Silicon Labs introduced the industry’s most energy-friendly 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) based on the ARM® Cortex®-M0+ processor. The EFM32™ Zero Gecko MCU family is designed to achieve the lowest system energy consumption for a wide range of battery-powered applications such as mobile health and fitness products, smart watches, activity trackers, smart meters, security systems and wireless sensor nodes, as well as battery-less systems powered by harvested energy. The new Zero Gecko family is the latest addition to the EFM32 Gecko portfolio pioneered by Energy Micro. The family includes 16 cost-effective MCU products designed from the ground up to enable the lowest possible energy consumption for connected devices enabling the Internet of Things (IoT).
The EFM32 Zero Gecko MCUs feature the industry’s most sophisticated energy management system with five energy modes that enable applications to remain in an energy-optimal state, spending as little time as possible in the energy-hungry active mode. In deep-sleep mode, Zero Gecko MCUs have an industry-leading 0.9μA standby current consumption with a 32.768kHz RTC, RAM/CPU state retention, brown-out detector and power-on-reset circuitry active. Active-mode power consumption scales down to 110 µA/MHz at 24MHz with real-world code (prime number search algorithm) executed from flash. Current consumption is less than 20nA in shut-off mode. The EFM32 MCUs further reduce power consumption with a 2-microsecond wakeup time from standby mode.
Like all EFM32 Gecko products, the Zero Gecko MCUs include a best-in-class energy-saving feature called the Peripheral Reflex System (PRS) that significantly enhances system-level energy efficiency.
Silicon Labs
www.silabs.com