Freescale reduced the size of the world's smallest microcontroller on ARM architecture

The company 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 assortment of the manufacturer, the novelty was designated Kinetis KL03. It is 15% less compared to Kinetis KL02.

The novelty, which easily fits inside the golf ball hollows (its dimensions are equal to 1.6x2 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 within the framework of the “Internet of Things” concept.

Small size is not the only advantage of the Kinetis KL03 microcontroller. The microcircuit also boasts high energy efficiency. The microcontroller is based on a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 + processor operating at 48 MHz with an operating voltage of 1.71-3.6 V. The microcontroller's configuration includes 32 KB of flash memory, 2 KB of RAM, and a real-time clock. As part of the periphery, a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a high-speed comparator, and low-power UART, SPI, and I2C modules should be distinguished. The microcircuit is designed to operate in the temperature range from -40 ° C to +85 ° C.