Energy Micro adds 12 devices to its Cortex-M3 microcontroller range for energy friendly applications

Oslo, Norway, July 12, 2011 – Energy Micro, the energy friendly microcontroller company, has announced availability of its EFM32 Gecko and Tiny Gecko product lines in a QFP64 package. The new 64-pin devices are particularly popular in the growing smart metering market, in addition to energy sensitive applications like building automation, security systems and portable health and fitness equipment.

The introduction of the larger I/O count package adds 12 new product variants to the company’s ARM® Cortex™-M3 based microcontroller portfolio. The EFM32G232, EFM32G842, EFM32TG232 and EFM32TG842, which are available in various configurations of Flash memory ranging from 8 to 128 KB and RAM from 2 to 16 KB, offer the same energy saving Gecko technology as other package options in the EFM32 MCU range. In application benchmark tests, this low current performance, combined with a wake-up time of 2µs has enabled the EFM32 microcontrollers to extend battery cell life by a factor of at least four.

Designed to significantly reduce current consumption, the EFM32 Gecko and Tiny Gecko microcontrollers operate in active mode typically 160µA per MHz executing code from Flash, 900nA in deep sleep mode and 20nA in shut off mode. The EFM32 Tiny Gecko family now also features the LESENSE low energy sensor interface, which enables autonomous monitoring of up to 16 external sensors in the microcontroller’s sub microamp Deep Sleep mode.

Andreas Koller, VP of World-Wide Sales and Marketing at Energy Micro said, "We have responded to the needs of our customers, and the introduction of the new QFP64 devices give engineers even more choices for applications where energy efficient design and proven packages are critical."

EFM32 Gecko and Tiny Gecko microcontrollers in QFP64 are available now and pricing starts at $1.49 each in 100k quantities. Technical data is available via Simplicity Studio, Energy Micro’s new online software console.

Wi-Fi based remote control car to be demonstrated at Embedded World 2011, Nuremberg

Nuremberg, Germany and San Jose, CA, February 23, 2011GainSpan Corporation a leader in low power embedded Wi-Fi solutions, today announced the successful integration of its GS1011MIP Wi-Fi module on STMicroelectronics EvoPrimer development platform. Now, system engineers can easily add ultra low power Wi-Fi connectivity to embedded systems that use popular STMicroelectronics 8/32-bit microcontrollers. A demonstration of the solution featuring a Wi-Fi based remote control car can be seen at ST’s Booth #12-330 in Hall 12 at Embedded World 2011 in Nuremberg, Germany, from March 1 – 3, 2011.

The GS1011MIP Wi-Fi module works seamlessly with the STMicroelectronics MCUs that are among the top sellers in the global markets and are used extensively in a broad range of embedded system applications. Key applications for this integration include consumer electronics, home appliances, personal healthcare devices, security systems, thermostats, HVAC equipment, home and building automation systems, industrial sensors among many others.

"These solutions are important to system engineers because we are seeing growing interest from them to add Wi-Fi connectivity to new designs and to upgrade existing designs, no matter what the host processor. Our fully certified, low power Wi-Fi modules and Serial to Wi-Fi software greatly simplify the task of adding wireless connectivity," said Bernard Aboussouan, vice president of marketing at GainSpan. "The successful integration with STMicroelectronics MCUs protects customer investments in product development and accelerates Wi-Fi enabled product availability in the market."

This demonstration shows the ease with which GainSpan's Wi-Fi solution can be integrated with an ST 8/32-bit MCU. North Pole Engineering, Inc. (NPE), a GainSpan design-in partner, developed the Wi-Fi based remote control car and integrated the hardware and software of the GS1011MIP module with the ST EvoPrimer platform in about one week. "The GainSpan platform was extremely easy to integrate with the ST platform. We are pleased by the flexibility of the GainSpan chip to integrate the complete Wi-Fi and networking stacks, making it simple and quick to add Wi-Fi capability to devices," said Joe Meyer, president of North Pole Engineering.

GainSpan's GS1011MIP Wi-Fi module is the ideal solution to enable fast development of Wi-Fi enabled devices. It includes a full Wi-Fi stack including WPS for easy provisioning, Over-The-Air firmware update, optional networking stack and services and 802.11i security. In the demonstration, the networking stack and security reside on the GS1011MIP offloading the MCU from all Wi-Fi and networking functions, while the host MCU handles the application and connects to the Wi-Fi module over UART or SPI interfaces using AT commands. The Wi-Fi module also features an ultra low power SoC that consumes just a few µA of standby current and has a wake-up latency of only a few ms, which is ideal for battery operated devices requiring years of battery life.

STMicroelectronics' STM32 is the industry’s largest family of microcontrollers using the advanced ARM® Cortex™-M3 32-bit processor core, offering a range of memory densities, operating speeds, and integrated features to solve diverse application demands. The EvoPrimer development platform provides rapid prototyping with STM8 and STM32 microcontrollers. EvoPrimer has a common base unit with interchangeable microcontroller modules, or target boards. The target boards connect to functions on board the EvoPrimer base, including LCD touchscreen, joystick, MEMS accelerometer, microphone, loudspeaker and jack, Micro SD card connector, and Li-ion battery with charge-management circuitry.

www.phaselink.com/news-Release/Press%20Release%2002-21-11.pdf

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Royalty-free RTOS now available for energy-efficient microcontrollers

San Diego, CA, October 25, 2010 ― Express Logic, Inc., the worldwide leader in royalty-free real-time operating systems (RTOS), today announced ThreadX® RTOS support of Energy Micro’s Cortex™-M3-based EFM®32 microcontroller (MCU) family. Designed for small footprint, demanding real-time control, the ThreadX RTOS is a perfect match for the EFM32 Gecko, which targets energy-sensitive real-time control applications including energy, water, and gas metering, building automation, alarm and security, and portable medical/fitness equipment.

Energy Micro develops, markets and sells ultra-low power microcontrollers using the industry leading 32-bit ARM® Cortex-M3 architecture. ThreadX’s limited memory usage and short entry-return from power-saving sleep ideally suits the combination of EFM32 microcontroller's energy friendly autonomous low-power features and the Cortex-M3 CPU. This combination is critical for bringing new safe and energy-friendly medical equipment and industrial systems to life.

"The ThreadX RTOS offers the high-speed and small memory footprint crucial to the energy-sensitive markets the EFM32 Gecko microcontrollers target," commented Oyvind Janbu, Energy Micro's CTO. "Designing reliable and long-lasting battery-operated applications requires a framework that reduces overhead and response time. ThreadX and EFM32 devices provide an unmatched solution."

The EFM32 Gecko microcontroller family consumes a fraction of the energy required by other 8-, 16- and 32-bit microcontroller solutions. The EFM32 Gecko MCU is in full production, and Energy Micro has revelead details of the software and pin-compatible Tiny Gecko and Giant Gecko products. A comprehensive tool suite supports the Gecko MCU, and the unique energyAware Profiler enables designers to perform real-time energy debugging directly on their system.

Express Logic’s ThreadX® RTOS offers a robust library of application-callable operating system services that simplify and optimize the performance of an embedded system. ThreadX is designed for microcontroller-based applications and features a small memory footprint of under 6KB so it can reside in even the most limited on-chip MCU memory. ThreadX provides preemptive, real-time, priority-based scheduling for optimum responsiveness and high performance and includes services such as thread scheduling, message passing, resource allocation, synchronization, and interrupt management.

ThreadX is complemented by FileX®, a full embedded file system, NetX™, a rich but small-footprint IPv4/IPv6 TCP/IP stack, USBX™, a full USB Host/Device/OTG stack, and PEGX™, a graphics development toolkit. TraceX®, Express Logic’s graphical real-time event analysis development tool, also is available for the EFM32 Gecko. ThreadX is provided with full source code and is fully integrated into the IAR Embedded Workbench IDE.

A free evaluation version of ThreadX and a demonstration program in source code form are available for the EFM32 Gecko from Express Logic’s web site, www.rtos.com. The demonstration program consists of a simple multithreaded application that uses many advanced, yet easy-to-use features of ThreadX, including message passing, thread creation, and scheduling. The entire application, including the ThreadX RTOS, requires less than 7KB of flash and less than 4KB of SRAM. Users can modify the demonstration or write a completely new ThreadX application up to the evaluation version’s limits, which consist of ten threads, one instantiation of each type of memory pool, and a maximum of two instantiations for each of the other ThreadX objects. The demo application is provided in C source code form, and is fully integrated with the EFM32 system and intended for use with the IAR tools.

"We are pleased to provide ThreadX RTOS support for Energy Micro’s EFM32 Gecko microcontrollers," commented William E. Lamie, CEO of Express Logic. "These power-saving MCUs enable ThreadX to deliver sub-microsecond context-switch performance for the most demanding real-time applications."

Shipping and Availability
ThreadX is available in full source code form, royalty free, and at license prices starting at $12,500.