Energy Micro introduces first energy friendly ARM Cortex-M4 products

Energy Micro, the energy friendly microcontroller and radio company, today announced that it will extend its EFM32 Gecko range of microcontrollers with the addition of products based on the ARM Cortex™-M4F core.

The addition of 60 new EFM32 Wonder Gecko devices brings the total number of variants within the Gecko range to over 240 – the industry’s most comprehensive range of pin- and code-compatible devices for low-energy embedded applications. The new controllers incorporate highly differentiated Gecko technology to minimize energy consumption, including a flexible range of standby and sleep modes, intelligent peripherals that allow designers to implement many functions without CPU wake-up, and ultra-low standby current.

“By adding M4F to our portfolio, we create a complete pin- and code-compatible roadmap of processors, from the lower cost value line Zero Gecko through to Wonder Gecko variants incorporating sophisticated signal processing functionality,“ said Geir Førre, CEO of Energy Micro. “With the lowest active and standby power consumption, this makes the Wonder Gecko the world's most energy friendly Cortex-M4 microcontroller.”

Equipped with up to 256K Flash memory and 32K RAM, the Wonder Gecko devices share many of the features that have made the EFM32 Series the solution of choice for low-energy applications. The new M4F family can achieve active mode current consumption of just 180µA/MHz. Devices provide a deep sleep mode that consumes just 400nA with RTC running, a shut-off mode requiring only 20nA and wake-up time as short as 2µs.

The LESENSE function block, a generic low energy sensor interface, enables monitoring of a mix of up to 16 capacitive, inductive or resistive sensors independently of the processor core. This allows designers to maintain basic functionality while keeping the processor in sleep or shut-off mode for as long as possible.

The Wonder Gecko processors will be available in sample quantities in Q3 2012, with pricing starting at $2.64 at 100K devices.

Energy Micro’s Gecko microcontroller portfolio consists of more than 240 variants based on the ARM Cortex-M processor cores, and includes Gecko Technology benchmarked to consume just a quarter of the energy of competing 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit MCUs.

See the Wonder Gecko introduction video here: http://youtu.be/LI36g3PaRU0

About Energy Micro

Further information is available at www.energymicro.com

About ARM and the Cortex-M4 processor

The ARM Cortex-M4 processor is the latest embedded processor by ARM specifically developed to address digital signal control markets that demand an efficient, easy-to-use blend of control and signal processing capabilities. The Cortex-M4 processor features extended single-cycle multiply-accumulate (MAC) instructions, optimized SIMD arithmetic, saturating arithmetic instructions and an optional single precision Floating Point Unit (FPU). These features build upon the innovative technology that characterizes the ARM Cortex-M series processors. The Cortex-M4 makes signal processing algorithm development easy through an excellent ecosystem of software tools and the Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS), and offers unparalleled capability to integrate 32-bit control with leading digital signal processing techniques for markets that require very high levels of energy efficiency.