What if we could design our embedded devices in a way that pretty much took the battery issue off the table? If we could dramatically reduce our power consumption, the choice of battery wouldn’t be such a critical compromise in our design. And – what if – for some devices – we could get rid of the battery altogether?
In this episode of Chalk TalkHD Amelia chats with Ryan Hoium (Texas Instruments) about about TI’s revolutionary Wolverine technology and a new series of ultra-low power MCUs that will change the way we think about batteries in our embedded designs.
Click Here for More Information about the MSP430FR5969 – (ACTIVE) Wolverine Mixed Signal Microcontroller.
Click the link below to download the free whitepaper: Benchmarking MCU Power Consumption For Ultra-Low-Power Applications
desiderata sorry: ‘Firefox has detected that [scripts are redirecting in a way that will never complete.]’ in the link to the ultralow power benchmarking whitepaper.
So, AES 128… hardware, MSP430/16 16MHz (at top speed, not least to match the onboard A-D), some of the 40 data I/O can be tapped for capacitive sense, 64kB (for those whose customers will buy a 4K TV and put up 100 Apple II GS screens; or dig in to low power 40-bit memory and interfaces otherwise) FRAM (mind the 10^12th write), and it eats bait cameras and/or oldschool KMT invasions like actual/fictional wolverines…
Did not benchmark those; probably have to re-file compliance to do that. Still a fine nod to whoever made the first wolverine honeypot to confirm hibernation (before many geneticists sequenced it, I suppose.)
Besides the nice new low-leakage power supply passives, I guess I would sensibly find an optical transciever ca. 60microamps (x 3.0 V) to use with this than run 4 x 5W WiFi antennas, or use NFC (no stirrer onboard,) or process a few ATSC or QAM cable channels with 200ma hardware, and pick wetting lenses and lightpipes, electrofluidic or e-Paper displays rather than OLEDs or LEDs for indicators.
On the plus side, minigame events where you shake the controller on cue (to repower the device with an enclosed coil and magnet) can be more sensible (where the body heat powered thermal junction devices fall short of whatever demand.)
The way this webcast was recorded, with you (Amelia) entirely on one channel and the speaker (Ryan) entirely on the other, sounds really unnatural when listening using headphones. It’s as if there are two people whispering directly into your ear. A bit creepy.
Hi Geoff,
Our apologies – that’s a post-production glitch and we’re fixing it right away.
– Kevin
It is not that I want to be critical but besides the FRAM I do not see how 360nA is good. Actually, this number is reached in what is called deep sleep mode and can mostly be woken up by a reset or an external interrupt that requires high power. It will be nice to have a very low RTC that does that. Why not save the register contents into the FRAM and shut the power completely down. I guess the leakage will be much less. I believe one can integrate an analog switch in there. They can reach as low as 1nA of leakage power if well designed.