NXP announces availability of ARM Cortex-M3 USB microcontrollers

“Having introduced the first Cortex-M0 based LPC1100 MCU series just weeks ago, we are now adding easy-to-use USB connectivity to our pin-compatible Cortex-M3 series,” said Geoff Lees, vice president and general manager, microcontroller product line, NXP Semiconductors. “In addition we’ve created the industry’s first virtually free fully integrated open-source development tools for the ARM® Cortex™ platform.”

The USB 2.0 device controller is fully certified and supports all 4 transfer types including isochronous transfer which is a key requirement for USB-based audio applications. Double buffering is supported on both isochronous and bulk end-points. The on-chip USB drivers support both the Mass Storage Class (MSC) and Human Interface Device (HID) class. Furthermore, these drivers are incorporated in ROM, saving customers approximately 5-6 K bytes of user code. ROM-based firmware drivers offer the dual advantage of low power operation as well as secure and safe bootloading via USB or other on-chip serial channels. The LPC1340 series is enumerated and recognized by any Windows® or Linux® PC as a mass storage device. Flash programming is enabled by a simple drag-and-drop action.