Oslo, Norway, September 2, 2010 – Energy Micro®, the energy efficient microcontroller company, has introduced a free software tool designed to remove the traditionally time-consuming problem of debugging I/O pin conflicts. Supporting the complete EFM32 Gecko low power MCU family, energyAware Designer ensures correct pin configuration and automatically generates set-up code and documentation.
On creating a new project, designers select a target MCU and are presented with a default device configuration. Clicking on a peripheral function enables it and highlights respective pins in green on an intuitive pin-out diagram. Pin-conflicts induced by selecting another peripheral, that by default is routed to the same pins, are highlighted in red. These are simply resolved by choosing an alternative peripheral location, automatically suggested by the software. Configuration of GPIO resources and clocks are handled in a similar way.
Once happy with the overall MCU configuration, designers can then use the energyAware Designer tool to generate the corresponding C-code file, which can then be cut-and-paste directly into the application code. At the same time, detailed PDF documentation can be exported, reporting the final device pin-out map in diagrammatic and a choice of tabulated formats.
Energy Micro’s CTO, Øyvind Janbu said, “For too long engineers have had to waste a lot of time trying to decipher complex peripheral maps to determine where pin-out conflicts lie. EnergyAware Designer takes away this difficulty, simplifies MCU configuration and documentation, and lets engineers concentrate on developing the application instead.”
A short video showing a demonstration of the energyAware Designer software tool can be viewed at: www.energymicro.com/videos
Based on the ARM® Cortex™ M3 core, Energy Micro’s EFM32 Gecko microcontroller family has been proven to consume a quarter of the energy required by other 8, 16 and 32-bit microcontroller solutions. The EFM32 Gecko microcontroller is in full production and details of the software and pin-compatible Tiny Gecko and Giant Gecko products have recently been announced.
About Energy Micro
Energy Micro develops, markets and sells the world’s most energy friendly microcontrollers, based on the industry leading ARM® Cortex™-M3 32-bit architecture. The company was founded in 2007 by experienced semiconductor professionals with previous expertise from Chipcon, Texas Instruments, Atmel and Nordic Semiconductor. Energy Micro is backed by leading Nordic investors Northzone Ventures and Investinor. More information on Energy Micro is available at www.energymicro.com
