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From the beginning, the design objective of the MSP430 team was to focus on the Ultra-Low-Power consumption of the complete system. The goal was to create a microcontroller which consumes very little current in the sleep modes and performs the given tasks in the active mode as fast as possible.
To reduce the current consumption of a system, the MSP430 allows designers the ability to influence the active current consumption and active time as well as sleep mode current consumption and sleep time.

The active mode current consumption of the MSP430 is 250 µA in a 2.2 V system. The time to wake-up from the sleep mode to a total functional system takes a maximum of 6 µs. This allows the MSP430 to be in sleep modes longer and eliminates unnecessary energy use in the active mode.

MSP430 provides five Power Saving Modes
Active Mode	250µA/2.2V
Low Power Mode 1 (LPM1)	30µA/2.2V
LPM2	6µA
Standby Mode (LPM3)	0.8µA/2.2V
RAM Retention / Off Mode (LPM4)	0.1µA

The powerful 16-bit CPU core ensures a fast execution of the tasks and therefore reduces the active time. This means that the higher the performance of the CPU core, the lower the system power consumption. All MSP430 peripheral modules are specially designed to support these Ultra-Low-Power features.