Silicon Labs expands IoT hardware, software solutions
Silicon Labs has announced new products designed to advance the innovations and trends shaping the Internet of Things (IoT) including Matter, Amazon Sidewalk, Wi-SUN, and Wi-Fi 6. The products build on the company’s Series 2 SoC family with the expansion of the family to include four new products:
- Complete Matter development solutions providing support for Matter over Wi-Fi, Matter over Thread, Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) commissioning, and Matter bridges to Zigbee and Z-Wave, all in advance of the expected release of Matter 1.0 this Fall.
- The first end-to-end development platform with complete connectivity support for Amazon Sidewalk. The Silicon Labs Pro Kit for Amazon Sidewalk offers differentiated security with Secure Vault, sub-gigahertz (GHz) and Bluetooth LE connectivity, and the software and tools for Sidewalk device makers, designers, and developers to get to market faster.
- A new flagship SoC and power amplifier for Wi-SUN, the FG25 SoC and EFF01 Front End Module (FEM), respectively, which when used together, are designed to provide a sub-gigahertz (GHz) transmission range of up to 3 kilometersi in dense urban environments with no data loss.
- Silicon Labs’ first Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth LE SoC family, the SiWx917, which is designed to be the lowest power, longest battery life Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth LE combination SoC in the industry.
The central component of the Matter development solutions is the company’s 2.4 GHz wireless MG24 SoC for Bluetooth and multiple-protocol operations that supports Matter over Thread as a single-chip solution. The MG24 has an effective range of up to 200 meters indoors for OpenThread while enabling Bluetooth commissioning of new devices on the same chip. When the MG24 is combined with the ultra-low power RS9116 Wi-Fi product, it enables development of Matter over Wi-Fi 4 with an easy transition to the company’s Wi-Fi 6 single-chip Matter SoC in 2023.
The Silicon Labs Unify SDK, offered as the only multi-protocol software development platform for Matter Border Routers, provides the tools to bridge Matter to other IoT platforms, including Zigbee and Z-Wave, and Silicon Labs Simplicity Studio and GSDK provide developers a single development environment for enabling Matter on wireless devices and seamlessly connecting them to their desired ecosystem. The MG24 Matter-ready SoC, RS9116 Wi-Fi SoC, the multiprotocol Unify SDK, Simplicity Studio, and the Gecko SDK are available now for developers and designers to begin designing Matter-ready products using the wireless protocol of their choice.
The Silicon Labs Pro Kit for Amazon Sidewalk comprises low-power, high-performance wireless hardware for all Amazon Sidewalk protocols, including Bluetooth Low Energy, sub-GHz FSK and CSS, software SDKs, and security. The kit comes with a pre-flashed software image and AWS pre-registration, providing developers with a quick start to Amazon Sidewalk development. Simplicity Studio, the integrated development environment (IDE) for all Silicon Labs technologies, guides developers through the entire Amazon Sidewalk development journey from start to certifying finalized code into a guided, end-to-end process.
Tanuj Mohan, General Manager and Chief Technology Officer at Amazon Sidewalk says, “We’re excited to work with Silicon Labs to enable developers to build devices and experiences powered by the secure, ubiquitous, and always-on community network that we are building in Amazon Sidewalk. The new Silicon Labs Pro Kit for Amazon Sidewalk streamlines the development process, so developers can deliver innovative products with Amazon Sidewalk’s enhanced connectivity at scale.”
While anyone can develop an Amazon Sidewalk device, Amazon Sidewalk connectivity is currently only available to end consumers and endpoint devices in the U.S. The Silicon Labs Pro Kit for Amazon Sidewalk is sampling today, with general availability planned for 2H 2023.
The company also announced the new FG25 SoC and its complementary RF power amplifier, the EFF01, designed to help address the growing need for intelligent, connected devices in cities and other municipal environments. Built to be the flagship SoC for low-power wide-area networks (LPWAN) like Wi-SUN and other proprietary sub-GHz protocols, the FG25 SoC combines an ARM Cortex-M33 processor with the most internal memory of any SoC in the company’s portfolio.
This large pool of internal memory, combined with Silicon Labs’ scalable Wi-SUN Field Area Network (FAN) Border Router 1.1, enables FG25 deployments to scale to hundreds of thousands of nodes. Ideal for Smart Cities, this ability to scale will allow city planners and municipal engineers to connect streetlights, cameras, weather stations, smart metering, utility transmission systems, and more together to enable data-sharing and optimization between city services to improve their efficiency, save costs, and offer more ways for citizens to interact with and get more value from municipal services.
Also launching with the FG25 SoC is the EFF01 RF Front End Module. Designed to amplify the power and transmission range of the FG25 SoC, the EFF01 FEM doubles the effective range of the FG25, allowing it to operate with minimal data loss at a range of up to 3 kilometers in dense urban environments. The FG25 and EFF01 are currently sampling with customers and are anticipated to become generally available in Q4 2022 and Q2 2023, respectively.
Finally, the company also announced the new secure ultra-low power SiWx917 Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth LE combination SoC, the first Wi-Fi 6 solution in Silicon Labs’ portfolio. The SiWx917 is a single-chip solution that is Matter-ready, includes an integrated applications processor, and offers industry-leading energy efficiency, making it ideal for battery-powered or energy-efficient IoT devices with always-on cloud connectivity.
In addition to SiWx917’s Wi-Fi 6 support for high-performance in dense wireless environments, it includes a dual-core architecture, a quad-thread ThreadArch processor for wireless connectivity, and an ARM Cortex M4F for user application processing. It also integrates embedded SRAM, FLASH, an AI/ML accelerator, an enhanced PSA Level 2 certifiable security engine, and a power management subsystem in a single 7×7 package.
The SiWx917 is a fully integrated SoC designed to deliver exceptional compute power, faster machine learning processing, best-in-class security, enough memory to run wireless stacks and applications, and ultra-low current consumption for long battery life. This can help users reduce development costs and device footprint, future-proof their applications, and accelerate time to market. The SiWx917 is currently sampling, with general availability anticipated in early Q3 2023.
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