Freescale's New IoT Chip Is as Thin as a Blade of Grass

Freescale Semiconductor is rolling out the latest of its tiny ARM-based microcontrollers that is aimed at the growing Internet of things and wearable device markets.

Company officials on Dec. 1 unveiled an ultra-thin Kinetis K22 microcontroller (MCU) that they said has the thickness of a blade of grass. Freescale and other chip makers have been looking to shrink the MCUs to enable customers to build increasingly smaller Internet of things (IoT) and wearable devices, with much of the focus being around the chips' length and depth.

With the new Kinetis M22 MCU, which is available now, Freescale engineers focused on the height of the chip, reducing it by almost half over its predecessor, which was 0.60mm thick. The new chip comes in at 0.34mm, about half the thickness of a credit card, according to Steve Tateosian, manager of microcontroller platforms for Freescale