32bit micros consumes 25% the power of rivals

1 min read

Energy Micro has announced the 32bit EFM32 Gecko microcontroller family. Based on the ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller architecture, the EFM32G has been proven, says the company, to consume 25% of the energy required by existing 8, 16 or 32bit microcontrollers.

Geir Forre, founder and ceo, said: "By introducing innovative new energy saving features, such as the peripheral reflex system and energy management unit, the potential saving in battery life that can be achieved is immense. Competing solutions just can't match the EFM32G's performance." Consuming less than 180µA per MHz while executing real life code from flash, the EFM32G also has the lowest stand by consumption – typically 900nA while running real time clock, power on reset, brown out detector and full ram and cpu retention. In its deepest sleep mode, it draws less than 20nA, but can still wake up in less than 2µs. There will be 22 variants and these will become available over the next few months. Package options include qfn32, qfn64, qfp100 and bga112, while parts will be available with up to 128kbyte of flash and up to 16kbyte of ram.