E-peas Breaks Into Microcontrollers with the "Lowest Power Consuming Cortex-M0 Ever"
Designed to run at 18µA/MHz and with a deep sleep mode of just 340nA, the EDMS105N is optimized for energy harvesting projects.
Energy-harvesting specialist E-peas has announced it is branching out into ultra-low-power microcontroller parts — unveiling "the lowest power consuming Cortex-M0 microcontroller ever commercialized," the company claims.
"E-peas has come a long way since its creation. With our scope now going beyond energy harvesting alone, we will be able to make an even bigger contribution to the global IoT edge devices growth," claims E-peas chief executive and co-founder Geoffroy Gosset. "The release of our EDMS105N MCU is the culmination of many years of in-depth research and development work, and we are excited to see how extensive an impact it will have on the IoT sector in the years ahead."
Built around Arm's Cortex-M0 core IP, the 32-bit EDMS105N microcontroller can run up to 24MHz at a claimed 18µA/MHz in active mode — dropping down to just 340nA in its lowest-draw sleep mode, which keeps the real-time clock running and retains data in a single 8kB bank of static RAM (SRAM).
Designed for use with a 1.8-3.3V supply voltage, the part includes 32kB of SRAM and 256kB of single-cycle flash memory, an eight-channel direct memory access (DMA) controller, Single Wire Debug (SWD), one UART and an additional debug UART, two SPI, two I2C, and two I2S buses, up to 48 general-purpose input/outputs (GPIOs), four 32-bit timers with two compare/capture channels, one real-time clock, and a 32-bit watchdog.
Other features of the part include a single 12-bit analog to digital converter (ADC) with eight channels, a rail-to-rail analog comparator with VDD scaler, and an AES acceleration module supporting ECB, CBC, and CTR modes plus a hardware true random number generator (TRNG) based on clock drift. All this is packaged in a QFN48 measuring 6mm (around 0.24") on a side.
While announcing the new part at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), E-peas also unveiled an example application: An autonomous surveillance system, driven by the new microcontroller and powered wholly from harvested energy. At the same time, the company also showcased a new antenna design developed in partnership with Ignion — and the first, the company claimed, to be optimized for energy harvesting applications.
E-peas did not reveal availability or pricing on the new microcontroller, but promised it would be sampling "soon." Interested parties, meanwhile, can read more on the official product page.
