Low-voltage MCU

Silicon Laboratories has released what it claims is the first microcontroller capable of operating down to 0.9 V, enabling portable devices to derive power from a single-cell battery.

The C8051F9xx family’s 8-bit architecture with an integrated high-efficiency DC-DC boost converter, which can supply up to 65 mW for both internal MCU use and to drive other components, creates a single-cell battery system.

For devices powered by user-replaceable batteries such as wireless sensor networks, smoke alarms, portable medical devices, remote controls, computer peripherals and portable audio devices, the family enables smaller form factor products and longer battery life.

In many low power applications, operating from 0.9 up to 3.6 V, the MCU is in sleep mode for the majority of the time, waking up periodically to capture data. The family delivers a typical sleep-mode current of less than 50 nA. The MCU can wake up from its low-power sleep mode with the CPU operating at 25 MIPS and ready to make an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) measurement within 2 µs.

This allows the MCU to spend minimum time performing measurements and algorithms. To save battery life in active mode, the devices’ power-efficient architecture has an active-mode current down to 170 µA/MHz.

The family is claimed to be the first MCU to integrate 64 KB of flash and 4 KB of RAM into a 4 x 4 mm package.