Datasheet: Small Size, Big Power

Smaller Microcontrollers Bring New Possibilities

- By Curtis Franklin, Editor-In-Chief

A new generation of CPUs and GPus are bringing the sort of power once thought only possible for much larger systems to very small microcontrollers. These very small controllers offer OS, language, and application options that include AI and advanced communications to independent embedded applications.

Once upon a time, you could get a rough idea of how much compute power was available in a system by the size of the board holding the main processor. Big power required a big board.

In 2025, though, servers can sit in the box that once held strong mints and single-board computers can host serious AI. It is the age of the small microcontroller.

In many ways, the rise of the small controller can be traced to two parallel developments: The introduction of the Arduino ecosystem in 2005 and the release of the Raspberry Pi in 2012.

While neither of these was intended to be the sort of embedded controller used in massive production runs, they introduced many individuals to embedded system programming and redefined what could be expected from a very small embedded system controller.

It’s not that tiny controllers weren't available before the early 2000s, it’s just that tiny controllers came with minimal capabilities. That changed with these new families of boards, which meant limited size no longer came with sharply limited expectations.

So what defines a small embedded controller today? In this datasheet we're choosing to include boards that have multiple I/O capabilities, both analog and digital, and the ability to control those ports with complex logic.

That's the “embedded controller” piece, but the “small” part of the definition gets a little fuzzier. The Arduino Uno is 82.5mm x 53.3mm so that’s one set of dimensions to throw around the size definition.