Energy Micro claims world's most energy efficient microcontroller

EFM32 Gecko microcontroller family is said to deliver 4x increase in battery life.

David Greenfield

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The first product line released byEnergy Micro, a producer of microcontrollers, is the 32-bit EFM32 Geckomicrocontroller family. Based on the ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollerarchitecture, Energy Micro says the EFM32G has been proven to extend batterylife by a factor of four, consuming a quarter of the energy required byexisting 8, 16 or 32-bit microcontrollers.

Proven to consume less than 180ector and

full RAM and CPU retention. The line uses less than 20nA in its deepest sleep

mode. In addition, Energy Micro says the microcontroller's start-up time of

less than 2µs is the industry's fastest.

Other features of the EFM32Ginclude:

• a 4x40 segment LCD controller running at lessthan 900nA;
• an 8-channel 12-bit 1M samples/sec ADC runningat less than 200
• a brown-out detector running at less than 100nA;
• a 32kHz real time counter running at 50nA; and
• a UART capable of 9600bps at 100nA.

Twenty-two different EFM32G microcontrollerproducts will become available over the next few months, in a variety ofpackages including QFN32, QFN64, QFP100 and BGA112. The EFM32G operates from asingle supply rail of between 1.8 and 3.8V. The operating temperature range is-40 °Cto +85 °C.The microcontrollers provide up to 128KB Flash memory and up to 16KB of RAM.

Access other Control Engineering content related to energyefficient microcontrollers:

• TIexpands smart metering portfolio to meet energy efficiency guidelines
• OnSemiconductor introduces integrated power line modem for smart meters
• Embeddedcontrol system reduces small combustion motor emissions

- Edited by David Greenfield , editorial director
Control Engineering Sustainable Engineering News Desk