It’s about the size of a black pepper flake. But a new microcontroller unit from Dallas-based Texas Instruments could have a big impact on a range of industries.
TI has announced the launch of the world’s smallest microcontroller unit (MCU), a product it said will allow designers to optimize board space in applications such as medical wearables and personal electronics without hampering performance via a wafer chip-scale package (WCSP).
The MCU expands Ti’s comprehensive Arm Cortex-M0+ MSPM0 MCU portfolio, the company said. It measures only 1.38mm, and—as you can see on the photo of the finger above—packs a lot into something exceedingly little.
“In tiny systems such as earbuds and medical probes, board space is a scarce and valuable resource,” Vinay Agarwal, VP and GM of MSP Microcontrollers at TI, said in a statement. “With the addition of the world’s smallest MCU, our MSPM0 MCU portfolio provides unlimited possibilities to enable smarter, more connected experiences in our day-to-day lives.”
Advancing innovation in ‘shrinking products’
With more than 100 cost-effective MCUs, TI said its MSPM0 MCU portfolio offers scalable configurations of on-chip analog peripherals and a range of computing options to enhance the sensing and control capabilities of embedded designs. TI displayed the devices at Embedded World 2025 this week in Nuremberg, Germany.
TI said that consumers demand that everyday electronic items, such as electric toothbrushes and stylus pens, offer more features in a smaller footprint at a lower cost. The company said that to innovate within these shrinking products, engineers are increasingly seeking compact, integrated components that enable them to add functionality while preserving board space.
TI said the MSPM0C1104 MCU leverages the advantages of WCSP packaging technology, along with intentional feature selection and TI’s cost optimization efforts. The size of the eight-ball WCSP is 38% smaller than competing devices.
According to TI, its new MCU features 16KB of memory; a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter with three channels; six general-purpose input/output pins; and compatibility with standard communication interfaces such as Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter (UART), Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) and Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C).
Integrating accurate, high-speed analog components into the world’s smallest MCU gives engineers the flexibility to maintain the computing performance of their embedded systems without increasing board size, the company said.
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