EFM32
EFM32 is a microcontroller family offered by Silicon Laboratories . The EFM32 are 32-bit microcontrollers of various subfamilies that are based on the " ARM Cortex-M3 " architecture. A special focus was placed on energy consumption during development. This has also influenced the naming: EFM stands for English Energy Friendly Microcontroller .
history
The EFM32 microcontroller family was originally developed by Energy Micro. In mid-2013, Energy Micro was acquired by Silicon Laboratories. The following table lists the individual milestones.
| date | announcement |
|---|---|
| April 2008 | Energy Micro announces that they have licensed ARM Cortex-M3 Core. |
| October 2009 | Announcing the EFM32 Gecko MCU Family |
| December 2009 | Development kit for EFM32 Gecko MCU family |
| February 2010 | EFM32 Tiny Gecko MCU Family |
| July 2010 | EFM32 Giant Gecko MCU Family |
| November 2010 | Announcement of the development environment Simplicity Studio |
| September 2011 | EFM32 Leopard Gecko MCU Family |
| April 2013 | EFM32 Wonder Gecko MCU family |
| June 2013 | Silicon Laboratories Announces Acquisition of Energy Micro |
| October 2013 | EFM32 Zero Gecko MCU family |
| June 2014 | Simplicity Studio V2 |
| February 2015 | Simplicity Studio V3 |
| May 2015 | EFM32 Happy Gecko MCU family |
| December 2015 | EFM32 Pearl and Jade Gecko MCU family |
Processor architecture
The EFM32 microcontroller family is divided into different subfamilies, which are based on the " ARM Cortex-M " architecture. The following table gives an overview of the processors and EFM32 families.
| ARM Cortex-M version | EFM32 family |
|---|---|
| ARM Cortex-M0 + | EFM32 Zero Gecko (EFM32ZG),
EFM32 Happy Gecko (EFM32HG) |
| ARM Cortex-M3 | EFM32 Tiny Gecko (EFM32TG),
EFM32 Gecko (EFM32G), |
| ARM Cortex-M4F | EFM32 Wonder Gecko (EFM32WG), EFM32 Pearl Gecko (EFM32PG) |
Internal peripherals
The EFM32 microcontrollers have different internal peripheral units depending on the type. Common among others are GPIO , analog-to-digital converters , digital-to-analog converters , timers , watchdogs , UART , serial synchronous interfaces such as I²C and Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) and a real-time clock (RTC). Some of these peripheral units can be used autonomously without interaction with the microcontroller core, which among other things reduces power consumption.
GPIO
The input and output of digital information is a fundamental task in a microcontroller ( EVA principle ). As a rule, the digital inputs and outputs of microcontrollers are multiplexed. This means that different functions are brought out to one and the same pin and the function that is ultimately available can be selected via control registers. In this way, various digital I / O functions, but also module functions (such as UART signals, I2C signals, SPI signals, PWM signals, ...) are made available at the pins of the MCU housing. This flexibility allows the same microcontroller to be used in a wide variety of applications and its pinning to be flexibly adapted to the application.
With the EFM32 family, the operating mode of the I / Os (tristate, push-pull, open-drain, pull-up resistor, pull-down resistor), the driver capability of the digital outputs and the interrupt behavior can also be set. In addition, the digital functionality can be completely deactivated so that the pin can be used as an analog input or output.
Analog-to-digital converter
In order to be able to use the microcontroller in sensor applications, corresponding analog peripheral modules are also contained in many chips. An important module here is the analog-to-digital converter (English Analog to Digital Converter, ADC). For this reason, an analog-digital converter is integrated in some EFM32 microcontrollers . The resolution of the converter is programmable with the EFM32 - a resolution of 6 bit, 8 bit or 12 bit can be selected. There is also the possibility of hardware-supported oversampling to improve the resolution. By choosing the appropriate resolution, the conversion time can be optimized and the average power consumption can be adapted to the application. With many microcontrollers, the reference voltage used for the analog-digital converter is specified separately in the data sheet. Not so with the EFM32 - here the influence of the integrated reference is already included in the analog-digital converter specification.
programming
With the EFM32 microcontroller family, the software programmer has the option of programming either in assembler or in C. Nowadays, however, software development is almost exclusively done in C. An incomplete list of C compiler development environments is given in the following table.
List of available C compilers (incomplete selection)
| IDE name | Manufacturer | Versions available |
|---|---|---|
| Simplicity Studio | Silicon Labs | |
| MDK-ARM Microcontroller Development Kit | wedge | |
| IAR Embedded Workbench | IAR Systems | |
| TrueSTUDIO for ARM | Atollic | |
| Crossworks for ARM | Rowley Associates |
Web links
swell
- ↑ Official EFM32 web site
- ↑ Energy Micro Licenses Cortex-M3 Processor
- ↑ Silicon Labs announces takeover of Energy Micro ( memento of the original from June 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Press Release EFM32 Zero Gecko Family ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Silicon Labs announces Simplicity Studio Version 2 ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Silicon Labs announces Simplicity Studio Version 3 ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Press Release EFM32 Happy Gecko Family ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Press Release EFM32 Pearl and Jade Gecko family
- ↑ EFM32 Zero Gecko family
- ↑ EFM32 Happy Gecko family
- ↑ EFM32 Tiny Gecko family
- ↑ EFM32 Gecko family
- ↑ EFM32 Leopard Gecko family
- ↑ EFM32 Giant Gecko family
- ↑ EFM32 Jade Gecko family
- ↑ EFM32 Wonder Gecko family
- ↑ EFM32 Pearl Gecko family
