Silicon Labs Microcontrollers
Well known in the industry for the low-power performance, the Gecko family of microcontrollers from Silicon Labs provide performance in small packaging suitable for battery-powered applications. Powered by ARM® Cortex®-M4, M3 and M0+ cores, embedded developers can scale up and down within these families of devices as demands change.
ARM® Cortex®-M4 MCUs
Ranging from the Giant Gecko S1, with its 2MB of flash and 72MHz clock speed, down to the Pearl Gecko, small quad flat-pack and BGA packages make this family suitable for battery-applications, remote sensing and wearables. With a focus on IoT applications, these microcontrollers also feature a range of cryptography hardware to support secure connections, encryption key storage and data security.
ARM® Cortex®-M0+ MCUs
Available in packages as small as 4 x 4mm, and consuming as little as 150µA/MHz, these Cortex®-M0+ devices utilise autonomous and energy efficient peripherals. The Happy Gecko and Zero Gecko are capable of waking-up quickly from their energy saving modes, ensuring that your application can process data quickly without wasting energy.
ARM® Cortex®-M3 MCUs
Small packaging and wafer options ensure that these microcontrollers can find a home in almost any portable application. Powered by a Cortex®-M3 core, this family provides the scope to move from tiny 4 x 4mm packages with 4kB flash memory up to 7 x 7mm packages with 1MB of flash. The Tiny Gecko and Gecko offer fast wake-up and an LCD controller, whilst the larger devices, such as the Giant Gecko, includes USB host and device, AES encryption and low energy UART and sensor interfaces.
iSYSTEM - Enabling Safer Embedded Systems
Regardless of the application or target microcontroller, or if you are using an evaluation board or your own prototype, iSYSTEM has a debugging solution to meet your needs. With our free integrated development environment (IDE) winIDEA Open, the on-board J-Link debug interface, found on Silicon Lab's ‘Developer Kit’ range of evaluation boards, is an excellent way to get started. Simply develop your application code in the “Simplicity Studio”, configure your peripheral and build your code. From there, it is simply a case of downloading the generated ELF file onto the target from within winIDEA Open to profit from the deep insights the winIDEA environment can offer. Additionally, it is also possible to start with on-chip testing of your application code using testIDEA. As soon as code trace or code coverage becomes an issue, you can upgrade to our range of BlueBox On-Chip Analyzers, as shown in the table below.
| Family | Cortex®-M Core | Development Kit J-Link |
iC5000 | iC5700 | iC6000 |
| Zero Gecko | M0+ | ✔(1) | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Happy Gecko | M0+ | ✔(1) | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Tiny Gecko | M3 | ✔(1) | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Gecko | M3 | ✔(1) | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Jade Gecko | M3 | ✔(1) | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Leopard Gecko | M3 | ✔(1) | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Giant Gecko | M3 | ✔(1) | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Pearl Gecko | M4 | ✔(1) | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Wonder Gecko | M4 | ✔(1) | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
| Giant Gecko S1 | M4 | ✔(1) | ✔ | ✔ | ✘ |
(1) - Basic debugging supported only; no trace
