Deep sleep empowers devices
25 June 2009
The quest for lower power consumption during operation has always been one of the key drivers in electronics. However, reducing power when not in operation, in sleep mode, is an enabling technology for many other applications. Microchip’s latest range of 8 and 16 bit microcontrollers (MCUs) draw just 20nA in deep sleep mode, just enough to maintain essential registers and allow it to be woken up, and are aimed at a host of applications from smoke alarms, energy harvesting, home medical devices, asset tracking and many more. At operating currents of around 520nA, Microchip (www.Microchip.com/XLP) claims the new microcontrollers also use less power than any of its competitors.
The PIC microcontroller families feature nanoWatt XLP eXtreme Low Power Technology, and join three other recent 8-bit families that are all part of Microchip’s nanoWatt XLP portfolio, which provides designers with a rich and compatible low-power migration path that includes on-chip peripherals for USB and mTouch sensing solutions. mTouch is Microchip’s capacitive sensing interface.
The three new nanoWatt XLP MCU families being announced include the 16-bit PIC24F16KA family, which features typical sleep currents as low as 20nA; and the 8-bit PIC18F46J11 and PIC18F46J50 families, both of which feature typical sleep currents of less than 20nA. The six general-purpose members in the PIC18F46J11 family provide up to 64kbyte of Flash program memory and the peripheral set of a typical 64- or 80-pin device in only 28- or 44-pins. The PIC18F46J50 family also features six members, which in addition integrate full speed USB 2.0 to enable connectivity for embedded applications requiring remote field upgrades or the downloading of data.
The extremely low sleep currents and numerous wake-up features of Microchip’s new nanoWatt XLP MCUs should be ideal for battery operated devices, which actually spend most of their time asleep. The interest in the market for such low power processors, for use in consumer to industrial applications, is now on the rise. Numerous consumer, industrial, automotive and medical applications can benefit from the extremely low power and peripheral integration of the nanoWatt XLP MCUs.
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