New-Tech Europe Magazine | July 2017

Next-gen MCUs enable better design techniques, add functionality and use less power

Jin Xu, Microchip Technology Inc.

Deck The rise in popularity of portable, battery-powered applications over the years has pushed designers to add more features into smaller form factors. This increase in functions, particularly wireless communication, puts a bigger demand on the system power source. The challenge becomes how to implement the desired system functions while extending the battery life. With the help of the most recent advances in microcontroller functionality, including various integrated features and peripherals, power management in embedded designs has become smarter and easier to implement. These MCUs have also enabled better design techniques. Do More With Less Power In case you haven’t noticed, it seems that everything around us is getting smarter and connected to one thing or

another. Your shoes now have sensors that can tell you how to improve your running time by displaying your pace on your smart phone. Your scale can automatically save your weight to your cloud–based tracking application, and it can let you know why that last doughnut you ate was a bad idea - via an alert on your smart phone. Your home security system can inform you about a leak in your garage via text message, thanks to a small wireless sensor placed next to the water heater. The rise in popularity of portable battery-powered applications has increased exponentially, thanks to the technological advances over time. Engineers are constantly being pushed to increase product functionality while reducing its overall dimensions, for each successive design. These additional features put a bigger demand on the system power source. The challenge becomes how to implement these new

functions while extending the battery life, all in a smaller footprint. The conventional approach for battery- powered application design is to keep as many modules in a low-power state for as long as possible, occasionally waking up to perform the required tasks before returning to sleep mode. In a complex design with multiple MCU/MPUs and components, a low pin count 8-bit microcontroller is often used as the system supervisor, to perform housekeeping tasks such as turning on and off modules, as needed, to maximize the power efficiency. Still, the majority of designs have only one main microcontroller with a host of integrated peripherals to implement the required system functions. Therefore, the power consumption of that microcontroller becomes a critical parameter. However, not all microcontrollers are made the same when it comes to low-power

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