Codenamed "Wolverine" for its aggressive power-saving technology, the improved ultra-low-power MSP430 microcontroller platform from Texas Instruments offers at least 50 % less power consumption than any other microcontroller in the industry: 360 nA real-time clock mode and less than 100 µA/MHz active power consumption. Typical battery powered applications spend as much as 99.9 % of their time in standby mode; Wolverine-based devices can consume as little as 360 nA in standby mode, more than doubling battery life.

 

Wolverine’s low power performance is made possible by using one unified ferromagnetic RAM (FRAM) for code and data instead of traditional Flash and SRAM memories, allowing them to consume 250 times less energy per bit compared to Flash- and EEPROM-based microcontrollers. Power consumption is further reduced thanks to an ultra low leakage  process technology that offers a 10x improvement in leakage and optimized mixed signal capabilities.

 

MSP430FR58xx microcontrollers based on the Wolverine technology platform will be available for sampling in June 2012.