NXP Semiconductors Introduces New MCX Microcontroller Portfolio

NXP Semiconductors launches a new MCX microcontroller portfolio designed to drive innovation in smart homes, smart factories, smart cities and many emerging industrial and IoT edge applications. The product portfolio consists of four families built on a common platform supported by the widely adopted MCUXpresso development tools and software suite. Based on this, developers can fully utilize unified software across the product portfolio, speeding up development. The portfolio also integrates, for the first time, NXP's new specialized Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for accelerated inference at the edge, delivering up to 30x improvement in machine learning throughput compared to individual CPU cores.

MCUs have changed dramatically over the past few decades due to the rapid proliferation of edge devices. While MCUs are at the heart of many edge applications today, a new generation of smart applications places higher demands on MCUs to help developers meet complex power, performance, and safety requirements, master a variety of connectivity options and balance total system cost and energy efficiency.

The four families of the MCX product portfolio are designed with ease of use in mind, simplifying the process of migration, and expanding or streamlining designs as needed, while minimizing development costs through the use of unified software tools. The portfolio is based on high-performance Arm Cortex-M cores and integrates a rich set of peripherals for design flexibility. MCX microcontroller products integrate up to 4 MB of on-chip flash, low-power cache and advanced memory management controllers, and also provide up to 1 MB of on-chip SRAM to further improve real-time performance in edge applications.

Machine learning and runtime inference will be powered by NXP's eIQ machine learning software development environment. Developers can take advantage of the easy-to-use tools provided by eIQ to train machine learning models targeting NPU or CPU cores and deploy them on MCUs. Built according to NXP's "Secure by Design" approach, the MCX series will provide secure boot with an immutable root of trust and hardware accelerated encryption, and select series also offer a built-in EdgeLock security subsystem.

Product Features

1. The new MCX microcontroller (MCU) portfolio consists of four new product families, built on a common platform and supported by NXP’s widely adopted MCUXpresso development tools and software suite to simplify product development

2. The Arm Cortex-M core-based MCX product portfolio includes the high-performance MCX N-series, the cost-optimized MCX A-series focusing on analog performance, the MCX W-series with low-power integrated wireless connectivity, and the ultra-low-power MCX L-series

3. The release of the new product portfolio will also bring the debut of professional machine learning accelerators designed by NXP to help users achieve high-performance inference at the edge

About the MCX Portfolio

1.MCX N series of high-performance microcontrollers, dedicated to providing secure and intelligent applications, the series includes a product family that integrates the EdgeLock security subsystem and a dedicated NPU, which has an efficient computing architecture for real-time reasoning.

2.MCX A-series benchmark microcontrollers provide key functions for a wide range of applications such as motor control, providing advanced analog functions such as high-precision data converters that are critical to customers, and fast time-to-market, which are important in application development, especially cost In limited circumstances, it is a key factor to consider.

3. The MCX W series wireless connectivity microcontrollers provide low power narrowband connectivity, including Bluetooth low energy. Designed to simplify wireless connectivity for IoT devices, the series helps extend battery life in small connected systems through energy-efficient wireless connectivity technology.

4.MCX L series ultra-low power microcontrollers are designed for applications with low power consumption requirements. Compared to traditional MCUs, these devices offer industry-leading low static and dynamic power consumption, which will help significantly extend battery life.