The LPC15xx are ARM Cortex-M3 based microcontrollers for embedded applications featuring a rich peripheral set with very low power consumption. The ARM Cortex-M3 is a next generation core that offers system enhancements such as enhanced debug features and a higher level of support block integration.

The LPC15xx operate at CPU frequencies of up to 72 MHz. The ARM Cortex-M3 CPU incorporates a 3-stage pipeline and uses a Harvard architecture with separate local instruction and data buses as well as a third bus for peripherals. The ARM Cortex-M3 CPU also includes an internal prefetch unit that supports speculative branching.

The LPC15xx includes up to 256 kB of flash memory, 32 kB of ROM, a 4 kB EEPROM, and up to 36 kB of SRAM. The peripheral complement includes one full-speed USB 2.0 device, two SPI interfaces, three USARTs, one Fast-mode Plus I2C-bus interface, one C_CAN module, PWM/timer subsystem with four configurable, multi-purpose State Configurable Timers (SCTimer/PWM) with input pre-processing unit, a Real-time clock module with independent power supply and a dedicated oscillator, two 12-channel/12-bit, 2 Msamples/s ADCs, one 12-bit, 500 kSamples/s DAC, four voltage comparators with internal voltage reference, and a temperature sensor. A DMA engine can service most peripherals.