Date: 04/03/2012

TI's "Wolverine" MCU embeds FRAM to cut power consumption

Texas Instruments says its new FRAM integrated "Wolverine" MSP430 microcontroller platform offers at least 50 percent less power consumption than any other microcontroller in the industry (360 nA real-time clock mode and less than 100 uA/MHz active power consumption). The first devices based on this platform is going to be the MSP430FR58xx microcontroller series with expected availability in June 2012.

"Everyday devices such as glucose meters and smoke detectors are seeing increased levels of performance with 10-20 years of battery longevity, and this trend is trickling into a myriad of other applications," said Kevin Wang, chief analyst, iSuppli China. "The revolutionary 'Wolverine' low-power architecture from TI is setting a new industry standard and will enable a proliferation of ultra-low-power products. From consumer to medical to industrial, the sky is the limit."

TI says with unified FRAM the "Wolverine"-based microcontrollers can operate at less than 100 uA/MHz in active mode and consume 250x less energy per bit compared to Flash- and EEPROM-based microcontrollers. FRAM is 100 percent non-volatile, which gives developers the low power, speed and flexibility of SRAM while retaining the key no-power storage capability of Flash.