Re: WHERE'S ALL THE SMALL FOOTPRINT STUFF?

This is off-topic (and nearly sacrilegious) in an msp430 group, but the
smallest microcontrollers I know of at the moment are the Freescale
Kinetis devices - they have 20 pin devices in less than 2x2 mm, with
Cortex M0+ cores (far nicer than PIC's !).

On 04/11/14 07:38, Onestone [email protected] [msp430] wrote:
> 
> I know I've moaned before, but potentially the best part that Ti built
> was the MSP430F2131. It's problems were simple, no SBW interface, no
> comms. It's plusses were a very small footprint, decent I/O count and
> reasonable memory. As they've added to their portfolio they've
> concentrated on the high end big memory high pin count stuff, or the
> very low pin count, like 16 pin QFN packages, which usually just fall
> short on pin count. Sadly the 2121 and 2131 were orphan parts, an odd
> transition into the 2 series without the SBW. I looked at the
> MSP430G2131 and thought here was the answer to my prayers, but it seems
> to be nothing more than an MSP430F2002 with possibly a slightly better
> Brownout detector, how about uniformity in numbering Ti??
> 
> Most of the stuff I design has small physical requirements, like, in the
> past a 0.45" (11.43mm) sq wireless multi-sensor device, a sub 0.25gm
> (.008oz) motion and temp logger, and a 6x8mm (.235 x .315) motion temp
> and light logger with optical comms. All of these used the 2131 or 2121
> because nothing else had the pin count I needed, but in all cases my
> data rates were limited by the need to bit bang comm ports. Once again I
> find myself in that situation, I have a 10mm diameter limit on one
> design and a 5x8mm limit on the other, and this time I need a faster
> comm system. The closest I can get is the MSP430G2432, nothing remotely
> close in FRAM, which would be my preference, and nothing else I can find
> in a 4 x 4 mm  QFN24 package. The other problem I've often encountered
> is the lack of a DAC. In these small designs I don't have space (or
> budget) for an external DAC, and surprisingly need one quite often. For
> this design I've been forced out of the MSP430. For the first time in 14
> years I've been unable to find a part that does what I need
> economically, and am jumping ship to the Microchip PIC16LF1709, a 20 pin
> QFN part with DAC, UART, SPI and plenty of other resources. Yes it's 8
> bit, yes it has that evil PIC architecture, but I was once a huge fan of
> the small PIC's, and don't see this as an insurmountable problem.
> 
> Whinge over
> 
> Al
> 


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Posted by: David Brown <[email protected]>
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