Freescale downsized the world's smallest ARM-based microcontroller

Freescale Semiconductor, a well-known manufacturer of semiconductor chips and microprocessors, introduced the successor to the Kinetis KL02 chip, which last year won the title of the smallest microcontroller on the ARM architecture. In the manufacturer's assortment, the novelty received the designation Kinetis KL03. It is 15% less compared to the Kinetis KL02.

The novelty, which easily fits inside the recesses of a golf ball (its dimensions are 1.6 x 2 mm), is intended for use in various ultra-compact solutions, for example, miniature medical equipment designed for oral administration, portable consumer electronics devices, wearable computers and other devices as part of the concept of the “Internet of things”.

Small sizes are far from the only advantage of the Kinetis KL03 microcontroller. The chip also boasts high energy efficiency. The microcontroller is based on a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 + processor operating at a frequency of 48 MHz with an operating voltage of 1.71-3.6 V. The microcontroller configuration includes 32 KB of flash memory, 2 KB of RAM and a real-time clock. The peripherals should include a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a high-speed comparator, as well as low-power modules UART, SPI, and I2C. The microcircuit is designed to operate in the temperature range from -40 ° C to +85 ° C.