The device comes in a variety of configurations featuring the usual peripherals: 10/12/14-bit ADCs, comparators, timers, USART, LCD driver, watchdog, HW multiplier, internal oscillator, etc. Some of the devices are in-circuit programmable via JTAG or an RS-232 link.
Texas Instruments provides software development tools that can be downloaded for free. The tools have a crippled compiler that limits the number of lines that can be compiled. The open source community produces a freely available software development toolset (MSPGCC) based on the GNU toolset.