Introduction:

The MSP430 is a 16-bit microcontroller that has a number of special features not commonly available with other microcontrollers:

  • Complete system on-a-chip — includes LCD control, ADC, I/O ports, ROM, RAM, basic timer, watchdog timer, UART, etc.
  • Extremely low power consumption — only 4.2 nW per instruction, typical High speed — 300 ns per instruction @ 3.3 MHz clock, in register and register addressing mode
  • RISC structure — 27 core instructions
  • Orthogonal architecture (any instruction with any addressing mode)
  • Seven addressing modes for the source operand
  • Four addressing modes for the destination operand
  • Constant generator for the most often used constants (–1, 0, 1, 2, 4, 8)
  • Only one external crystal required — a frequency locked loop (FLL) oscillator
  • derives all internal clocks
  • Full real-time capability — stable, nominal system clock frequency is available after only six clocks when the MSP430 is restored from low-power mode (LPM) 3; — no waiting for the main crystal to begin oscillation and stabilize.

MSP430 Family:

The MSP430 family currently consists of three subfamilies:

  1. MSP430C31x
  2. MSP430C32x
  3. MSP430C33x

MSP430C31x:

MSP430C32x:

MSP430C33x: