The industry's first 90nm ARM9 family-based 32bit microcontroller family has been launched by Royal Dutch Philips. The LPC3000 family, based on Philips' Nexperia platform, is manufactured in the 90nm process technology developed in the 300mm Crolles2 pilot facility Philips shares with Freescale Semiconductor and STMicroelectronics in Crolles, France.

By using 90nm process technology and the ARM926EJ-S core, Philips claims to have cut manufacturing costs, decreased power dissipation, and increased operating speeds of its 32bit MCU technology.

System designers always want to improve power-dissipation, especially in handheld consumer devices. Philips believes its ARM9 family-based LPC3000 MCU family is a good solution because the 90nm technology allows for 1V operation—reducing power dissipation nine times over 3V devices. The ARM9 family also provides several power-management benefits, including the ability to go into a low-power state until an interrupt or debug request occurs. The LPC3000 family will feature a multilevel NAND Flash interface.