NXP Network Armed With Low-Cost Cortex MCU

Distributors in Europe will be gearing up to support NXP's low-cost, ARM Cortex-based LPC1100 32-bit microcontroller.

The semiconductor company has announced the product will be available from its distribution network in December. NXP distributors in Europe are Arrow, EBV, Future, Silica, Digi-Key and Farnell.

"Existing eight-bit architectures have their origins in the early era of the semiconductor industry, resulting in limitations of address range, register restriction, limited functionality, unsuitability for high-level languages, and little attention to power and scaling issues," said Geoff Lees, vice president and general manager, microcontroller product line, NXP Semiconductors. "The Cortex M0 processor core and system architecture take full advantage of today's optimised low power design tools, techniques and the latest low-power, high density silicon Flash process."

"It may be a big surprise to embedded users how much the LPC1100, a 32-bit microcontroller outperforms in efficiency eight-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers," commented Markus Levy, president of EEMBC (Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium). "If performance and energy consumption are important criteria for selecting a microcontroller based on the results generated from EEMBC's (Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium) CoreMark benchmark, embedded designers should check out the LPC with its 0.65 cent price tag before committing to any eight or 16-bit options with comparable features and pricing. The scores for the device are already posed on CoreMark.org.