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Hi there, I'm Øyvind.
With the introduction of the new EFM32 Zero Gecko family, we thought it was a good time
to compare the power consumption of our Zero Gecko Cortex-M0+
with other Cortex-M0+ and Cortex-M0 competitors.
Comparing the Zero Gecko performance to competing solutions, the EFM32 ZG has lower power consumption
while enabling more features.
Brown-out Detection is essential in any battery operated application.
When you see that competing solutions add as much as 50 micro-amps to include BOD, the
0.9 uA of the Zero Gecko including BOD/POR, RTC and RAM retention, shows you the real story.
The Cortex-M0+ core of the Zero Gecko executes code very efficiently from Flash,
and only consumes 110 uA/MHz while executing real code.
So when comparing active mode current consumption,
you should always look at real life code, and not just a while(1) loop.
The transition from sleep mode to active mode is also very important in terms
of energy consumption and speed.
The Zero Gekco family wakes up in only 2 microseconds. Comparing this to other solutions, you can
see that we save a lot of energy and can execute the code that we want as fast as possible.
Finally, the high performance digital and analog peripherals of the Zero Gecko has an
interconnection matrix called Peripheral Reflex System - PRS.
PRS allows the Cortex-M0+ core to be sleeping while the peripherals are doing their job.
If you want to verify the power consumption of the EFM32 Zero Gecko devices, this can
be easily done by connecting one of the starter kits to your PC.
You can use the Advanced Energy Monitoring (AEM) system on the kit to measure power consumption
and to profiler your code.
So, comparing existing ARM Cortex-M0+ and M0 devices, the EFM32 Zero Gecko consumes
less power while having a higher feature set.
I'm happy to announce our latest family member, Zero Gecko!