Intel Corp (INTC)

[mas]

Quark is in a different performance class to Cortex-M especially as it's going dual-core at 22nm. The point is will it be sufficiently lower power and cheaper than a small Cortex-A to be relevant, that is the big question mark about it.

The Kinetis KL03 will be sampling to Freescale partners in March for testing with the FRDM-KL03Z Freescale Freedom development board with assorted developer tools. The MCU will be made available at volume for $0.75 per unit in 100,000-unit quantities beginning in June, the company said.

The KL03's 48MHz ARM Cortex-MO+ has a bit manipulation engine for "faster, more code-efficient handling of peripheral registers," according to Freescale. The tiny MCU has 32KB of flash memory, 2KB of RAM, and 8K of ROM with an on-chip boot loader, with high-speed 12-bit ADC and a high-speed analog comparator. It operates on a 1.71-3.6-volt charge and utilizes low-power wake up and other low-power modes for different tasks.