| Designer | ARM/Texas Instruments |
|---|---|
| Bits | 32-bit |
| Introduced | 2015 |
| Endianness | Little |
The MSP432 is a mixed-signal microcontroller family from Texas Instruments. It is based on a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4F CPU, and extends their 16-bit MSP430 line, with a larger address space for code and data, and faster integer and floating point calculation than the MSP430. Like the MSP430, it has a number of built-in peripheral devices, and is designed for low power requirements. In 2021, TI confirmed that the MSP432 has been discontinued and "there will be no new MSP432 products". [1]
Modern embedded computing requires large amounts of data and code, and often calls for floating point calculations. The MSP430's 16-bit architecture was already once extended to 20 bits (MSP430X) to accommodate those needs, but the resulting 1 MB limit is still too small, and the instruction set extensions slow down the code execution. Furthermore, MSP430 architecture does not include a hardware floating point unit. IEEE754 floating point computations are emulated in software [2] using integer arithmetic on its native 16-bit data, and are quite slow. [3]
The ARM Cortex-M4F architecture used in the MSP432 line allows up to 4 GB of unified program/data/peripheral memory, and has a built-in single precision IEEE754-compatible Floating Point Unit.
| MSP430 | MSP430X | MSP432 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Address space | 16 bits | 20 bits | 32 bits |
| Memory address space | 64 KB | 1 MB | 4 GB |
| Clock speed | 25 MHz | 48 MHz | |
| Floating Point | None | IEEE754 32-bit FPU | |
| Typical Dhrystone 2.1 (DMIPS/MHz) | 0.288 [4] | 1.196 | |
| ULPBench low power score | 120 | 167.4 | |
The peripherals in MSP432 are similar to those in MSP430, and there is a built-in ROM driver library that facilitates software reuse. [5]
Differences from MSP430 include:
The MSP432 is similar to the Stellaris LM4F120 and Tiva-C TM4C123 parts previously available from TI. The MSP432 is slightly slower, cheaper and uses significantly less power, and tends to have less of the sophisticated peripherals such as wide 32/64-bit timer units, or the quadrature encoder blocks. In fall of 2017 TI expanded the family with higher performance parts containing Ethernet, USB, CAN and SPI peripherals.
In 2017 the Tiva TM4C129 was rebranded as the MSP432 "E-series" [6] but with added features including: AES Module, SHA/MD5 Module, DES Module.
Several new subsystems were introduced in MSP432:
The MSP432 devices are named similarly to those of the MSP430. For instance MSP432P401RIPZT consists of the following pieces:
The first released MSP432 general purpose chip family, expanded in fall of 2017:
This Launchpad board is compatible with a suite of MSP430 stackable BoosterPacks, including the low-power SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3100 BoosterPack. It includes a USB debugging interface that can be connected directly to the development workstation.
Similar to the P401R launchpad, this supports a larger chip with 2 MB flash, 256 KB SRAM and also has a 320-segment LCD display leveraging the chip's LCD_F peripheral.
This is a long development board with two sets of BoosterPack headers and onboard Ethernet jack. It also supports USB OTG applications with a second USB port near the Ethernet jack (distinct from the USB debugging port).
This is a higher cost development board with a 100-pin LQFP ZIF socket used by initial MSP432 chips, and a JTAG and Spy Bi-Wire debug interfaces.
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