Maxim’s high-performance microcontrollers help develop wearable medical and fitness products

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Reviewed

Nov 17 2016

Designers can now easily develop high-performance fitness and medical wearable devices with enhanced functionality using the MAX32630 and MAX32631 ARM^® Cortex^®-M4F microcontrollers from Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. (NASDAQ: MXIM).

With the fast-growing market for personal wellness and medical wearable applications, new complex demands are being placed on the internal electronic components of devices. They must be small, yet have a high degree of functionality, processing capability, and optimal integration of peripherals. Devices must also have high accuracy and low noise, as well as extremely low power dissipation in various operational modes to ensure sufficient operating life on a single charge. Maxim’s MAX32630 and MAX32631 microcontrollers address these concerns with a variety of features.

The MAX32630 and MAX32631 sophisticated power management maximizes run time and provides the lowest energy consumption in the industry of active (127µW/MHz), DMA (32µW/MHz), and retention sleep (3.5µW) modes. The microcontrollers offer abundant onboard code (2MB flash), data (512KB SRAM), and cache (8KB) memory, which facilitate running third-party applications and logging sensor data, thereby improving the overall user experience. Interfaces include SPI, SPI XIP, UART, I²C, 1-Wire^®, and USB ports. Peripheral functions include six 32-bit timers, clock, 66 general-purpose I/O pins, pulse train engine, and 10-bit analog/digital converter (7.8ksps) The MAX32631 adds a trust protection unit (TPU) that enables advanced hardware encryption and authentication features, providing customers with a complete security toolbox to protect IP, algorithms, and user data.

The MAX32630 and secure MAX32631 extend Maxim's scalable memory architecture microcontroller portfolio for wearables, which includes the MAX32620 and secure MAX32621 with 2MB flash memory and 256KB SRAM, and MAX32625 and secure MAX32626 with 512KB flash memory and 160KB SRAM. All products operate over the -20 degree Celsius to +85 degree Celsius temperature range.

Key Advantages

Powerful processor: Fast Cortex-M4F 32-bit microcontroller core with floating-point unit
Ultra-low power: 127µW/MHz full-active and 3.5µW sleep modes extend battery life
Small form factor: Space saving 4.37mm × 4.37mm 100-ball WLP package
Secure: Robust hardware security with onboard trust protection unit

Commentary

“The combination of ultra-low power, high performance, and small footprint of the MAX32630 and MAX32631 offers designers a robust solution that has been architected ground up for wearable medical and fitness products,” said Prem Nayar, Director, Medical & Wearables Micros, Maxim Integrated. “The family of MAX326 microcontrollers provides sensor fusion, flexible design, and connectivity to further enhance the user experience.”

“With Maxim’s low-power microcontrollers for wearables, we have been able to add more features to Garmin’s high-performance wearables while maintaining the same battery life,” said Justin of Garmin International.

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