Silicon Labs launches the world's most energy efficient USB microcontroller

     Silicon Labs, a leading provider of microcontrollers, sensors and wireless connectivity solutions in the Internet of Things (IoT), has announced the industry's most energy efficient USB microcontroller (MCU). The new Happy Gecko MCU is the latest addition to Silicon Labs' award-winning EFM32 32-bit MCU product family, providing the industry's lowest USB power consumption for longer battery life and energy-harvesting applications. Based on the ARM® Cortex-M0 + core and low-power peripherals, the Happy Gecko family of products simplifies USB connectivity design for a wide range of IoT applications, including smart meters, smart home and building automation, alarm and security systems, smart accessories and wearables.

     As a leading supplier of USB bridge chips and smart interface ics, Silicon Labs developed the Happy Gecko family of products to meet customers' growing demand for low-cost, low-power USB connectivity solutions. With more than 3 billion USB devices shipped each year, USB has become the fastest growing interface in consumer applications and is also gaining traction in industrial automation. In today's IoT world, developers have found that adding a USB connection to a portable, battery-powered, connectable device can result in double the application current consumption. Silicon Labs' Happy Gecko MCU provides the ideal energy efficient USB connectivity solution for these power-sensitive IoT applications.

     The Happy Gecko USB MCU has an advanced energy management system with five energy consumption modes, allowing applications to maintain optimal energy consumption by spending as little time as possible in operating mode. In deep sleep mode, the Happy Gecko MCU has an industry-leading 0.9μA standby current consumption (and is capable of simultaneously enabling 32.768kHz RTC, maintaining RAM/CPU status, power down detection, and power-on reset circuits). When the actual code (prime search algorithm) is executed at a 24MHz operation rate, the operating mode power consumption can be reduced to 130μA/MHz. In addition, the USB MCU can further reduce power consumption with 2μs standby wake time.

     Like all EFM32 MCUS, the Happy Gecko family includes the Peripheral Reflex System (PRS) feature, which greatly improves the overall energy efficiency of the system. The 6-channel PRS is capable of monitoring complex system-level events, allowing autonomous communication between different MCU peripherals without CPU involvement. PRS captures the occurrence of specific events before waking up the CPU, so the Cortex-M0+ core can be kept in energy-efficient standby mode for as long as possible, thereby reducing system power consumption and extending battery life.

     The popular EFM32 chip has many low-power, accurate analog peripherals, and the Happy Gecko MCU has the same characteristics. These low-energy peripherals include analog comparators, power supply voltage comparators, on-chip temperature sensors, programmable current digital-to-analog converters (IDacs), and 12-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) that consume only 350μA of current at a 1MHz sampling rate. On-chip AES encryption enables secure wireless connectivity deployments for IoT applications such as smart meters and wireless sensor networks.

     The outstanding single-die integration features of the Happy Gecko family of products allow developers to reduce the number of off-chip devices and material (BOM) costs. While typical USB connectivity schemes typically require off-chip devices such as crystals and regulators, the highly integrated Happy Gecko MCU eliminates almost all of these discrete devices through a crystal-free architecture with a full-speed USB PHY, on-chip regulators, and resistors. The Happy Gecko MCU supports space-saving QFN, QFP, and Chip-level package (CSP) options in a tiny package size that is large enough for USB connectors and ultra-thin form factor wearable product designs.

     Daniel Cooley, Vice President and general manager of MCU and Wireless products at Silicon Labs, explained: "The Happy Gecko MCU brings developers the benefits of Silicon Labs' energy-efficient EFM32 architecture, providing a coveted, cost-effective plug and play solution for adding USB connectivity to their battery-powered IoT applications. "The combination of the Happy Gecko USB MCU and our Simplicity Studio development environment enables system designers to connect their 32-bit applications to virtually any device with the lowest power consumption and lowest BOM cost."