Silicon Labs' new MCU EFM32 and EFM8 feature upgrades to accelerate product prototyping for the Internet of Things

Silicon Labs' new 32-bit MCU EFM32PG23 and 8-bit MCU EFM8BB50 products are designed to help developers accelerate product prototyping with a more optimized design architecture. The PG23 and BB50 not only further expand Silicon Labs' MCU portfolio, but also leverage small size and low power design to meet the needs of a variety of micro, battery devices and iot applications.

The EFM32 combines ultra-low power consumption and high performance

EFM32 is an energy efficient microcontroller designed for ultra-low power applications, especially power sensitive consumer and industrial products. EFM32 series MCUS are designed to extend functionality to ensure the real-time capacity needed to perform tasks while maintaining low system power consumption. The EFM32 MCU family is ideal for prototyping many iot applications due to its highly integrated, low-power design based on the Cortex-M kernel.

The full range of EFM32 MCU is suitable for:

● Consumer Products

● Smart meters

● Home Automation

● Industrial automation

● Communication hub

● Industrial control hub

Take PG23, the latest model in the EFM32 series, as an example. This MCU is small but suitable for many applications. It has an Arm Cortex-M33 core with operating frequency up to 80 MHz and operating current of only 21µA/MHz. In hibernation mode, the current of PG23 can be as low as 1.03 µA. With its low power consumption and low-power sensor interface (LESENSE), the PG23 is ideal for battery-powered applications. The MCU provides enough memory for most algorithms, with up to 512 kB of flash memory and 64 kB of RAM. In addition to a full-fledged serial communication peripheral, the PG23 also has an LCD controller, keyboard scanning, and an on-chip temperature sensor.

To detect edge signals, the PG23 has two analog comparators and an analog to digital converter with flexible resolution, configurable in 12, 16 or 20 bit resolution. Developers can also change the ADC's mode to get the high speed mode of 2 Msps, or focus on accuracy to get the high accuracy mode of ENOB up to 16 bits. By increasing accuracy, PG23 is ideal for many consumer medical, or test and measurement applications to quickly build and deploy artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms.