Feature-rich Giant Gecko microcontrollers solve complex IoT applications

Silicon Labs (also known as " core technology " , NASDAQ : SLAB ) has expanded its energy-efficient industrial-grade microcontroller ( MCU ) EFM32® Gecko portfolio to deliver higher performance, more features and lower performance. Power consumption. The new EFM32GG11Giant Gecko MCU family offers the most advanced feature set in the low-power MCU market for applications such as smart metering, asset tracking, industrial / building automation, wearables and personal healthcare. Giant Gecko MCUs integrate processing power at peak speeds of up to 72MHz , large memory capacity, peripherals and hardware accelerators, and complete software tools, including the industry-leading Micrium® OS .  

Internet of Things ( IoT ) applications are becoming more complex, driving the need for multi-sensors, complex user interface displays, advanced algorithms, and wireless protocol stacks. As the power budget shrinks, the MCU must also be as energy efficient as possible in sleep mode to maximize battery life. Giant Gecko MCUs address these challenges by increasing integration, performance and energy efficiency.

Tom Pannell, senior director of marketing for Silicon Labs IoT products, said: "GiantGecko MCUs provide a user experience that was previously only available on high-power MCUs . Based on Gecko's decade-long evolution, the Giant Gecko family of products is available to developers. A huge leap in performance, functionality and design capabilities. "

The Giant Gecko range offers the following features:

·        ARM® Cortex®-M4 processor core supporting performance-intensive applications.

·         The largest on-chip memory capacity of the same MCU (up to 2MB flash and 512KB RAM ) to support more code size, debug capability, over-the-air ( OTA ) updates, data logging and a rich graphical interface.

·        SD/MMC and Octal/Quad-SPI memory interfaces support additional storage expansion capabilities for storage-intensive applications.

·         Fast wake-up / sleep transition and low-power architecture allow for autonomous access to sensor inputs and support for autonomous operation of low-power peripherals.

·         Low power consumption: the active mode to 77 μ A / MHz, the deep sleep mode to 1.6 μ A.

 

The Giant Gecko MCU integrates a rich communication interface and controller:

·         10/100 Ethernet Media Access Control ( MAC ) for IP- based industrial control.

·         A WiFi module that can be connected to the SDIO interface for IP- based wireless cloud connections.

·         Single or dual CAN bus controller for industrial control applications.

·         Free-crystal USB controller for cost-effective, ultra-low power USB connectivity.

·         Supports pixel-blended overlay ( Alphablending ) accelerator TFT LCD display drivers and ultra-low power segment LCD drivers for a richer user interface.

·         The current-based capacitive sensing engine simplifies the development of capacitive sensing applications by providing powerful touch inputs and ultra-low-power touch wake-up.

 

The Giant Gecko family of products provides a secure and reliable platform for building applications that use the best encryption algorithms. This family of MCUs features an energy-efficient Security accelerator that runs advanced algorithms for higher performance and lower power than traditional software methods, and a Security Management Unit ( SMU ) to support precise security control of peripheral access. And the NIST- certified True Random Number Generator ( TRNG ) is used for higher security randomization.

The GiantGecko MCUs are available in QFN , QFP and BGA package options and support up to 192 pins, including many other pin-compatible packages for existing EFM32 MCUs . Compatible with the entire EFM32 MCU and EFR32 Wireless Gecko SoC family of product software for the widest range of software reuse, reducing developer time and cost.

Silicon Labs ' Simplicity Studio development tools support Gecko MCUs , providing developers with one-click access to all the resources needed to complete a project in a unified, Eclipse- based development environment. Simplicity Studio includes graphical configuration, advanced energy monitoring, network analysis and capacitive touch configuration tools, as well as software examples and documentation. The Giant Gecko MCU natively supports Micrium OS , and developers can easily access Micrium tools through SimplicityStudio .

Price and availability

The engineering samples of the EFM32GG11Giant Gecko MCU are ready for mass production in the first quarter of 2018 . The EFM32GG11 MCU starts at $ 5.66 in quantities of 10,000. In addition, the SLSTK3701A Giant Gecko development kit is available, with a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $ 99.99 . To order EFM32GG11 engineering samples and development kits, please visit the website: .