World’s most energy-efficient MCUs featured on low-power, cost-effective Freescale Freedom development platform
Freescale Semiconductor’s award-winning Kinetis L series, the world’s most energy-efficient microcontrollers (MCUs) and the first built on the ARM Cortex-M0+ processor, is now broadly available.
Kinetis L series 32-bit devices, initially announced earlier this year, are the first to be featured on the new Freescale Freedom development platform, a small, low-power, cost-effective evaluation and development system perfect for quick application prototyping and demonstration.
The first member of the Kinetis L series, the KL25 MCU, and the Freescale Freedom development platform are readily available today through global semiconductor and electronic component distributors and suppliers, including element 14, Digi-Key Corporation and Mouser Electronics. More than 15,000 Freescale Freedom development platforms have been ordered and already begun shipping.
“We’ve driven an aggressive timeline to get the world’s most energy-efficient MCUs into our customers’ hands as soon as possible,” said Geoff Lees, vice president and general manager of Freescale’s Industrial & Multi-Market MCU business. “Six months after the announcement of the ARM Cortex-M0+ core, Freescale is delivering the fully qualified Kinetis L series in volume production quantities to help legacy 8- and 16-bit users ease the transition to 32-bit.”
KL25 features
Each Kinetis L series family includes scalable flash memory options, pin counts and analog, communication, timing and control peripherals, providing easy migration paths for end product line expansion. The KL25 MCU features include:
- 48 MHz ARM Cortex-M0+ core
- Down to 40 uA/MHz code execution from flash memory
- 32 KB to 128 KB of flash memory
- High-speed 12/16-bit analog-to-digital converter
- 12-bit digital-to-analog converter
- High-speed analog comparator
- Low-power touch sensing
- Powerful timers for a broad range of applications including motor control
- USB 2.0 full-speed host/device/OTG
- Pin- and software-compatible with the Kinetis K20 family, providing a migration path to DSP performance and advanced feature integration
World-class enablement
The Kinetis L series is supported by the Freescale Freedom development platform, Processor Expert software including an MQX Lite RTOS component, the Solution Advisor and the Tower System modular development platform for rapid prototyping, along with third-party development resources from the extensive ARM ecosystem.
The Freescale Freedom hardware provides easy access to the MCU I/O pins in an industry-standard form factor with a rich-set of third-party expansion board options. An integrated open-standard serial and debug interface, OpenSDA, offers an easy-to-use mass-storage device mode flash programmer, a virtual serial port and classic programming and run-control capabilities.
In addition, Freescale continues to grow the Tower System portfolio with the introduction of the TWR-KL25Z48M controller module. This new Kinetis L series module provides advanced evaluation and rapid prototyping capabilities that can leverage the growing Tower System portfolio. The TWR-KL25Z48M features the OpenSDA debug interface, capacitive touch pads, a Tower System plug-in socket and much more.
Availability and pricing
The Kinetis L series MKL25Z128VLK4 (80 LQFP) MCU is available now at a suggested resale price of $1.98 (USD) in 10,000-unit quantities. The Freescale Freedom development platform (FRDM-KL25Z) is available at a suggested resale price of $12.95 (USD). The Tower System TWR-KL25Z module is available at a suggested resale price of $99 (USD).
The entry-level Kinetis L series device, the KL02 MCU, is planned for broad availability in early 2013 at a suggested resale price of 49 cents (USD).
