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Battery Concerns Could be a Thing of the Past, Thanks to New Futuretech

By Ken Briodagh April 01, 2015

Battery life is the scourge of the mobile device epoch, in which we are only living in the genesis. This creates a real problem for M2M solutions, especially in the IIoT, because they are often too small or too inaccessible to be services conveniently. Well, now Atmal, a San Jose, California-based technology developer says it has an ARM-based microcontroller that will run at such low power that the battery life of some intelligent devices could last years on current types of batteries.

The group of products is called the Smart SAM L21, and according to Atmal, it delivers power at consumption levels of as little as 35 milliamps in active mode and 200 nanoamps in sleep mode. That combined with a 12-channel event system that connects the devices directly, bypassing a CPU, and SleepWalking peripherals that control the clock and power to reduce leakage and switching, and only wake the CPU upon a pre-qualified event, account for the extended battery life.

It’s not all about the power, either. They also have full-speed USB host and device, AES security, capacitive touch sensing and opAmps. There are several add-ons and peripherals available, but one of the best is the Atmel QTouch controller, which offers built-in hardware support for buttons, sliders, wheels and proximity. It also supports both mutual and self-capacitive touch without the need for external components.

If the astronomical numbers being thrown around about the growth of the IoT in the next decade are true, this kind of solution will be critical to keep utility grids from getting overloaded. According to the rating scale of the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, the ULPbench (Ultra-Low Power benchmark), this is the lowest power processor ever made. Its score was 50 percent better than the closest competitor on the scale.

The future is getting here a lot faster than we anticipated. For a peek at what is could look like, check out the video below. 




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
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