The recent release of Silicon Labs’ Series 3 portfolio marks the first time the company has opted for 22 nanometer process nodes, a decision that centered on future-proofing devices, Matt Maupin, Senior Product Marketing Manager told IoT Insider in an exclusive briefing.
The Series 3 portfolio includes two new wireless system-on-chips (SoCs): the SiXG301 and SiXG302. The SiXG301 is optimised for line-powered devices and the SIXG302, for battery-powered efficiency.
During the briefing, Maupin spoke more specifically about the SiXG301. One of the key talking points was the “incremental changes” made in Series 3, with the most noticeable being in compute capabilities such as offering higher clock speeds and lower current. Maupin noted that there will still be applications better suited to using their Series 2 SoCs.
“If you’re looking at applications that don’t have a lot of Flash and RAM requirements, that’s where 40 nanometer has its advantages, when you have a lot of digital on the chip, because … the analog doesn’t shrink,” explained Maupin.
The SiXG301 was positioned as somewhat building upon the foundation set by the Series 2 – which included targeting specific applications – and in this case, is optimised for smart lighting LED applications, in the home or in commercial environments, alongside other smart home products, as it supports protocols including Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Thread with support for Matter.
Another talking point included the Series 3 SoCs having more radio capabilities integrated, able to incorporate tri-band radios. Series 2 had dual-band radios. The radio in question is high performance with up to +10dBM output power, and supports minus 106.3dBM sensitivity for Matter and Zigbee; representing an area where people working on LED lighting can fail to think about, which is reliable RF communication.
“[People can think] ‘well, it’s just an LED bulb,’ but there is a perception that if I push a button or I make a command, I want a response in a certain amount of time,” said Maupin.“Generally that’s 100 milliseconds. If you’re having a lot of retries … it does affect the user experience. So we want to make sure [customers] have very reliable communication.”
This decision to focus on smart lighting as an application reflects the traction the company is making in creating products for its lighting customers, as well as it being a continually growing and expanding market. The release of Series 3 includes more memory for protocols like Thread.
Cost was cut by reducing the Bill of Materials (BOM) through removing a DC DC, and the need for conductors, because it was not necessary for the device. However, at embedded world where it launched the BG29 family of SoCs, the DC DC was iven a “boost” to create more efficiency, being cognisant of the needs of the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices market.
“It makes sense because at this point … customers care about every penny we cut out of the cost for them,” added Maupin.
Choosing 22 nanometer process nodes
Smart lighting is sometimes thought of as “simple,” Maupin noted, but customers’ unique approaches to dimming, colour control and other features requires SoCs with lots of RAM and processing ability.
This was part of the decision-making to choose 22 nanometer process nodes, to ensure that the devices are future proof and can continue to be used by customers in the near future.
“One of the reasons 22 nanometer was such a good fit is [that] we are providing a lot of Flash and RAM specifically for LED lighting,” said Maupin. “We’re seeing a lot of customers move to Matter, and with this, we want to make sure that these devices are future proof.
“So this device can have up to 4MB of co-packaged Flash, and 512K of RAM.”
Growth in Matter adoption
Witnessing an uptake in Matter adoption has been “new”, and unlike that of Bluetooth or Thread when they were first released. Maupin partly credited this to adoption in the infrastructure from tech giants like Apple, Google and Amazon.
“In those [smart home] devices they always support Matter over Wi-Fi, because it’s an easy firmware upgrade, but now they’re doing Matter over Thread … we’re seeing a lot of adoption in the infrastructure, and that’s going to enable more products.”
Although they are witnessing an uptake in Matter adoption, Maupin noted, there are still regions around the world where Matter is not necessarily the preferred solution, and by using Silicon Labs’ concurrent multiprotocol (CMP) technology, devices are able to support multiple protocols simultaneously – meaning manufacturers who sell globally aren’t caught out by varying protocol adoption across different regions, and the end user doesn’t have to be concerned about what protocol it supports. A win win.
Silicon Labs’ CMP technology has been part of Series 1, 2 and now Series 3 devices.
“A common application of that [CMP technology], for example, if I go buy an LED bulb, many of them have Zigbee but they also have Bluetooth, so I could do either or,” said Maupin. “Matter over Thread supports not only Matter over Thread, but you also use Bluetooth for commissioning, and things like that.
“So we’ve had that. With this, what we’re doing now is [that] we can support two 802.15.4 packets.”
By focusing on optimising the chips, recognising the growth in protocol adoption, and looking for ways to cut costs for customers, the release of Silicon Labs’ Series 3 products represents the company’s ongoing journey in bringing to market products that matter.
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