Compare Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontrollers with this online tool. Differences are highlighted in red:
This comparison engine has been developed using data found on TI homepage. As there are close to 400 types of MCUs at TI, it’s often difficult to know at once what differs form 1 CPU to another. This utility is based on TI data. It makes it easier to point out the differences by using colors. The features that differ are shown in red and the rest in black.
Via 43oh.
I wonder: How can the active current be lower than the standby current?
It’s odd, it states uA per MHZ, and these chips can work 25Mhz max. But I wonder what happens when they work on 1MH, will the current really br 0.16uA, I doubt it…I think the active current rating is tested under the most efficient circumstances. Lets say its most efficient at 8Mhz and 3V and then it consumes 1.28 uA.. and they just deduct 0.16uA/Mhz
Did you look at the MSP430 data sheet to find the minimum frequency?
According to the datasheet of MSP430F5509 the power consumption in active state is from 115 μA/MHz to 195 μA/MHz. This parameter is about 3 order of magnitude higher, than that in the above table.
Submit this idea to TI so they can implement it for every chip selection and comparison tool. That’s what I tried to suggest to the original author when I traced this blog entry back to its source, but the web form rejected my email address because my host has two ‘dots’ in the name. Fail.
The table has a typo on it, it should read mA/MHz in Active Mode.
The issue over uA/MHz doesn’t stop there, since all the processor vendors use different ways to describe this term. Some state the Active Mode @ 1MHz CPU Bus speed at some rated Voltage running from Flash, with all peripherals off, some state the Active Mode @ 1MHz CLOCK speed at some rated Voltage running from Flash, with all peripherals off (issue here is that these suppliers use the CLOCK rather than CPU Bus speed because they have a divide by 4 between the CLOCK & CPU buses), some state the uA/MHz as a “figure of Merit” whereby they calculate the Current at maximum clock speed, and then divide this result by the maximum clock, eg a 50MHz processor draws 5mA, then it’s ‘Figure of Merit’ is 100uA/MHz (5mA / 50), and finally, some micro vendors just measure the Current drawn by the CPU on the die, ignoring everything else like Flash, RAM, clocks, leakage currents and publish the information as real active currents for their processors…which of course is utter rubbish.
@Robert: Thanks for the insight. I should have realized that the typical 4x variation between processor implementations (PIC v AVR, as one example) for the same “MIPS” could easily make uA/MHz numbers appear to vary more than they really do. One thing I have noticed is that it is not always possible to turn off every peripheral that is not being used, because often more than one peripheral is grouped together, such that if you use one then you pay for the current for both, or more. Thus, it can be rather challenging to obtain the published results in a real application circuit. The one simplification that I think holds rather well is that the current consumed for each additional MHz is probably linear, even though there might be a static baseline such that it never actually reaches 0 uA at 0 MHz (halt).