Ambiq Micro – New player on the MCU market

Ambiq Micro – new ultra-low-power technology

Ambiq Micro developed a patented Subthreshold Power Optimized Technology (SPOT™) platform that dramatically reduces the amount of power consumed by semiconductors. By applying SPOT, Ambiq Micro produces the world’s lowest power real-time clock (RTC) and microcontroller (MCU).

Rather than using transistors that are turned all the way “on”, subthreshold circuits use the leakage of “off” transistors to compute in both the digital and analog domains. With most computations handled by using only leakage current, total system power consumption on the order of nanoamps is easily achieved. For example, when compared to a typical circuit operating at 1.8V, a “near-threshold” circuit operating at 0.5V can achieve up to a 13X improvement in dynamic power.

Operation at such low voltages is problematic due to susceptibility to noise, high sensitivity to temperature, and variability due to process drift. In developing the SPOT™ platform, Ambiq Micro has addressed all of these challenges by redesigning every analog and digital circuit in the chip to adapt for the temperature, voltage, and manufacturing variations that are problematic at these voltage levels. Despite the comprehensive use of subthreshold voltages in the SPOT™ platform, Ambiq Micro‘s products behave just like any other semiconductor device and they are implemented using industry-standard CMOS manufacturing flows. The one difference: dramatically reduced power consumption.

Normally Apollo is know as space ship or space ship mission. In case of Ambiq Micro‘s MCU product Apollo is not a spaceship but Apollo is a MCU series launching a new mission in direction low power. In the meanwhile Ambiq Micro did their second launch to low-power with their Apollo 2 series, consuming just 10uA/MHz with 48MHz ARM™ Cortex™ M4F with 1MB FLASH and 256KB RAM.

Apollo achieves a score of 377 and smashes through EEMBC ULPBench ceiling, doubling the highest score on record.

Ambiq Micro – another Energy Micro?

Some time ago Energy Micro was in a same position Ambiq Micro was and is now part of SiliconLabs. In technical point of view Ambiq Micro is up-to-date. So which partners does Ambiq Micro has?

As partners Ambiq Micro has Fujitsu, known as Fujitsu Semiconductor and now being converted from an semiconductor manufacturer to a distribution partner. In Europe FEEU – Fujitsu Electronics Europe GmbH is taking care of technical support and also distribution of Ambiq Micro MCUs and RTCs. So lets see about the future of Ambiq Micro!

Fujitsu Electronic Europe is providing a webshop for small quantity orders and EVK/EVB oders.

Direct link to Fujitsu Electronics Europe webshop:

http://shop.feeu.com