Embedded systems developers have raised their expectations regarding development boards and tools. Boards need to be clean, easy to use and offer standardized interfaces. This allows rapid prototyping using the growing market of available shields and modules. Development tools must also be easy to use and offer projects that provide a simple starting point for common types of applications.

To learn more, Elektor's Stuart Cording spoke to NXP's Kyle Dando at their FRDM Lab at embedded world 2024. Two new MCX microcontrollers have been launched recently. The first is their MCX N series, a 150 MHz dual Arm® Cortex®-M33  featuring their eIQ® Neutron Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for machine learning (ML) acceleration. With dual 1024 kB flash banks, 512 kB RAM, and 32 kB of full ECC RAM, and external flash support, these target factory automation, edge AI, and other embedded intelligence applications.

The second is their MCX A series. These single-core Arm Cortex-M33 (48 and 96 MHz) are more general-purpose MCUs with a range of timers, 12-bit ADC and temperature sensor, and serial interfaces (FS-USB, UART, I2C, I3C).

NXP's latest FRDM development boards support these MCX devices by including an onboard MCU-Link debugger and connection headers for Arduino, Pmod, mikroBUS, and other FRDM boards. Supported expansion boards are listed on NXP's Expansion Board Hub, while software examples and code can be found at the Application Code Hub.
 
Kyle also demonstrated how these integrate into MCUXpresso, NXP’s suite of software and tools. Example projects can be found through the search feature, downloaded, and built quickly to explore everything from simple interfacing to complex ML applications rapidly. Support for dual-core processors is also available, something that remains a new challenge for many bare-metal microcontroller developers.