Few decades back in 1970s, solid state transistor of size
measuring few mm was the power behind developing pocket
size AM radios and such communication equipment. Now the
transistor size has gone down to less than 0.1 micron, making
it difficult to see them in ordinary microscope. Now the
time has come to discuss about the size of a processor chip.
Few thousand to few million transistors together does arithmetic
and logic operations to save our brains from calculations
and computations, we don't know how many neurons it will
take in our brain to do simple calculations, but these processors
which does same job are getting close to the size of neuron.
The technology trend now in semiconductor industry is not
just the size it's also about less of number of transistors
used per processor.
The processor IP expert ARM is offering off-the-shelf ready
IPs to semiconductor vendors to develop smart processors.
One such IP is ARM's Cortex-M0 processor. Now its up to
the semiconductor chip makers to use advanced process to
make the real device as small and as smart they can.
NXP Semiconductor has displayed its creativeness in this
aspect by sampling the world's smallest 32-bit microcontroller
for general-market applications. The LPC1102, based on the
Cortex-M0 processor with a footprint of 5mm2 of PCB area
is targeted for high volume applications.
The LPC1102 with on-chip 32KB of flash memory and 8KB of
RAM is available in Wafer Level Chip Scale Packaging (WL-CSP)
with dimensions of 2.17 mm2 x 2.32 mm2, thickness of 0.6
mm, and pitch of 0.5 mm, close to the size of BJT transistor
when it became popular.
The other key features include a 4-channel 10-bit ADC, one
UART, one SPI, two 32-bit and two 16-bit timers, one 24-bit
system timer, SWD debugging and programming with four breakpoints
and two watchpoints, eleven I/O functions, and an internal
IRC oscillator.
When it comes to cost of these kind of devices it's going
to be in the range of cents.
"More and more of our customers are limited by PCB
space as they design products that are racing toward continual
miniaturization, while also being expected to deliver more
features, performance, as well as longer battery life,"
said Geoff Lees, vice president and general manager, microcontroller
product line, NXP Semiconductors. "The LPC1102 with
its 2 x 2 mm footprint is the solution."
"The very rapid roll-out and ongoing innovation by
NXP is remarkable and demonstrates the strength and versatility
of the ARM Cortex-M0 processor," said Richard York,
director of product marketing, Processor Division, ARM.
"Clearly NXP is reaping the benefits as shown by its
increasing product portfolio of innovative and successful
new ARM processor-based products."
