Tiny Gecko microcontrollers suit low-power apps

An Energy Micro product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Mar 4, 2010

Energy Micro has announced a range of entry-level devices for low-power applications subject to stringent PCB space and product cost limitations.

The EFM32 Tiny Gecko (TG) microcontrollers offer the energy-efficient performance of the company's bigger Gecko products, combined with smaller Flash and RAM combinations and a choice of space-saving QFN20, QFN32 and QFN64 packaging.

Engineered around the energy-efficient ARM Cortex-M3 architecture, the 32-bit Gecko products use less than a quarter of the energy needed by alternative 8-, 16- or 32-bit microcontrollers.

Their current consumption is extremely low: in active mode typically 180uA per MHz executing code from Flash, 900nA in deep sleep mode and 20nA in shut-off mode.

In application benchmark tests, this low-current performance, combined with a wake-up time of under 2us, has enabled the EFM32 Gecko microcontrollers to extend battery cell life by a factor of at least four.

The smallest and lowest cost Tiny Gecko microcontrollers, the QFN20 packaged EFM32TG100 devices, provide Flash and RAM capacities of respectively 4 to 32KB, 1 to 4KB and 12 GPIO.

To simplify application scaling, the QFN32 packaged TG200 and QFN64 packaged TG230 and TG840 are also pin compatible with the bigger Gecko family of products and provide Flash options of 8, 16 and 32KB, and either 2 or 4KB of RAM and 24 or 56 GPIO.

To help further reduce overall system cost, the Tiny Gecko products offer the same energy-saving features and most of the peripherals of the larger Gecko products.

At the top of the range, the TG840 devices embed a 4 x 24 segment LCD controller consuming less than 900nA, while all TG parts offer an AES encryption/decryption engine as standard.

Other peripherals provided by Tiny Gecko include low-energy UART and I2C serial interfaces, A/D and D/A converters and a host of counters and timers.

The Gecko microcontroller's 'peripheral reflex system', running in parallel with the standard 32-bit ARM bus, allows peripherals to run and communicate autonomously while the CPU is turned off, resulting in longer sleep periods and savings in energy consumption.