device that […]

April 16, 2018April 16, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

$1.80 CH551 Mini Development Board Features 8-bit C51 Core, USB Interface, and I/Os

Last year, WCH (Nanjing QinHeng Corp.)’s launched a CH55x family of microcontroller based on an 8-bit C51 core with a USB interface, and extra I/Os depending on the selected part number Electrodragon is now listing a tiny USB development board based on CH551 for $1.80, and the chip itself sells for as low as 1.60 RMB (0.25 USD) on Taobao. Specifications: MCU – WCH CH551 8-bit C51 micro-controller USB – 1x USB type A port I/Os – 18 through holes exposing all I/Os from the MCU including GPIOs, USB, 3.3V, 5V GND Misc – On-board power led, user LED (P3.0) Power – 5V via USB port (or pin?) You won’t need an external hardware – such as a USB to TTL board – to program the boards since the MCU supports USB. To enter into programming mode, short connect the two pins in the middle of the board (DL) with […]

April 4, 2018April 6, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

$1.40 EDMINI Development Board Features LogicGreen LGT8F328P MCU Compatible with ATMega328P/Arduino

Arduino compatible boards are normally using Microphip Atmel microcontrollers, but as we’ve see with GD32 clone of STM32 MCU, some companies are making MCU clones too, usually with some improvements, and LogicGreen designed LGT8F328P micro-controller (mostly) compatible with Atmel ATMega328P micro-controller and adding features such as DAC output, PWM specific features, a computing accelerator (DSC), and others. The MCU also runs at double the clock speed (32 MHz). I found out about the new MCU via Electrodragon selling EDMINI Arduino compatible development board based on LGT8F328P micro-controller for $1.40. The board looks to be a clone of Arduino Pro Mini. Main specifications for EDMINI board: MCU – LogicGreen 8F328 (LGT8F328P) MCU – 99% compatible with ATMEGA328P MCU Expansion – Same pins as Arduino Pro Mini plus SWD/SWC pins, PE4/PE5 pins Misc – On-board power LED, D13 LED, reset button Power Supply – 5V RAW as VCC directly in; regulated 3.3V […]

February 13, 2018February 13, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Tock Open Source OS for Secure IoT Systems Runs on Arm Cortex-M Microcontrollers

We already have a fair share of open source operating systems running on Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers with FreeRTOS, mbed OS, Zephyr OS, RIOT, and many others. Earlier this morning, as I wrote about the Embedded Linux and IoT Summit 2018, I discovered you can now also add Tock to the list, with the operating system specifically designed for (secure) IoT on Arm Cortex-M MCUs. According to the abstract, Tock aims to enable more secure and extensible IoT systems by using a language sandbox and hardware enforced mechanism to isolate third-party and other untrusted code in the system. The operating systems is comprised of three components: A trusted core kernel written in Rust language with a HAL, scheduler and platform-specific configuration Capsules compiled with the kernel and use Rust’s type and module systems for safety; typically used for drivers & virtualization layers User-space processes using the MPU for hardware protection at runtime; […]