Easily solve design challenges with MSP430 MCUs

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Ever found a seemingly perfect microcontroller (MCU) for your design requirements, only to realize it won’t scale in memory or offer flexibility in peripherals? As a designer, you face challenges every day, but MCU scalability shouldn’t be one of them. In this article, I’ll explain how the MSP430 MCU can:

Solving scalability challenges.
Minimize board layout complexity and reduce BOM cost.
Retain data during power-off conditions.
Scalability Challenges
Scalability is an important factor when selecting any MCU. It can be frustrating if you have finished writing your firmware and then find yourself exceeding the available memory without a pin-compatible higher memory option. The recently released MSP430FR2476, which includes 64 KB of nonvolatile FRAM memory, provides additional scalability, including microcontrollers with as little as 0.5 KB of memory combined.

Figure 1: The MSP430 value line cost-optimized portfolio provides scalability across different feature sets
Minimizes board layout complexity and reduces BOM cost
Flexibility is also an important selection criterion for MCUs. But what does flexibility mean? Flexibility can be the ability to expand the portfolio by combining different peripherals, such as analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) or transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs). Flexibility also means being able to implement different functions in the MCU.
Perhaps you need to emulate an electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) with your MCU memory. Perhaps you want to use a pulse-width modulated (PWM) signal to replace the functionality of a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). While fixed-function ICs can handle some of these applications, it is possible and potentially more economical to implement multiple functions on a single MCU. In addition to reducing BOM cost, implementing different functions on a single chip can minimize complex board layout and save PCB space. The
above functions and other MCU applications can be implemented on a single MSP430FR2476 The above functions and other MCU applications can be implemented on a single MSP430FR2476 device and several other lower-memory MSP430 devices. The eBook, “Enhancing Simple Analog and Digital Functions for $0.25,” highlights these different capabilities and comes with software examples.
Retaining Data During Power Loss
In addition to scalability and flexibility, MSP430 devices feature a unique FRAM-based nonvolatile memory architecture. If you are designing a system that needs to retain critical information through power loss, a FRAM-based MCU can be more valuable than a traditional MCU with flash memory.
One application where preserving the state of the CPU and other peripherals during low-power and no-power scenarios is important is in 5G base stations. As wireless 5G networks are on the way, 5G base stations can connect multiple wireless devices to a central hub while providing faster connection speeds. Utilizing 5G’s high-frequency spectrum requires many different components to make up the base station, including field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), integrated transceivers, and high-speed data converters. Designers will need to guarantee robust power designs for these systems to ensure reliable operation, as network downtime can result in significant revenue loss for manufacturers and significant inconvenience for end users who expect reliable Internet connections. Additionally, in 5G base* power designs,
the MSP430FR2476MSP430FR2476 devices (and all MSP430 FRAM devices) are built specifically for power-off situations. With the Calculation Through Power Consumption (CTPL) library, these devices can save the state of the CPU and other peripherals in non-volatile FRAM memory and restore them when power is restored without completely resetting the system. One use case for the CPTL library is to record information on different power rails in the system to be used as a diagnostic function in the event of a power outage or system failure.
Figure 2 shows the implementation of the CTPL library, which addresses power-off situations.

Figure 2: Algorithm flow using the CTPL library
The addition of the 64KB MSP430FR2476 allows the Value Line portfolio to be used in a wide range of applications where scalability is a prerequisite