MCU maths libraries help maintain ultra-low power consumption

26th March 2014

Staff Reporter

0 0

Leveraging intelligent peripherals and optimised software to ease the burden of complex maths instructions, Texas Instruments has announced an expanded ecosystem of free and easy-to-use maths libraries for its MSP430 MCUs. Both MSPMATHLIB and IQmathLib software libraries are suitable for applications where performance and power are critical, such as orientation tracking.

It is now possible to use an inverse tangent function to measure pitch and roll angles in a fraction of the time with an MSP430 MCU, an accelerometer and IQmathLib. Other ideal applications for these optimised maths software libraries include wireless sensor nodes, smart metering, heart rate monitors, and any product with capacitive touch or graphics capabilities.

MSPMATHLIB is an accelerated library of floating point, scalar maths functions that complete maths-intensive operations in a fraction of the time – providing developers with up to 26 times the performance. The advanced maths library helps 16-bit MCUs execute code faster, which improves battery life in any maths-intensive application. Developers can easily configure MSPMATHLIB software to improve performance on all MSP430F5xx, MSP430F6xx and MSP430FR5xx MCU series.

IQmathLib is now available for MSP430 MCU developers to help optimise 16- and 32-bit fixed point maths. This maths library provides the same benefits as MSPMATHLIB, but can achieve up to 100 times the performance, while only limiting the flexibility of the data range. IQmathLib provides all the back-end functions necessary to increase performance without sacrificing power consumption. IQmathLib is available for all MSP430 MCU series.

A TI Design will be available to showcase the performance and power capabilities of IQmathLib and allow developers to jumpstart system design on a variety of sensor fusion and asset monitoring applications. The reference design is an orientation tracker that processes several sensor inputs to monitor for tilts, drops or theft. IQmathLib enables the MSP430 MCU to execute sample code quicker so the orientation tracker can go back to a low-power mode. This IQmathLib design includes several components from TI’s MCU LaunchPad development ecosystem, such as the MSP430 Value Line LaunchPad, CircuitCo’s Educational BoosterPack, and the Fuel Tank BoosterPack from Element14 and TI.

Both MSPMATHLIB and IQmathLib are available at no cost via TI’s Code Composer Studio (CCS) integrated development environment (IDE). MSPMATHLIB is additionally available for IAR’s Embedded Workbench. Both libraries can be downloaded standalone.