Nanoampere MCU is designed to serve sensors

Nanoampere MCU is designed to serve sensors


LONDON – Lapis Semiconductor Co. Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan), a Rohm Group company formerly known Oki Semiconductor, has developed a low-power microcontroller designed to serve as a sensor hub and potentially as a host for sensor-fusion software.

The ML610Q792 microcontroller has a "halt" mode in which power consumption is reduced to 600-nanoamperes allowing for low power consumption. The chip includes 64-kbytes flash ROM, with on-board writing supported.

The microcontroller, based on the proprietary U8 8-bit RISC core and a 16-bit math coprocessor, is designed to be a low-power microcontroller making it possible to deploy cloud-based features and services in smartphones.

The microcontroller logs environmental data supports wireless communications in compact products such as pedometers and smartphone accessories.

Dual interfaces allow for connections to a sensor, or sensor bus, and to the host application processor and the chip is housed in a 48-pin package measuring 3.1-mm by 3.0-mm.

Lapis is also providing a development board with multiple sensors and drivers and a software development kit with source code and libraries for data logging, calorie calculation and pedometer functions such as step counting.

The part has been in mass production since February 2012 and Android drivers are under development Lapis said.

The sample price for the microcontroller is 300 yen (about $3.80) and the SDK is priced at 70,000 yen (about $880), according to the Lapis website.


Related links and articles:

www.lapis-semi.com

News articles:


Oki Semiconductor becomes Lapis

Genusion licenses B4-Flash to Rohm, Lapis

Nordic takes aim on step up to the WSN platform


Previous
Next