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MCU Terminology

Jonthornham
Expert 1490 points

I am totally new to MCU's.  I have been reading as much as I can but most info seems to assume a prior knowledge of what things like VLO, DCO, and MCLK mean and what their purpose is.  Can someone suggest a source which goes over all the components for a total beginner?

Take care,

Jon

  • 0
    TI__Guru 64740 points

    I would suggest that you review the MSP430 Family User's Guide for the particular device that you may be targeting.  The terms will be described there as well as a description of the functionality of these subsystems.

  • 0
    TI__Genius 14940 points

    Jon,

    The users guides for the different MSP430 families have some pretty good information in them but they do tend to build on previous sections a bit.  I would suggest reading the sections on the CPU, the Reset and Interrupts, and then the Clock module.  Some of these sections may have slightly different names for different families, but they all have these sections.  It sounds like your MSP430 also has a power module of some kind so you will want to read that section as well.  You may want to read through the section on DMA if your MSP430 has one as it ties in with many other peripherals.  Once you have that (no small task) accomplished, you should be able to read most other sections and the acronyms will make a bit more sense.

    Regards,

    Jim

     

  • 0 in reply to Jim Noxon
    Guru 227245 points

    I'd consider the TimerA section more important that the DMA, as the majority of projects can live without DMA while most will require a timer. (TimerB is mostly similar, with some extensions)

    My suggestion would be:

    CPU (without the detailed assembly instruction description, but including the addressing modes), clock system, timerA. Then maybe the USART/USI/USCI module for a serial connection.

    It's important to know the structure how things interact. Details of how programming it are secondary. The default values will take care of the power meodule and clock module settings so the device will start wihtout programming them. It's necessary, however, to understand how all is nested.

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