With a mission to develop, market & sell the World's most energy friendly microcontrollers (MCU) Energy Micro have added to its expanding EFM32 MCU portfolio with the introduction of the Zero Gecko.

Based on ARM's Cortex-M0 core, the EFM32 Zero Gecko is aimed at battery-backed applications in sectors such as energy metering, building automation, security & portable medical equipment.

Specific details surrounding the new family are fairly scarce at the moment, but what we do know is the Zero Gecko aims to achieve an impressive four times energy consumption improvement when compared to alternative M0-based microcontrollers, according to Energy Micro.

While the Cortex-M3 core is popular in Europe, the M0 core is gaining momentum in Asia due to its low cost & entry energy saving advantages. Adding a Cortex-M0 offering to the EFM32 line up not only allows Energy Micro to address this low cost, potentially high volume market but also provides an important 'hook' into the rest of their range as the Zero Gecko will be pin & software compatible with its companion M3-based products, providing a migration path if & when required.

Currently, Energy Micro is working with lead customers on product specification refinement & plans to make the Zero Gecko available during Q4 of 2011 with a projected price of $0.60 per device (entry level) in 100k quantities.

Useful links
Energy Micro [www.energymicro.com]


EFM32 Gecko

In a change to our regular column, AND have invited key individuals from the electronics industry to showcase their current Micro's of the Month. This month, we're very pleased to feature the Energy Micro EFM32 Gecko by Richard Bethell, Technical Director at Solid State Supplies Ltd.

Engineered around the energy-efficient ARM® Cortex™-M3 architecture, Energy Micro's 32-bit EFM32 Gecko products use less than a ¼ of the energy needed by alternative 8, 16 or 32-bit microcontrollers.

Proven to consume less than 180µA per MHz while executing real life code from Flash, the EFM32G achieves the lowest active mode current consumption of any microcontroller. Its standby current consumption is also the lowest, at typically 900nA while running real time clock, power-on reset, brown-out detector & full RAM & CPU retention & less than 20nA in its deepest sleep mode. Furthermore, the microcontroller's start-up time of less than 2µs is the industry's fastest.

Specific highlights in the EFM32G's rich feature set contributing to its ultra low energy consumption include: a 4x40 segment LCD controller running at less than 900nA; an 8-channel 12-bit 1M samples/sec ADC running at less than 200µA; a brown-out detector running at less than 100nA; a 32kHz real time counter running at 50nA; & a UART capable of 9600bps at 100nA.

The EFM32G operates from a single supply rail of between 1.8 and 3.8V. Its operating temperature range is -40°C to +85°C. The microcontrollers provide up to 128KB Flash memory and up to 16KB of RAM.

Energy Micro also offers a series of entry-level microcontrollers as part of its Gecko family. The EFM®32 "Tiny Gecko" microcontrollers offer the energy-efficient performance of the company's bigger Gecko products combined with smaller Flash & RAM combinations & a choice of space saving QFN20, QFN32 & QFN64 packaging. As the QFN32 & QFN64 Tiny Gecko microcontrollers are pin & software compatible with the larger Gecko microcontrollers, developers can begin development using Gecko & migrate to Tiny Gecko when the parts become available.

For more information, please contact Richard Bethell [richard.bethell@sssplc.com], alternatively visit Solid State Supplies [www.sssplc.com]

Useful links
Richard Bethell [richard.bethell@sssplc.com]
Solid State Supplies [www.sssplc.com]
Energy Micro [www.energymicro.com]