The CC430 is an MSP430 microcontroller with an integrated wireless transceiver and is the heart of the Chronos. It is a 16-bit ultra-low power microcontroller that has exceptionally long battery life. The sub-one gigahertz wireless transceiver features good receiver sensitivity and blocking performance which makes very long range performance possible. Communicating with sensors hundreds of meters away is possible even when using small antennas like the one on the Chronos watch. The CC430 features several intelligent analog peripherals including analog comparators, and a 200ksps (kilo samples per second) analog to digital converter that is used to interface with the various sensors on the Chronos. The MCU even features a 128-bit AES coprocessor that can securely encode and decode wireless information. The CC430 also features 32KB of flash and 2KB of RAM. This should be more than enough flash and RAM for even the most demanding personal area network. The default application loaded on the Chronos consumes the majority of the flash because it attempts to demonstrate every possible feature on the watch. When developing a custom application, it is easy to remove the sections of the code that are not in use to free more space.