July 15, 2013 – Silicon Labs (NASDAQ: SLAB, Country Manager In-gyu Kim), a global leader in high-performance analog-intensive mixed-signal ICs, today announced development kits and application software demos for the EFM32 Wonder Gecko microcontroller (MCU) family. The EFM32 Wonder Gecko MCU was developed by Energy Micro, which Silicon Labs acquired last month. The Wonder Gecko MCU line is based on the ARM® Cortex™-M4 processor core, provides a full set of DSP instructions, and includes a hardware floating-point unit (FPU) suitable for high-speed computation. The development kits and software examples are designed to enable embedded engineers to utilize high-performance CPUs and low-power 32-bit digital signal processing.

Geir Førre, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Microcontroller Business Unit at Silicon Labs, stated, “With a focus on energy efficiency, the Wonder Gecko Kit provides embedded designers with the opportunity to utilize the most energy-friendly ARM Cortex-M4-based MCU and the lowest standby power mode,” adding, “The Wonder Gecko development kit and software libraries offer the opportunity to easily leverage high-performance signal processing capabilities and floating-point computation performance.” “Increasingly, examples of smart sensors and wireless applications are demonstrating that analyzing large volumes of data locally at sensor nodes is more efficient than transmitting them remotely over a network,” he said.

To shorten design time, the EFM32 development kit includes a built-in J-Link debugger and provides software examples that utilize the built-in kit's features.

• Audio preamplifier equalizer example that digitizes audio connector signals using the MCU's on-chip ADC (analog-to-digital converter) and generates output through a DAC (digital-to-analog converter).
• An audio frequency analyzer example that uses the kit's audio connector and performs a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to display frequency components on the development kit's LCD.
• 10-500 Hz FFT Analysis Example Using Built-in Optical Sensor

Through these software demos, designers can evaluate the differences between hard and soft floating-point operations, as well as compiler optimizations and CPU cycle counts.

The example projects are part of the CMSIS (Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard) DSP function library. This includes complex FFTs, FIR (finite impulse response) filters, matrix and vector operations, and statistical analysis. CMSIS provides a vendor-independent hardware abstraction layer for ARM Cortex-M processors.

The Simplicity Studio software suite, provided free of charge by Silicon Labs, includes all necessary materials for the development kit, including CMSIS, the Board Support Package (BSP), and the Wonder Gecko white paper. The Wonder Gecko white paper highlights the benefits of 32-bit processing, DSP, and FPU performance in the EFM32 Wonder Gecko MCU family. It explains how the Wonder Gecko MCU achieves high-level 32-bit performance and delivers industry-leading energy efficiency.

Price and supply
Silicon Labs' EFM32 hardware evaluation platform is currently available for the Wonder Gecko MCU family. The EFM32WG-STK3800 starter kit is available for $79 and provides an LCD segment display, lighting and touch sensors, USB, and a USB interface to a host device. The fully featured EFM32WG-DK3850 development kit is priced at $349 and includes a QVGA resistive touch color display, audio connector, joystick, switch, and potentiometer for additional user control. Both development kits provide high-performance energy monitoring and real-time power profiling, and support the SEGGER J-Link debugger and Simplicity Studio developer tools.

For more information on the Wonder Gecko MCU family and to order the EFM32 development kit, visit www.silabs.com/cortex-m4-kit .