Things related to the current market has favored topic. According to forecasts, by 2020 the world will have more than 100 billion networked devices. It is noteworthy that these devices will be more than half the power consumption is very sensitive. MCU Therefore, low power consumption, high performance, especially in integrated wireless communication solutions will be taken seriously. It’s more than a simplified design that allows designers to more downstream networking equipment market.
Things attention to the average power consumption
With the increase of people and things, things and things connected to the next era will be one hundred billion connections, in addition to actively promote the development of ISO work on technical standards, market prospects for low-power M2M business is very broad. In this regard, Oivind Loe Silicon Labs 32-bit microcontroller product marketing senior manager in an interview, said: “Energy efficiency is a critical component in the application of things some of the characteristics of networking applications, such as meter reading and smart. smart credit card, there may be even ultra-low power requirements; in order to fit a variety of applications, MCU must have a well-designed energy mode, supports MCU current consumption to achieve a balance between functions and response time. ”
Microchip’s appliance unit IoT solutions marketing manager Xavier Bignalet also pointed out: “Today, connectivity applications power consumption is a necessary condition, even in some applications, the battery life of 20 years sustainable.”
But it is worth noting that networking applications for low-power chip demand is not all as low as possible under different scenarios and have unique needs. Deputy Minister of Renesas common Solution Center Integrated Marketing Wang Feng in an interview said: “If things specific to the application, it is often difficult to distinguish clearly standby power consumption and run things because the device, the device most. the case is in standby and between work, or a high frequency conversion between the two, the average power consumption becomes important. ”
In view of this situation, many semiconductor companies for the development of low-power MCU networking chips invested a lot of efforts. “Renesas 16-bit and 32-bit Rx series L78 series has a low-power features. Renesas many products using a proprietary kernel, have more space to optimize power consumption of the time. In addition, Renesas has its own chip peripheral products, with its own production facilities, joint action in the core, peripherals and technology in three aspects, the product can achieve low power consumption. “Wang Feng said.
Oivind Loe said: “MCU designed energy mode, balanced current consumption and response time and features an optimized trade-off between this method enables to provide MCU current consumption, performance, size and cost of the right for many applications. combination.”
Improved design architecture is an important way of saving
Specifically, MCU power consumption levels include static power consumption to run in two parts. Consider the actual application, the static power consumption of the chip in a sleep state or non-operating power, and dynamic power that is consumed by the MCU running power. The final performance of the system is to calculate the average power consumption. They have a level of power consumption and manufacturing processes are a great relationship, what kind of process, the product determines the static power consumption and operating advantages and disadvantages.
In addition, some vendors from the entire infrastructure improvements, low-power networking environment. NXP Semiconductors Greater MICR microcontroller Jin Yujie director of product marketing, said: “NXP introduced unique asynchronous MCU structure, MCU, respectively, in one integrated ARM Cortex A7 and Cortex M4 core, usually can be maintained with M4 core operation, especially in the standby mode of operation, maintaining low power consumption. ”
Renesas another way to take, but also a better solution to this problem. “The demand for features introduced in Renesas MCU in Snooze mode, you can do the standby MCU core, peripherals work. That is when you use Snooze mode, the peripherals will judge outside instruction comes, the need for core work, only confirm this demand later will really wake kernel, so that the efficiency of the system has increased significantly. “Wang Feng said.
Reduce peripheral power consumption, but also reduce the power consumption of the chip as a whole effective way. According to Jin Yujie introduction, NXP products by API software when MCU, MPU complete the task, some interfaces do not turn off to save power.
Microchip also peripherals mining potential. “Microchip’s 8-bit microcontroller with a part independent of the core peripherals can well achieve low power requirements, only a little or no CPU intervention, further reducing power requirements. In addition, such as LCD, op amp, RTCC , touch sensing, USB, DMA and encryption engines, low-power peripherals to enhance the performance of the MCU to a new level, to minimize system-level power. “Xavier Bignalet said.
Challenges to deal with fragmentation
Things biggest feature is the fragmentation, how to make MCU chip to adapt to the application of things, but also a challenge. “Things is not just a single market, but encompasses all areas of vertical markets Thus, for networking equipment is not a common specification: wearable devices with stringent power consumption requirements; and heavy industrial equipment. not demanding low power consumption can be the current situation is that most chip makers in order to balance the cost of using a common MCU to try to cover most applications. “Xavier Bignalet said.
However, this situation is improved. “With the evolution and development of networking applications markets semiconductor technology, in the future there may be makers of things for the market to develop a dedicated chip, commonly used in existing MCU analog peripheral functions may be removed, so as to focus on algorithms and connectivity, lower power consumption and cost at more advanced semiconductor process. in simple terms, is to control the main functions of the MCU and intelligently analyze / connection as the main function of the chip may things separation but co-exist. “ARM China embedded applications market manager Geng Lifeng representation.
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