The heart of the Launchpad board is the MSP432 chip. This chip is a System-on-Chip (SoC) microcontroller unit (MCU) that houses the Central Processing Unit (CPU) and its various peripherals. This CPU is an ARM processor core, which is the heart of the MSP432.

In addition to this chip, the launchpad board contains many peripherals, including many other chips. To name a few:

• XDS110: It is a large chip which is comparable in size to MSP432. This chip helps program and debug MSP432. This chip is only used during the "development" phase of an embedded system. That is why this whole board is called a "development board". When an embedded system is designed and tested enough, a different board is built where only the MCU and some necessary peripherals exist. Then the embedded system is shipped and used wherever it is intended for. This is called "deployment" as opposed to "development."

• LEDs

• Pushbuttons