Silicon Labs has expanded its microcontroller product family to meet the needs of developers designing next-generation secure, battery-powered IoT devices, the company announced in a statement.
Silicon Labs’ new EFM32TG11 Tiny Gecko microcontrollers provide an ultra-low-power solution for connected devices requiring long battery life and no compromises in features or security.
The new controllers are ideal for smart meters, personal medical devices and home automation products with multiple sensors, local displays and touch controls. It can be used in IoT designs as standalone microcontrollers or with network coprocessors, giving developers more design flexibility.
The solutions are optimized for applications offering cloud connectivity through wireless access points, gateways and concentrators. When paired with a Silicon Labs’ transceiver, system-on-chip or module in many light-weight wireless applications, a Tiny Gecko 11 microcontrollers can manage both the application code and wireless connectivity.
When used with sophisticated protocols such as 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, the wireless system can be simplified by partitioning the Tiny Gecko 11 to solely manage the microcontroller application.
The Tiny Gecko 11 microcontrollers include sufficient memory, sensor interfaces, peripherals, communication links and on-chip security to support both wireless use cases, as well as standalone microcontroller applications.
Based on an ARM Cortex-M0+ processor running at 48 MHz, the Tiny Gecko 11 microcontrollers provide ample processing power while maintaining very high energy efficiency.
The microcontrollers combine low active current consumption (37 µA/MHz), fast wake-up times, a range of sleep modes (1.3 µA in deep sleep) and other architectural enhancements to enable secure, battery-powered IoT products requiring both high performance and low power consumption.
The Tiny Gecko 11 microcontrollers integrate an array of features that expand application possibilities, including advanced capacitive sense controller with wake-on-touch capability for applications requiring touch interfaces; low-energy sensor (LESENSE) interface for autonomous sensing in deep sleep modes; patented 8×32 segment LCD controller, reducing power consumption by up to 40 percent; A CAN controller for industrial applications requiring wired connectivity
There is also hardware cryptography including AES, hash functionality (SHA), cyclical redundancy checks (CRC), an energy-efficient true random number generator (TRNG) and a security management unit (SMU), enabling fine-grained security for peripheral access
Software and pin-compatible with other EFM32 Gecko products, the new MCUs offer more flash memory (up to 128 kB) and RAM (up to 32 kB) than the previous Tiny Gecko generation, making it easier to develop feature-rich embedded applications supporting real-time operating systems (RTOS) such as Micrium OS.
Samples and production quantities of the EFM32TG11 Tiny Gecko are available now in six package and size options, including an ultra-small 5 mm x 5 mm QFN32. Tiny Gecko 11 pricing begins at US$1.65 in 10,000-unit quantities. The SLSTK3301A Starter Kit, available now at an introductory price of US$89, enables developers to jumpstart evaluation and development of Tiny Gecko-based applications. The Tiny Gecko MCUs are supported by Silicon Labs’ Simplicity Studio development tools available to developers free of charge.