Nuvoton Launches NuMicro M2351 Series TrustZone Empowered Microcontroller Focusing on IoT Security

Hsinchu, Taiwan – Sep. 10^th, 2018 –The rise of the internet of things era has increased awareness for the integration of the physical world into digital systems. While the digitization of our everyday lives led to efficiency improvements and economic benefits, it has also caused pressure on systems designers who are now required to come up with innovative IoT products capable of performing secure connection and data exchange while maintaining low power consumption. Since security and power consumption are the key requirements of IoT application, Nuvoton launches the NuMicro M2351 Series, which excels in supporting the proliferation of intelligent connected devices. Its secure and efficient power management features strengthen the innovation of IoT security and collaborative software development, such as the IoT devices with a secure connection, smart home appliance, fingerprint locks.

The NuMicro M2351 microcontroller series is powered by Arm^® Cortex^®-M23 core and operates at up to 64 MHz frequency, with up to 512 Kbytes Flash memory and up to 96 Kbytes SRAM. The NuMicro M2351 series is embedded with TrustZone for Armv8-M architecture and Arm PSA with Nuvoton Secure Microcontroller Platform (NuSMP) Supported, which elevates the traditional firmware security to a new level of robust software security.

TrustZone for Armv8-M and Nuvoton Security Functions Empowered

Arm TrustZone technology is a System on Chip (SoC) and CPU system-wide approach to security. In addition to the firmware-level security, the NuMicro M2351 series offers a more enhanced software-level security for more robust security and greater power efficiency. Furthermore, the TrustZone architecture could benefit the collaborative software development business model with rapid development and robust intellectual property protection.

In addition to TrustZone technology, the NuMicro M2351 series is also equipped with rich functions to enhance system security. The Secure Bootloader supports trusted boot feature. The hardware crypto accelerators, including ECC, support encryption and decryption operations to offload processor-computing power. The KPROM is a password protection mechanism to allow Flash memory write and erase. The XOM defines execute-only memory regions to protect critical program codes. The Flash lock bits are designed to disable external Flash read/write and debug interface. Tamper detection pins can detect the state transition on the tamper pins.

Power Management Technology for IoT Innovation

In addition to security, power consumption is also critical for IoT applications. M2351 Series offers multiple power modes for more efficient power management. Regarding the power consumption of M2351 series, the normal run mode consumes 97 μA/MHz in LDO mode and 45 μA/MHz in DC-DC mode. The current consumption of stand-by power down mode is 2.8 μA and the deep power-down mode without V_BAT is less than 2μA.

Arm PSA with Nuvoton Secure Microcontroller Platform (NuSMP) Supported

The Platform Security Architecture (PSA) is a holistic set of threat models, security analyses, hardware and firmware architecture specifications, and an open source firmware reference implementation. PSA is a contribution from Arm to the entire IoT ecosystem, offering common ground rules and a more economical approach to building more secure devices.

Nuvoton has developed the Nuvoton Secure Microcontroller Platform (NuSMP) to support Arm PSA. The NuSMP is a range of hardware and software mixture technology for security requirements of general purpose and secure IoT microcontrollers. With NuSMP, developers can easily achieve the secure services with the M2351 Series microcontroller in coverage of: Trusted Boot (Root of Trust), Secure OTA (Over-The-Air) firmware update (including secure software download), Power Management APIs for non-secure world and PC side crypto related development software tool.

Easy to Develop, Easy to Implement.

Committed to providing an easy development experience, Nuvoton offers the free-to-use Keil MDK Nuvoton Edition for M2351 series. Besides, IAR Embedded Workbench for Arm and GCC are also supported. For supporting tools, M2351 Series offers helpful tools to aid the project progress. For example, the TrustZone Template Generator could assist the security state planning and the secure firmware building; the Crypto Tool could support the cryptographic requirements of M2351 series, including key generation, key exchange, digital signature, encryption, and decryption. For security project developing, Nuvoton offers NuSMP (Nuvoton Secure Microcontroller Platform) of integrated security technologies. The application note, sample code and training videos for each technology would be available for developers to access and reference. Lastly, the Arm Mbed OS for IoT solutions and the Segger emWin for interactive interfaces are both supported in M2351 Series.

Packaging and Availability

The NuMicro M2351 series is available now in several packages including QFN33, LQFP64, LQFP128, and WLCSP49 (upon request). The M2351 series microcontrollers and its development tools can be ordered from Nuvoton’s official online store.

More information: https://m2351.nuvoton.com/

About Nuvoton Technology

Nuvoton Technology Corporation (NTC) was founded to bring innovative semiconductor solutions to the market. NTC was spun-off as a Winbond Electronics affiliate in July 2008 and became public in September 2010 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE). Nuvoton Technology focuses on development of analog/mixed signal, microcontroller, cloud and computing products and has strong market share in Industrial, Consumer and Computer markets. Nuvoton owns a wafer fab, featuring customized processes for analog, power and MCU products. Besides in-house IC products, the wafer fab also provides part of its capacity for foundry services. Nuvoton Technology provides products with a high performance/cost ratio for its customers by leveraging flexible technology, advanced design capability and integration of digital and analog technologies. Nuvoton values long term relationships with its partners and customers and is dedicated to continuous innovation of its products, processes and services. The company has established subsidiaries in the USA, China, Israel and India to strengthen regional customer support and global management. For more information, please visit https://www.nuvoton.com