In our Deep Green Editor’s Choice section, we look at technology helping design green into today’s new products.
On an easy-to-use daughterboard (or PICtail in Microchip lingo, for their standard development kits), the ZeroG ZG2100M module controls MAC and baseband layers and connects to the Microchip host MCU or DSC using an SPI port. The host runs both a free TCP/IP stack and the system application. The small-footprint ZG2100M integrates the antenna, power amp, RF, and baseband circuitry into a fully FCC, IC, and ETSI certified module, saving both component costs and development time.
Microchip Technology
www.microchip.com
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ZeroG Wireless
www.zerogwireless.com
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FPGA hits 0.25 W static
With 200K logic elements, Altera’s new Cyclone III LS achieves an impressive static power figure of 0.25 W, but that’s not quite the whole story. The family also brings in new features not seen before at such a low power point – antitamper and design security as well as design separation.
Designers looking for IP protection can get it now. The path from the FPGA[
] to flash is 256-bit AES encrypted, and the JTAG port can be disabled. Using an on-chip oscillator, the device runs a CRC to check that it isn’t being reconfigured, and if it is being tampered with, the device will zeroize.
In design separation (learn more about this in the July 2009 issue of Industrial Embedded Systems), single-chip redundancy is implemented with completely isolated partitions protected from data leaks. While this doesn’t solve all the problems (like external power disruption), it does allow a single device to do many jobs that previously required two, saving 50 percent power and board space right away.
Altera
www.altera.com
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DSPs go to lower standbys
Texas Instruments continues to push the envelope of low-power DSPs, looking to pack additional functions into devices that need more and more battery life. The TMS320VC5505 and TMS320VC5504 DSPs provide up to 320 KB of on-chip memory and multiple integrated peripherals that reduce system cost by more than 20 percent. But the real news is that with standby power of less than 340 microwatts and active power of less than 0.3 mW/MHz, these DSPs allow up to 40 percent additional battery life compared to earlier devices.
Running at 100 MHz, the C5505 DSP[] offers a full set of peripherals including an LCD controller, an FFT hardware accelerator, increased on-chip memory, and a 10-bit SAR ADC. The lower-cost C5504 is pin-to-pin and software-compatible with the C5505 and comes with a basic peripheral set including SPI, MMC/SD, USB 2.0, and more.
Texas Instruments
www.ti.com
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Green features coming to ZigBee
While ZigBee-enabled devices are generally low power by their nature, the ZigBee Alliance is taking things to the next level by establishing a Green Power feature set for self-powered devices using energy harvesting.
Green Power builds on the existing features of ZigBee and ZigBee PRO, with the objective of eliminating wires and batteries to power nodes. The exact contents of the standard are being kept under wraps until the end of 2009, when they will be made available to all ZigBee Alliance members.
ZigBee Alliance
www.zigbee.org
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