Date: 24/09/2010

NXP Semiconductors' ARM Cortex-M3 based MCU LPC1800 boasts high performance

NXP Semiconductors has announced the availability ARM Cortex-M3 based microcontroller chip. The new LPC1800 is optimized for low power operation at very low frequencies all the way through to 150MHz maximum performance from either Flash or RAM. NXP call this device as industry's highest performance MCU chip providing maximum connectivity and bandwidth options for a wide range of demanding applications.
NXP says the flexible dual-bank 256-bit wide Flash memories can be used for concurrent write/read operations, allowing "golden copy" preservation and prevention of reprogramming mishaps, or simply used as a single bank of memory. The LPC1800 also features two new innovative peripherals: a flexible quad-SPI interface and a state configurable timer subsystem.


"The LPC1800 sets a new performance benchmark for ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers," said Geoff Lees, vice president and general manager, microcontroller product line, NXP Semiconductors. "What makes the LPC1800 unique is NXP's innovation in reliable, high performance memory architecture and system peripherals."


LPC1800 offers large on-chip SRAM for a Cortex-M3 with up to 200KB provided in multiple banks. The dual-bank 1MB Flash architecture is for providing high reliability in-application re-programming, and allows for non-stop Flash operation.


Additional peripherals available on the LPC1800 include two HS USB controllers, an on-chip HS PHY, a 10/100T Ethernet controller with hardware enabled TCP/IP checksum calculation, a high-resolution color LCD controller, and AES decryption including two 128-bit secure OTP memories for key storage. Versions with AES encryption are available on request.


LPC1800 Standard Features:
Standard features on all members of the series include 32 KB ROM containing boot code and on-chip software drivers, eight-channel General-Purpose DMA (GPDMA) controller, two 10-bit ADCs and 10-bit DAC with data conversion rate of 400k samples/s, a motor Control PWM and Quadrature Encoder Interface, 4 UARTs, 2 Fast-mode Plus I2C, I2S, 2 SSP/SPI, Smart card interface, 4 timers, windowed watchdog timer, an alarm timer, an ultra-low power RTC with 256 bytes of battery powered backup registers and up to 80 general purpose I/O pins.


Package and Availability : LPC1800 is available in 144-pin and 208-pin LQFP packages and 100-pin, 180-pin and 256-pin BGA packages. Flash-based LPC1800 engineering samples are available now. Flashless LPC18x0 parts, featuring larger on-chip SRAM, are sampling now and will be available through distribution in December.